Game of Throne fans, you are about to love this analogy. Imagine living in a city, we’ll call it Meereen, (wink, wink people who’ve gotten through the fifth book) where you lived in constant fear of dragons swooping down from the murderous skies to attack and kill you. There is also a distinct possibility that after you are cooked they will burn your furniture and family to the ground.

Psychologically speaking, what psychological disorders might we observe within the Meereenian populace?

Anxiety levels would certainly be through the roof. More likely, a whole lot of Meereenians would suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), that would significantly affect their daily life in a profoundly negative way. Plus cultures that develop under such harsh psychological conditions like constant threat of war, or in the Meereenians case, dragons coming down from the sky and setting everyone on fire, suffer long term problems.

It would suck to grow up in Meereen. Adolescence is difficult enough and all we had to deal with was acne, obtaining booze, having a date for the prom, sneaking out past our curfews and sobering up for the SATs. I could not imagine throwing dragons into that mix.

But here’s the thing:

Meereen, while it may be made up, is basically what is happening to communities in Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and northern Pakistan because of the United State’s drone program.

Let’s be realistic:

The drone program is essentially the best program we have to fight terrorism. We’re taking out senior level al Qaeda leaders  like dogs on the first day of spring.

We should have maybe, just avoided a few of the wars we are now getting out of and instead used drones to accomplish our anti-terrorism goals.

But let’s not forget that there are major unwanted consequences that come with weapons of war. Let’s also remember the United States, bad-ass and awesome that it is, does not have a perfect tract record when it comes to unwanted consequences in other countries where we meddle that have massive negative backlashes of the magnitude of shitiness that they far outweighs whatever positive change we were trying to bring about.

There was that whole 36-year civil war we started in Guatemala when we assassinated the legitimately elected president and installed a harsh military dictator in his place.

So Let’s Have That Debate:

I do not think we should eliminate the drone program. I think we should be very honest in evaluating the casualties of it. The casualties are not just innocent civilians killed, but innocent civilians who live under constant fear that a dragon will swoop down from the sky to kill them.

While the media is bringing the question to the table, this is something that needs to stay in the forefront of decision makers in Washington. One solution is better drones, better technology that minimizes civilian casualties. Seriously, why does our military, which has a budget as large as my bank account is small, not have drones the size of fruit flies?

No one disagrees we need to protect ourselves from threats emerging outside our boarders. But certainly there is a point where the negative cost would eclipse the good we propose to do that. I don’t have an answer to what that is, but I think we should all be asking that question right now.