Oh, the irony: endorser of domestic aerial drones, Bob McDonnell, gives keynote at War Memorial

Not to be critical, but it is entirely disturbing that a political figure who supported (and still supports) the use of unmanned aerial drones in Virginia would be the keynote speaker at the annual Memorial Day Ceremony at the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond. That individual is of course the governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell.

On a day specifically set aside to remember the individuals who sacrificed life and limb for the freedoms we enjoy today as Americans, an advocate of expanding Virginia’s police state stood to speak before the gathered crowd of attendees as if he were himself the culmination and protector of these freedoms.

But anyone who believes that expanding Virginia’s police state is a bright idea has totally missed the boat, or they were never on it. Surveying, eavesdropping, threatening, and arresting more Virginians is not a viable long-term solution to the problem of crime in the state.

By expanding Virginia’s police state via unmanned aerial drones, Bob McDonnell and his cadre of lascivious lobbyists and ideological nimrods in the congress will only feed the inequities, the fear, the anger, and the mistrust sown into Virginia’s social fabric. Put another way, how will unmanned aerial drones increase rates of education throughout Virginia, pick Virginians out of dire economic situations, help relieve the anger of socially isolated Virginians?

Drones, of course, cannot do any of these things.

The even greater irony of Bob McDonnell acting as keynote speaker for the Memorial Day Ceremony was the special emphasis placed on Virginians who have been killed during the ‘global war on terror’ since the same time last year.

I argue that many of these Virginians who were killed probably weren’t fighting to see the same tools used in the ‘war on terror’ used domestically (i.e., drones). I’d imagine that many of these Virginians were and are fighting so that the instruments of war on foreign battlefields won’t have to be carried back home to potentially reduce the freedoms that Virginians enjoy.

Just as Virginia doesn’t use aerial bombing campaigns to pick off criminals, Virginia should not be using instruments of war in the state to supposedly reduce criminal activity.

But as is the case with so many kings, satisfaction is only at reach when public surveillance is at its highest.