Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control

By Medea Benjamin and Barbara Ehrenreich

Drone Warfare is the first comprehensive analysis of one of the fastest growing—and most secretive—fronts in global conflict: the rise of robot warfare. In 2000, the Pentagon had fewer than fifty aerial drones; ten years later, it had a fleet of nearly 7,500, and the US Air Force now trains more drone “pilots” than bomber and fighter pilots combined. Drones are already a $5 billion business in the US alone. The human cost? Drone strikes have killed more than 200 children alone in Pakistan and Yemen.

CODEPINK and Global Exchange cofounder Medea Benjamin provides the first extensive analysis of who is producing the drones, where they are being used, who controls these unmanned planes, and what are the legal and moral implications of their use. In vivid, readable style, this book also looks at what activists, lawyers, and scientists across the globe are doing to ground these weapons. Benjamin argues that the assassinations we are carrying out from the air will come back to haunt us when others start doing the same thing—to us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781781682531

Medea Benjamin

Medea Benjamin is the founding director of Global Exchange and cofounded codepink with Jodie Evans. She also helped bring together the groups forming United for Peace and Justice. Medea has traveled several times to Afghanistan and Iraq, where she organized the Occupation Watch Center. At the start of 2005 she accompanied military families whose loved ones had been killed in the war to bring a shipment of humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people. In 2000, she was the Green Party candidate for the U.S. Senate from California. Her campaign mobilized thousands of Californians around issues such as paying workers a living wage, providing universal health care, and building schools, not prisons. Medea is a key figure in the antisweatshop movement, having spearheaded campaigns against companies such as Nike and Gap. In 1999, Medea helped expose indentured servitude among garment workers in the U.S. territory of Saipan, which led to a billion-dollar lawsuit against seventeen retailers. She is the author or coauthor of eight books, including the award-winning Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo, and helped produce TV documentaries such as Sweating for a T-Shirt.