美国沉迷无人机反恐酿恶果_风闻

作者：兰顺正

首发自：CGTN

近日，美国外交政策分析家迈克尔·霍顿在美国《国家利益》双月刊网站上刊登了题为《为什么美国（和特朗普）沉迷于无人机战争》的文章。作者认为，特朗普政府沉迷于用无人机进行反恐战争，因此却导致了“越反越恐”的恶果。很明显，该篇文章将再次引发对于美国无人机肆意杀戮问题的探讨。

自“９·１１”以来，各类无人作战平台日益成为美军反恐战争的主角。作为信息化作战手段最新、最典型的代表，美军无人机作战具备对己的“零伤亡”及对敌的“定点清除”打击等特征，因此使用无人机作为一种有效反恐手段对“人命大于天”的美军而言早已是屡试不爽。最近十余年，武装无人机已经成为美国全球反恐作战的重要组成部分，遍布阿富汗、巴基斯坦、也门、索马里、利比亚和叙利亚等恐怖袭击高发国家。尤其在针对恐怖组织头目的“斩首行动”中日益发挥着主导作用。

但是美军在反恐战争中过于依赖无人机也引发了一系列的麻烦和争议。

首先是道德上的困境。由于无人作战特殊的作战方式，无人机战争对于在远离目标千万里之遥的空调房中操作无人机的军人和承包商来说没有任何人身危险。同时操作人员每天按时上下班，参与战争对其个人私生活影响很小。长此以往，作战人员从人性角度感知理解战争的能力可能会逐渐麻木、丧失，久而久之就会存在以游戏心态来执行杀戮，从而给予战争的道义基础根本性的冲击。

其次是在责任区分上。在常规的战争模式下，战争机器由权责分明的军事部门和政府机构来推动，因此对于战犯的指认与辨识在操作层面并非难事。然而，对于因无人作战引发的战争罪行，其责任的追究可能涉及操控者、军火商、程序员、采购官、战地指挥官、相关维护人员乃至无人机本身，涵盖其研制、生产、装备与应用的整个过程，其追责难度较常规战争进一步提升。另外决策者和政客不必为描述受伤或死亡的美国军人的可怕报道担心。公众也不会就美国军人牺牲的意义提出棘手问题。

以上因素导致了这些年来除了恐怖分子以外，死在美国无人机翼刀下的平民人数也居高不下。美军在巴基斯坦、也门、利比亚和索马里使用无人机等手段打击恐怖分子，造成了大量的无辜平民伤亡。据统计，自2004 年美国开始在巴基斯坦使用无人机反恐至2013年10月，死亡人数在2525～3613人之间，其中平民死亡为407～926 人，占总死亡人数的16%～25%。在也门，美军无人机日常活动地区的民众也承受着重大心理压力。2013年12月12日，也门境内一个大型的迎亲车队被误当作一群恐怖分子，而遭到美国无人机发动的“特征攻击”，结果造成 11～15 位无辜平民死亡。2010年 2 月，美军一架“捕食者”无人机在阿富汗执行反恐行动时，因“不准确和不专业的情报”，错误地攻击了3辆满载平民的客车，导致23人死亡。这一系列的平民伤亡被视为是对无人机的滥用，堪称国家恐怖主义行为。

而此次的文章指出，自特朗普上任以来，估计在索马里已经发动了155次空中和无人机打击。这个数量是奥巴马最后一个任期中发动的同类打击数量的5倍。在也门和阿富汗，空中与无人机打击有着类似的增加，只是美国不再公布有关袭击的数据。作者在文中表示，美国对无人机的依赖，就像“反恐战争”本身一样是一种缺乏战略的战术，只会制造更多的恐怖分子和好战分子。现在在也门、索马里以及美国正进行反恐作战的其他国家，叛乱分子和恐怖分子数量远比反恐开始前多得多。尤其是无人机的使用已经助推好战的“萨拉菲”组织在各个穆斯林国家招兵买马。据战略与国际问题研究中心估计，从2001年到2018年，支持“萨拉菲”组织的好战分子数量增加了近400%，这可能还是一种低估。

