Now, I mention this because it isn’t the first time the Houthi rebels have used drones in their war against the Yemeni central government (such as it is). In fact, you’ll recall that back in September, the Houthi managed to hit Saudi oil facilities with drones, and did them considerable damage.
Why do I mention this? Because not that long ago we thought of drone strikes as kind of a Western thing. We thought we had a monopoly on that sort of weapon. Only, very quickly, everyone from China to Iran copied us, and passed killer drones to all their proxies and friends.
And now they seem to be the normal stuff of war, as unremarkable as an AK-47 or an IED.
Which frightens me very much. I sincerely hope that the people who are in charge, somewhere, are thinking about how one fights such devices.
For I fear that, sometime, even where I am now, in the heart of the American continent, thousands of miles away from war...
Someday...out of the azure and cloudless Texas skies...seemingly so peaceful...
Death will come.
And we’ll never see it coming.
***
Want a free book? Check out With Luther, Tourists, and God in Santa Fe. It's partly a travel log and partly a meditation on people who actually make a difference in life. Oh, and it is lavishly illustrated by yours truly. It’s on Gumroad as a PDF about 52 pages long. So give it glance!
Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and journalist who has published material on topics ranging from the Jazz Age to computers. (Among his small claims to fame is that he interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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