The Strategy Behind U.S. Drone Strikes

Strategic Horizons: The Strategy Behind U.S. Drone Strikes -- Steven Metz, WPR

No topic in American security inspires more heated debate these days than the Obama administration's use of drone strikes against armed militants, terrorists and their supporters. While debate and scrutiny of public policy is a good thing, a hefty proportion of this criticism is badly misguided, often mistaking the use of drones as America's strategy itself. In large part this reflects a failure on the part of the Obama administration to develop a convincing narrative to explain the assumptions, logic and ultimate objectives of its strategy. Without seeing the big picture, it is difficult to understand how drone strikes fit in and why they are the least bad option available.

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My Comment: The strategy is simple .... unless there is a better alternative to stop Al Qaeda and other extremists .... drone strikes are the only alternative.

The Case For Drones

In Defense of Drones -- William Saletan, Slate

They're the worst form of war, except for all the others.

“UN: Drones killed more Afghan civilians in 2012,” says the Associated Press headline. The article begins: “The number of U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan jumped 72 percent in 2012, killing at least 16 civilians in a sharp increase from the previous year.” The message seems clear: More Afghans are dying, because drones kill civilians.

Wrong. Drones kill fewer civilians, as a percentage of total fatalities, than any other military weapon. They’re the worst form of warfare in the history of the world, except for all the others.

Start with that U.N. report. Afghan civilian casualties caused by the United States and its allies didn’t go up last year. They fell 46 percent. Specifically, civilian casualties from “aerial attacks” fell 42 percent. Why? Look at the incident featured in the U.N. report (Page 31) as an example of sloppy targeting. “I heard the bombing at approximately 4:00 am,” says an eyewitness. “After we found the dead and injured girls, the jet planes attacked us with heavy machine guns and another woman was killed.”

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My Comment: Using unmanned tools of war is the trend .... especially since this weapons platform has (so far) proven to be incredibly effective .... and with future generations of drones only now coming down the pipeline from not only the U.S. but from numerous other countries, drones are going to be used whether we want to or not.

America's Anti-War Left Are Now Voicing Their Protests Against Drone Strikes

Obama And The Drone Awakening -- Michael Hastings, Buzz Feed

The release of Justice Department documents is an exercise in “CYA.” “It's not clear that they have fully obeyed their own guidelines.”

A strange thing happened in America this week: The country started to show signs of outrage over the Obama administration's targeted killing program. The occasion: the leak of a now infamous Department of Justice white paper to NBC's Mike Isikoff outlining the legal arguments the administration has used to justify the secret killings of three American citizens — one of them a 16-year-old boy — since 2009. That memo became the basis for today's confirmation hearings of drone program architect John Brennan, the Obama administration's intelligence guru who is currently chasing David Petraeus' old job as director of the CIA. (Brennan reportedly was the first to tell Petraeus he needed to resign.)

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My Comment: Yup .... the American anti-war left and some in the liberal media are now taking notice. Will their protests continue .... only if the mainstream media covers it .... which I still doubt.

Do Drones Make Perpetual War Possible

U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Efren Lopez

Drones In Our Time -- Rosa Brooks, Foreign Policy

Why Obama was fibbing about America's wars coming to an end.

Philip Larkin, that famously crotchety British poet of political incorrectness, knew a lot about a lot. He knew a great deal, for instance, about the general f***ed-up-ness of families, the shimmering mirage of the sexual revolution, and the creeping fear of old age and death.

But he never even conceived of drones.

This, at any rate, was the thought that flew irrelevantly into my head as I listened to President Obama discuss "peace in our time" in his second inaugural speech. (And this, mamas and daddies, is also why you shouldn't let your babies grow up to be English majors: they will fritter away their time writing columns, and find any excuse to name-drop famous poets).

But really -- what would Larkin have made of drones?

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My Comment: Drones do not make war .... people make war. Drones are just a tool, and even if they were not in existence, wars and conflicts will still be happening. The only difference is that we will be having boots on the ground conducting the strikes against targets that our spies and intelligence agencies have spotted .... instead of drones.

America's Drone Campaign Is All About Attrition

The Truth About Obama's Drone Campaign: It's About Attrition, Not Decapitation -- Alexander B. Downes, Huffington Post

A key question facing President Obama as he begins his second term is whether to continue the U.S. drone campaign against Islamic militants. Since 2004 the United States has launched more than 400 covert drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Almost 90 percent of these strikes have occurred under President Obama. According to data from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Obama has signed off on roughly 350 U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, killing between 2,600 and 3,400 people.

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My Comment: For a country that wants to adopt assassination as part of it's war policy .... drones are a very effective weapon. But warfare is also about attrition .... and if America's drone campaign is all about attrition .... if history is any indication .... U.S. policy will fail.