综上不难看出，美军漠视他国平民生命，肆意使用无人机的作法，在未来会导致自己的“反恐战争”以及世界安全局势更加复杂。

（以下为英文原文）

America’s obsession with drones has paid offLan ShunZheng

Michael Horton, an American foreign policy analyst, recently published an article on the National Interest website titled “Why America (and Donald Trump) are addicted to drone wars.” The author argues that the Trump administration’s obsession with drones in the war on terror has led to more and more terror. Clearly, this article will reignite a discussion of the issue of indiscriminate killing by American drones.

Since the September 11 attacks, unmanned combat platforms of various types have increasingly become the protagonist of the U.S. military’s war on terror. As the latest and most typical representative of information operation means, the U.S. military unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operation has the characteristics of “zero casualties” and “targeted killing” against the enemy.

In the last decade or so, armed drones have become an important part of the U.S.’s global counter-terrorism campaign, spreading across countries with high incidence of terrorist attacks such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Syria. In particular, it has increasingly played a leading role in the “beheading” of terrorist leaders.

But the U.S. military’s reliance on drones in the war on terror has also created a host of problems and controversies.

The first is the moral dilemma. Because of the special nature of unmanned combat, drone warfare poses no personal danger to military personnel or contractors operating drones in air-conditioned rooms thousands of miles away from their targets. At the same time, the operators go to work on time every day, and the war has little impact on their personal lives. In the long run, the warfighter’s ability to perceive and understand war from a human perspective may gradually become numb and lost, and over time there will be a video game mentality to carry out the killing, thus having a fundamental impact on the moral foundation of war.

An American flag is placed among names of victims at the September 11 Memorial in New York, December 6, 2019. /AP

The second is in the division of responsibility. In the conventional mode of war, the war machine is driven by the military and government agencies with clear powers and responsibilities, so the identification of war criminals is not difficult at the operational level. However, for war crimes caused by unmanned combat, the accountability may involve operators, arms dealers, programmers, procurement officers, field commanders, relevant maintenance personnel and even the UAV itself, covering the whole process of its development, production, equipment and application, which is more difficult to be held responsible than conventional war.

These factors have contributed to the high number of civilian deaths from American drones in recent years in addition to terrorists.

According to statistics, since 2004 when the United States began to use UAV in Pakistan up until October 2013, the death toll was between 2,525 and 3,613, among which the civilian death toll was 407 to 926, accounting for 16 to 25 percent of the total death toll.

In Yemen, people in areas where U.S. drones operate are also under significant psychological pressure. On December 12, 2013, a large welcoming convoy in Yemen was mistaken for a group of terrorists, and was attacked by a U.S. drone, resulting in the death of 11 to 15 innocent civilians. In February 2010, a predator drone mistakenly attacked three buses full of civilians during a counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan based on false intelligence, killing 23 people. The series of civilian casualties is seen as a misuse of drones and an act of state terrorism.

The article notes that an estimated 155 air and drone strikes have been launched in Somalia since Trump took office. That is five times the number of such strikes launched in Obama’s last term. There has been a similar increase in air and drone strikes in Yemen and Afghanistan. The authors argue that America’s reliance on drones, like the “War on Terror” itself, is “a tactic devoid of strategy that only creates more terrorists and militants.”

There are now far more insurgents and terrorists in Yemen, Somalia and other countries where the United States is fighting the war on terror than there were before it began. In particular, the use of drones has helped militant salafi groups recruit in Muslim countries. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that the number of militants supporting salafi groups increased by nearly 400 percent between 2001 and 2018, which may still be an underestimate.

In conclusion, it is not hard to see that the U.S. military’s disregard for civilian lives in other countries and indiscriminate use of drones will lead to its own “War on Terror” and a more complex world security situation in the future.