Contrary to Otto from a Fish Called Wanda, The London Underground is not a political movement, but given the way I'm going to talk about it it might as well be.
This add is in the St. Paul's Station on the Central Line in London and it's not the only one. In my extensive googling to find the picture above, I uncovered a bunch of different "Where Do You Stand?" advertisements on topics ranging from a rising China to Iran's nuclear program. However, "Drone Strikes?" is the one I saw, so it's the one I'm going to talk about.
I've always been a fan of unmanned drone strikes for exactly the reasons listed above. I am all for a weapon that lowers the risk of civilian injury and increases the accuracy of the strike. But the add raises a compelling counter argument, namely the "extra-judical assassination" thing. War is a tough call to make. People are obviously going to die, so any tactical advantage that reduces the collateral deaths is, I think, fantastic; but in modern warfare collateral damage is almost a given. We no longer fight wars where both sides face each other on a field and shoot. That went by the wayside a long time ago (I would pick a war, but my history text book keeps telling me that each new war was the first to feature the extensive use of guerrilla tactics, so I'm not sure). I think we have passed the age in which we could genuinely avoid massive collateral damage. I'm not saying I'm happy about it, but it's probably true. The ability to target individuals is also probably a plus, but then again there's the whole "extra-judical assassination" thing. I guess that's the long way of saying its complicated, but I thought this add was particularly thought provoking and I thought it might be nice to share.
What do you think?
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