The Great Drone Debate

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The Great Drone Debate
By: wigwam Saturday September 29, 2012 1:37 pm	Tweet

Drone launches from flight deck of USS Lassen.

(Photo: Official US Navy Imagery/flickr)

It is by now well known that Stanford and NYU have issued a study “Living Under Drones, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan” that refutes Obama Administration claims that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan conform to international law and cause no significant harm to civilians. Here is Glenn Greenwald’s report on that study. And, per HuffPo,

Asked why opinion polls consistently rank Pakistan among the most anti-American countries in the world, [Pakistani Foreign Minister] Khar responded with a single word: “Drones.”

Joshua Foust published an immediate rejoinder to the Stanford/NYU study in The Atlantic, questioning the quality of the research and concluding:

In the short run, there aren’t better choices than drones. The targets of drone strikes in Pakistan sponsor insurgents in the region that kill U.S. soldiers and destabilize the Pakistani state (that is why Pakistani officials demand greater control over targeting). They cannot simply be left alone to continue such violent attacks. [...]

Drones represent the choice with the smallest set of drawbacks and adverse consequences. Reports like Living Under Drones highlight the need for both more transparency from the US and Pakistani governments, and for drawing attention to the social backlash against their use in Pakistan. But they do not definitively build a case against drones in general. Without a better alternative, drones are here to stay.

Foust’s conclusion raises the obvious question: Drone strikes are the best choice to accomplish what?

Spread anti-Americanism throughout the Muslim world?
Garner recruits for terrorist organizations?
Prolong the Global War on Terror (or whatever it’s now called).

Obama has seen how well GWOT has worked for his predecessor, himself, and their patrons. He likes to brag that he brought the troops home from Iraq, but in fact he was pushed out the door kicking and screaming. And, in spite of setting a withdrawal date, yesterday he told BBC Persian Television, which reaches Persian-speaking audiences in Afghanistan, Iran and elsewhere, that U.S. troops will stay in Afghanistan “until the job is done.” So, yes, I have to agree with Foust that drones are the option of choice, but only if as it appears the goal is to keep the U.S. in an Orwellian state of perpetual war.

Kevin Goszstola’s rebuttal to Foust can be found here.

6 Comments Recommend

6 Responses to The Great Drone Debate

BearCountry September 29th, 2012 at 1:50 pm 1

I keep asking the same question, which probably makes me a monomanic: who are these drone strikes protecting us from? Are any of those ME nations really gearing up to invade us? What would happen if we left? In that event, the taliban would throw out the crooked karzai sooner than they will if we stay. Will we “win” in Afghanistan? What does “winning” mean?

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wigwam September 29th, 2012 at 2:51 pm 2

In response to BearCountry @ 1

I’m going to give a somewhat long-winded answer.

Here’s who Andrew Bacevich is, per the Wikipedia:

Andrew J. Bacevich, Jr. (born 1947 in Normal, Illinois) is a professor of international relations at Boston University and a retired career officer in the United States Army. He is a former director of Boston University’s Center for International Relations (from 1998 to 2005), and author of several books, including American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (2002), The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005) and The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008). He has been “a persistent, vocal critic of the US occupation of Iraq, calling the conflict a catastrophic failure.”[1] In March 2007, he described George W. Bush’s endorsement of such “preventive wars” as “immoral, illicit, and imprudent.”[1][2] His son, also an Army officer, died fighting in the Iraq War in May 2007.[1]

Tom Englehardt reposts Bacevich’s writing here quite often.

Here is an excerpt from a 9/27/09 Bacevich op-ed in the Washington Post:

In confronting this conflict, the goal of U.S. national security strategy ought to be limited but specific: to insulate Americans from the fallout. Rather than setting out to clear, hold and build thousands of tiny, primitive villages scattered across the Afghan countryside, such a strategy should emphasize three principles: decapitate, contain and compete. An approach based on these principles cannot guarantee perpetual peace. But it is likely to be more effective, affordable and sustainable than a strategy based on open-ended war.

