Think Globally, Reenact Locally

Dupont Circle: home to a park smack in the center of a historic neighborhood, this famous Washington, DC landmark is constantly host to meandering lovers, cafe-bound entrepreneurs, stressed out diplomats, think tank people and eager tourists. But last month it was host to something quite different: a drone attack.

Organized by Pax Christi USA, Foreign Policy in Focus, CODEPINK, and Voices for Creative Nonviolence, the mock drone attack was the latest in a series of attempts to bring the wars home for Americans. Similar actions in Madison, San Francisco and Boston resulted in a number of media hits, including the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, energizing the moral dimension of the national conversation about drone attacks in the war on terror.

For the majority of Americans, foreign wars have always been hard to imagine.  Relatively few Americans are exposed to the risks of fighting, and most remain completely insulated from the consequences of our government's action in far away corners of the world.

Mock drone attacks are these activists' way of getting out the message that the CIA and the US Air Force are using unmanned flying drones to target militants in Afghanistan, Pakistan and even Yemen (including an American citizen).  The drones fly combat missions but are piloted by joystick-handlers in sunny Virginia and Nevada.  The CIA's program is secretive. Who is targeted, why and what is done to limit civilian casualties is all unknown.

It's not hard to do a (mock) drone attack  in your town.  All you need is a leaf blower (for that, well, droning sound), some  leaflets, a camera and a couple dozen friends.  Just check out this "How To" action guide.

Why should you do this?

As Philip Alston, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killing (who, as an aside, really does write the most scintillating UN reports) points out, so-called 'targeted killings' are as old as the hills (think snipers, missiles, car bombs or every CIA movie you have ever seen). In the past, however, peace time killings were denied or cloaked in secrecy (again, every CIA film, ever).  Drone attacks by the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan are aerial CIA assassinations passed off as acts of war.

Without political action to inspire moral condemnation of drone attacks, the CIA operators of this "addictive" technology will continue to fight morning traffic in Virginia to take their seats at a console where they can kill others while remaining completely insulated from the consequences in a far away corner of the world.

The Obama administration argues such attacks are legal under international law... That is, if we're at war.

There's a funny thing about the way  international law - or more precisely, humanitarian law - treats war.  Killing people is okay. You just have to kill the right people at the right time and place.  Under the laws of war, it's not okay to kill combatants and civilians indiscriminately (this is called distinction).  Indeed, you have to take all feasible precautions to avoid, or at least minimize, the loss of civilian life. This means combatants must follow the principle of precaution, and can't kill excessive amounts of civilians in relation to the military advantage they seek (this is called proportionality). While such laws hardly amount to peace on earth, they are aimed at making wartime more, well, humane, at least for civilians.  Under the rules of humanitarian law, drones might very well be legal.

Here's the trick, though:  when countries are at peace with each other human rights law places this whole state killing shtick out-of-bounds.  You couldn't just, say, send an unmanned aerial drone to blow someone to bits because you find them threatening.  No sir, that's a violation of that one human rights principle... oh yeah, the good ol' right to life.

This poses a international lawyer's conundrum.  If the U.S. is at peace with Pakistan but at war with terror, are strikes in North Wazirstan, where US drones have killed nearly 2,000 people since 2004, peace or war time strikes?

Like so many human rights questions in the war on terror, invoking war leads to the legal justification of morally distorted policy. Taking action to bring the strikes home, however, places the moral questions front and center, in war, in peace, or in this messy war-peace hybrid we seem to live in.

So check out the "How To" action guide, grab a few friends and bring a drone attack to a central crossing near you.

If anyone knows of other similar actions please post in the comments below.

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GOT A TIP FOR US? Is there a story or campaign in your area that we'd want to know about? E-mail us at humanrightstips@change.org. Please also follow Change.org's Human Rights page on Facebook and Twitter. Photo credit: Pax Christi USA