We’re writing about this because it seems that beyond the peripheral vision of many Americans, a quiet and ghastly drama is unfolding. For those who are there, of course, the chaos and horror are anything but quiet.  But it’s not being talked about much in the news, in churches, or anywhere else, for that matter– but it’s something that has been on our hearts for a long time.

We firmly believe that this is an issue that everyone should be able to agree on, regardless of our political or religious persuasions. Both political parties have supported (and expanded) the drone program, but the implications of it are so anti-human that this continuing phenomenon demands the attention– and the resistance– of people of compassion. With that goal of stirring compassionate people (and especially followers of Jesus) to action, A. and T. have co-authored this post to look into the human cost of drones, as well as to examine the question of whether this “anti-terrorism” strategy might actually be increasing the risk of terrorism in the United States and around the world.

A couple of months ago, we read an interesting Kindle Single called Aftershock: The Blast That Shook Psycho Platoon (download it for free here) about some of the struggles US soldiers face as they come back from either Afghanistan or Iraq.  It talks about the effects of two conditions: post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) and mild traumatic brain injury.  Aftershock follows the lives of one platoon that experienced a rocket attack while they were in their barracks at a main base in Iraq.  The rocket barely missed their building, and fortunately, only one of the men experienced minor physical injuries from shrapnel.  Unfortunately, all of the men experienced some psychological injuries from the distress of a near-death experience and from the blast waves emanating from the rocket.  Research is showing that the explosions of these bombs, land mines, and rockets can rattle the brain so much that the end result is like a concussion. Concussions are dangerous enough for football players or other people who suffer accidental head trauma, but the Army’s researchers are finding that concussions are even more severe for soldiers since usually the concussions are sustained in the middle of combat when a flood of chemicals like adrenaline are surging through the brain.

Concussions are strange and unpredictable injuries: some people experience no long-term effects from them at all, while others experience headaches, memory loss and other life-altering symptoms. When these brain-altering injuries occur during traumatic events– like losing friends and fighting for your life in battle– they can be compounded by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Over the past few years, the combination of those two conditions has manifested in many (but certainly not all) returning war veterans as an inability to adjust to civilian life, irrationally violent behavior, and suicide (the VA estimates that 18 U.S. war veterans commit suicide every day).

         While the effects of bombs on soldiers is concerning enough, it’s even scarier to think about the effects of collective PTSD and serious brain injury on the millions of civilians in these war zones. Under Obama’s administration (the same Obama who won a Nobel PEACE prize), the number of drone attacks in Pakistan and Middle Eastern countries like Yemen has sky rocketed: both the CIA and military both are using these un-manned aircraft to kill whomever they wish from a safe distance.

          Five years ago, A. and I came to Thailand for the first time. We hardly knew each other when we arrived, but by the time we left, we had become close friends. A few months later, we would fall in love with each other.  But by the end of our semester abroad, we had already fallen in love with Asia, and especially with the simplicity of village life we had discovered while living with the Karen hill tribe.

          We’ve stayed in touch with many of the friends we met in Thailand back then, and this week, we were able to fulfill a long-standing hope: we returned to that village with one of our best friends from university to attend our Karen friend’s wedding!  It was amazing to see the whole village and extended family come together to cook and decorate the church with fresh flowers from the market. Everyone brought rice wrapped in little banana leaf packets to contribute to the ongoing feast (it was hard to distinguish one meal from the next since there was always food around!), and everyone took home leftovers at the end. Without being told what to do, everyone seemed to naturally flow into potato peeling or flower arranging or whatever it was that needed to be done at the moment. We also appreciated how casual and low-key everything was—the priority was spending time together with family and friends rather than putting on a show for the guests, so the schedule for the wedding day wasn’t even decided until the day before, and nearly everyone who was invited had also contributed to the preparations beforehand.  Even during the ceremony, various small groups of people sang songs to the couple while kids played on the floor in the middle of everything. And just a few hours afterward, a bunch of us went with the bride and groom to play in a nearby waterfall.

          Five years ago, it was 2008. That year marked the beginning of our life together, and the beginning of a long searching that has continued ever since—the pursuit of simplicity, of community, of justice for small, beautiful communities all over the world whose existence is threatened by prejudice, indifference, power, and greed. 

          In the last five years, a lot has changed in Thailand. The city where we lived has gone a lot more “upscale”, looking less distinctively Thai and more like sterile shopping districts plastered with the same multinational brands that you see all over the world.  There are more touristy bars and gimmicks than we remember. Even in some of the village areas that seemed so remote when we first visited, there are now paved roads and even high-speed internet! At the wedding, too, we saw signs of change: young hipsters who have moved from the villages to the city for work wandered around taking pictures with smart phones while older members of the tribe slaughtered animals and prepared food in ways that this youngest generation may have never learned. Most of them were wearing bits and pieces of their traditional tribal clothing over skinny jeans and t-shirts.

          In the last five years, a lot has changed for us personally, too.  W­­­­­­e dated, got engaged, got married, and moved to Asia. We’ve collected more stamps in our passports; we’ve collected more battle scars, more hopes and dreams, and more questions than answers. So much has changed since 2008.  But in many ways, our slum community in India is just another village that has invited us in as part of the tribe.