Decapitation — targeting leaders for elimination — provides the means to suppress immediate threats to our safety. The violent jihadists who pose those threats are vicious but relatively few in number. They possess limited capabilities. Their aspirations of uniting the world’s Muslims into a new caliphate are akin to Sarah Palin’s or Dennis Kucinich’s presidential ambitions — unworthy of serious attention. They are rank fantasies.

Without effective leadership, the jihadists are nothing. The aim of decapitation is twofold. At a minimum it will oblige jihadist chieftains to devote enormous attention to ensuring their own survival, giving them less time to plot against the West. Optimally, it will confront jihadist networks with never-ending succession crises, consuming organizational energies that might otherwise find external expression. Decapitation won’t eliminate the threat — Hamas and Hezbollah have survived the Israeli government’s targeted assassination campaign — but it can reduce it to manageable levels.

A crucial caveat is that assassinations must be precise and accurate. The incidental killing of noncombatants is immoral as well as politically counterproductive. The missiles launched from U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles in Pakistan have repeatedly demonstrated the wrong approach. The recent elimination of Saleh Ali Nabhan in Somalia — in a helicopter-borne raid by special operations forces — models the correct one.

I’m not endorsing his recommendation in terms of morality, legality, or efficacy. But, IMHO, it represents the best of the military thinking on the matter. And, I stick to what I’ve said before: “If you lose the politics, you’ve lost the war,” and dropping warheads on wedding parties, funerals, rescue efforts, and children is bad politics in every culture.

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BearCountry September 29th, 2012 at 3:04 pm 3

In response to wigwam @ 2

I guess that my view is that the best of military thinking is not the best thinking to bring things to a useful conclusion in the ME. All it does, no matter what the desire is, is to provide more people with more reason to hate us, and they don’t hate us for our freedoms unless you consider using drones one of our freedoms.

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wigwam September 29th, 2012 at 3:09 pm 4

In response to BearCountry @ 3

I couldn’t agree more.

The thinking that dominates the situation is political thinking. The executive branch of the U.S. government has found this war to be both politically and financially beneficial, and they are hoping to keep it going. Drone strikes are good for that goal.

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wendydavis September 29th, 2012 at 9:57 pm 5

I wish there were a debate, wigwam. Sadly, no.

Drones haunt me…and they have since I first read of them, and their use, and the term ‘bugsplat’ years ago. I’ve written probably too many blogs and diaries about them…and their ‘collateral damage’ more times than an altogether sane person should have.

I’ve tried to reconstruct their lives, their emotions as they hear the buzzing…louder and louder…as they stand in their feelings tending sheep, or gathering firewood. To give them faces, and life. But no, almost no one cares, not really.

We’re officially in love with Biden’s ‘no cost, surgical strikes of Terrorists’. No one cares that ahead of Terror Tuesdays, anyone the bevy of military, CIA dark ops warriors, the Prez…can be deemed a militant, thus worth assassinating…

As long as they can keep us in fear that some crazy Muslim is about to kill hordes of us…they don’t mind drones, nor do they mind surveillance, TSA lines and gropes….indefinite detention of even American citizens…any of it.

All because they lack the imagination that the next victim could be them, or someone they love, or even a ‘militant’s’ funeral mourners.

Empathy.

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wigwam September 30th, 2012 at 1:24 am 6

In response to wendydavis @ 5

I wish there were a debate, wigwam. Sadly, no.

The debate is huge. It’s just not getting much attention. The president of the United States and his spokesmen are standing there with their bare faces hanging out and telling people there are no civilian casualties and that “due process of law,” which is what the Constitution and the Sixth Amendment guarantee, does not involve judicial process, which is exactly what due process of law has been about ever since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215.

Unfortunately, in a stunning betrayal journalism, the MSM is ignoring this debate and these lies, just like they ignored for decades the pedophelia by Catholic priests. And, when it is reported, there will always be someone like Joshua Foust to “put things into perspective” and down play the significance of the evil being done.

But, many MSM journalists read Glenzilla and know what’s going on and eventually this lie is going to break into the open.

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