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Until this week, it seemed like the conventional wisdom in Washington was that stopping U.S drone strikes in Pakistan was outside the bounds of respectable discussion.
That just changed. Or it should have.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Doyle McManus notes that counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen has told Congress that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan are backfiring and should be stopped. Until now Congress has been reluctant to challenge the drone strikes, as they are reluctant in general to challenge "military strategy," even when it appears to be causing terrible harm. But as McManus notes, Kilcullen has unimpeachable Pentagon credentials. He served as a top advisor in Iraq to General Petraeus on counterinsurgency, and is credited as having helped design the Iraq "surge." Now, anyone in Washington who wants to challenge the drone strikes has all the political cover they could reasonably expect.
And what Kilcullen said leaves very little room for creative misinterpretation:
"Since 2006, we’ve killed 14 senior Al Qaeda leaders using drone strikes; in the same time period, we’ve killed 700 Pakistani civilians in the same area. The drone strikes are highly unpopular. They are deeply aggravating to the population. And they’ve given rise to a feeling of anger that coalesces the population around the extremists and leads to spikes of extremism. … The current path that we are on is leading us to loss of Pakistani government control over its own population."
Presumably, causing the Pakistani government to lose "control of its own population" is not an objective of United States foreign policy.
McManus says there’s no sign that the Obama Administration
is taking Kilcullen’s advice and Obama administration is unlikely to abandon "one of the few strategies that has produced results." But a Washington Post report suggests otherwise:
Although the missile attacks are privately approved by the Pakistani government, despite its public denunciations, they are highly unpopular among the public. As Zardari’s domestic problems have grown, the Obama administration last month cut the frequency of the attacks. Some senior U.S. officials think they have reached the point of diminishing returns and the administration is debating the rate at which they should continue.
Since it is manifestly apparent that 1) the drone strikes are causing civilian casualties 2) they are turning Pakistani public opinion against their government and against the U.S. 3) they are recruiting more support for insurgents and 4) even military experts think the strikes are doing more harm than good, even from the point of view of U.S. officials, why shouldn’t they stop? Why not at least a time-out?
Why shouldn’t Members of Congress ask for some justification for the continuation of these strikes? The Pentagon is asking for more money. It’s time for Congress to ask some questions.
16 Comments
Pakistan is about to implode. The drone attacks will likely be increasing.
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” A senior Pakistani government official has urged residents of the Swat valley to flee the troubled region in the northwest where a peace deal with Taliban appears to be crumbling amid intense fighting.
Khan said on Tuesday that people should flee for their own safety because Taliban fighters were roaming the area and planting mines and that security forces might be forced to retaliate.
His call came as the Taliban warned the peace deal agreed by the government and Taliban fighters was close to collapse.
Muslim Khan, the Pakistani Taliban’s spokesman in neighbouring Swat, accused the government and the army of being stooges of the US. “
http://english.aljazeera.net/n…..17908.html
Thanks for this wonderful post.
Zardari’s trip to Washington would be the perfect time to announce an end to the drone strikes. I’m not holding out much hope for that, though.
Seconded.
The goal to get AQ without destroying the surrounding populace (like getting cancer without destroying the patient) doesn’t look to be working (14…700) aren’t a good ratio.
It appears AQ is clinging to the Taleban for all they’re worth. We need a tactic to separate them.
I wonder, after the recent fighting, how do the forces stand? Have they gone far, dispersed, congregated or what? How can we identify AQ in this situation?
The US is considering sharing control of drones with the Pakistani military.
It’s hard to see how the Pakistani military shouldn’t be defending the government and people from the attacks and criminal activity of the militants.
Geez, is that wise to share. Do we really trust them to not kill randomly?
Dual control, MarkH, means we trust them sorta.
The Iraq War was supposedly against al Qaeda, and US troops in Afghanistan the same.
We never poured US troops directly in bin Laden’s direction.
If the US just tries to grab him long dormant sleeper cells may be activated. Through drone war they will never know which Monday after the invasion of Pakistan to attack without asking which could tip them off.
Perhaps we should just give in and let the Soviet Union and China stop al Qaeda from getting Pakistani nukes but they have a history of getting Muslims to think Islam as a whole is being attacked in places like Chechnya, more than the US.
Al Qaeda’s original claim for 9/11 was to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia, which occurred in 2003, after which he had to worry about a US adrenaline soaked from a second terror attack sending troops back in. Which probably made him call off a terror attack in 2004.
Story telling such as one of the two, so-called, very top al Qaeda masterminds “confessing” while tortured that Saddam was involved with 9/11 greatly harmed the US. And the US being rough until a suspect says what the interrogator wants to hear, then after a rest, rough efforts to get him to add to the same story, may mean all directly gathered intelligence is poor.
As long as Al Qaeda is still smug that it will bankrupt the US like it believes it did with the USSR, with the US spending ever more on smart weapons while al Qaeda kills on the cheep, they have less reason to want to add a wild card, a domestic attack on the US.
But they may be now convinced by Republicans that Obama will be blamed,
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/17898
http://news.aol.com/article/re…..ror/463107
Please note in the above links how much Republican pressure there is for Obama to get even more Muslims mad at the US.
As far as I am concerned that Republicans who claim that Obama is making a terror attack likely by not being harsh enough, is inviting al Qaeda to again try to strike the US to get Obama in trouble. What is the difference between a patriot and a traitor?
Yes I condemn fighting everyone else, I wish we would let someone from perhaps Spain over their commuter train attack, or Iran over the bloodbath al Qaeda perpetrated between Shiites and Sunnis, go in to arrest bin Laden, then send troops to back them up if killed or arrested. But that would alert any sleeper cell to the exact date of a US invasion.
RichardKanePA
Note the following link,
http://www.salon.com/books/rev…..kilcullen/
David Kilcullen wants US troops to stay in both Afghanistan and Iraq, unless the above commentators agree, you shouldn’t use his words as proof that the drone attacks in Pakistan should stop.
RichardKanePA
It’s complicated there. We want AQ, but we also want to help Pakistan hold off or destroy the Taliban. Two overlapping conflicts! Strange and NOT wonderful.
RichardKanePA, The attack on the train station in Spain had right-wing finger prints all over it. It’s believed to be a false flag attack, that failed to achieve it’s goal: Blame the Spanish basques in order to drum up anti-Muslim sentiment. Investigation of the evidence led to members of Italy’s P2 group.
Spain was never gung-ho in their support of Bushco’s war on terror.
This could be why Spain has taken the high road, and may bring charges against the writers of the torture memos.
OK, this guy is on the right track, but still very much guilty of perpetuating institutional bigotry.
Let’s see how this sounds in a different context:
One would never talk about the loss of (white) American life in such a way.
Obama administration is unlikely to abandon “one of the few strategies that has produced results.”
Dead bodies are results. They aren’t necessarily positive. Even assuming we knew for sure that everyone killed in these raids was an AQ or Taliban bad guy, this should still be a strategy of last resort. As it is, we’ve killed people who clearly aren’t in that category.
if you knew that everybody killed was Taliban or Al Qaeda would you be opposed under present conditions?
I’m hoping the results since 1/1/09 have been better than from earlier. Do we know what the more recent results have been?
” Bombing runs by U.S.-led coalition jets killed dozens of civilians taking shelter from a fierce ground battle between Taliban militants and Afghan and international forces, two Afghan officials said Tuesday. The U.S. confirmed fighting Monday in western Afghanistan and said reports of civilian deaths were under investigation.
One Afghan official said angry and mournful villagers transported an estimated 30 bodies to a provincial capital to show officials. Other officials estimated the civilian toll to be between 70 and 100.
Villagers told Afghan officials that they put children, women, and elderly men in several housing compounds away from the fighting to keep them safe. But the villagers said fighter aircraft later targeted those compounds in the village of Gerani, killing a majority of those inside, Roshan and other officials said.
Abdul Basir Khan, a member of Farah’s provincial council, said villagers brought bodies, including women and children, to Farah city to show the province’s governor. Khan said it was difficult to count the bodies because they had had been badly mutilated, but he estimated that villagers brought around 30. “
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/42335