Drones Are Not the Answer

Drones Are Fool's Gold: They Prolong Wars We Can't Win -- Simon Jenkins, The Guardian

New appointments in the White House hail an era of hands-free warfare. Yet these weapons induce not defeat, but retaliation

The greatest threat to world peace is not from nuclear weapons and their possible proliferation. It is from drones and their certain proliferation. Nuclear bombs are useless weapons, playthings for the powerful or those aspiring to power. Drones are now sweeping the global arms market. There are some 10,000 said to be in service, of which a thousand are armed and mostly American. Some reports say they have killed more non-combatant civilians than died in 9/11.

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My Comment: There is a lot that I agree with in this opinion piece (i.e. the dangers of drone blow-back).... and there is a lot that I do not (i.e. Pakistan hated America even before drones appeared on the scene). But the real problem that I have with drone critics like Simon Jenkins is that they never give a solution and/or alternative to what we must do to confront radical Jihadist groups who are hell bent on doing us harm. A passive approach is not going to work .... so what is the pro-active strategy if drones are not going to be used. When that question is answered .... they will then have my wholehearted support.

A Drone War Is Still War

Guernica by Pablo Picasso. 1937. Oil on canvas. Wikipedia

A Drone War Is Still A War -- Michael Kinsley, Bloomberg

The most famous painting of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica,” commemorates the bombing of the small Spanish town on April 26, 1937, by the German air force, in support of General Francisco Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Hard to believe, but this was history’s first extensive bombing of a civilian population.

In his book “Postwar,” the late historian Tony Judt pointed out that more civilians died in World War II, of various causes, than did soldiers. That was not true of World War I or most earlier conflicts.

Guernica was a German dress rehearsal for the London blitz, the destruction of Warsaw, and so on. Soon to come on the Allies’ side were the destruction of Dresden, the firebombing of Tokyo and, of course, the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today when we think of war, bombing from the sky is one of the first images that come to mind.

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My Comment: Drones are the weapon of choice for the Obama administration in their battle against Al Qaeda and their affiliates .... and with little opposition, this weapon of choice is going to be busy. So yes .... a drone war is still war .... it is (when modified) an effective weapon .... and with the other services developing their own drones .... a weapon that is going to be used even more.

Is Now The Time To Reform America's Drone Policy?

Target Window -- Micah Zenko, Foreign Policy

Time for President Obama to reform drone policy.

The first time I saw what a Predator drone could do was in 2000 when I worked part-time in the Office of Policy Planning at the State Department. On the clunky desktop computer, if someone (not me, of course) was bored or curious, they could watch the full-motion video footage from the Predators hovering over the Kosovo area of Serbia, where they were monitoring the implementation of the NATO-Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Republic of Serbia Military Technical Agreement. With its narrow field of vision provided by those early electro-optical sensors, it was like seeing a battlefield through a soda straw. However, the monotonous mission of tracking Serbian combat troop movements was ideal for a robot.

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My Comment: I would say that President Obama has already "reformed" America's drone policy by not only making it the essential component in waging war against Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda linked groups in foreign countries, but increasing drone strikes to an unprecedented level .... including the targeted killings of U.S. citizens like American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

Should we have this debate .... definitely .... but unfortunately no one in Washington is opening that door and .... I suspect .... no changes until the end of President Obama's term.

Did Israeli Drones Help Minimize Civilian Causalties In The Last Gaza Conflict?

An Israel Aero Space Industries Heron 1 unmanned aerial vehicle stands on the tarmac. (Reuters).

Exclusive: How Israel's Drones Help Minimize Civilian Casualties -- FOX News

HAIFA, Israel – A single Syrian missile strike on a bakery near Hama killed more than 60 innocent civilians last week, so how did the Israel manage to fire more than 1,500 high powered missiles into densely-populated Gaza in November, with the total loss of 161 lives, of which 90 have been acknowledged by Hamas itself as active combatants?

The numbers speak for themselves, but very little credit has so far been given by foreign governments, NGOs, and the international media for the care taken by the Israeli military to avoid collateral damage during its recent vicious engagement with Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters.

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My Comment: There is a lot of detail in this report. Bottom line .... the intelligence on the ground is what kicks into operation the drone operations that conduct surveillance and provide targeting intel to those who will drop the bombs.

The Suffering Of An American Drone Operator

Drone operators at Holloman Air Force Base in the southwestern state of New Mexico: Modern warfare is as invisible as a thought, deprived of its meaning by distance. Gilles Mingasson/ DER SPIEGEL

Joystick Warfare Hell: The Suffering of an American Drone Operator -- Spiegel Online

Much has been made of the devastating impact American drones have on civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan. One soldier's story shows that it can also adversely affect the lives of those who operate the remote-controlled weapons. Former servicemember Brandon Bryant is still haunted by images of the injured and dying.

For more than five years, Brandon Bryant worked in an oblong, windowless container about the size of a trailer, where the air-conditioning was kept at 17 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit) and, for security reasons, the door couldn't be opened. Bryant and his coworkers sat in front of 14 computer monitors and four keyboards. When Bryant pressed a button in New Mexico, someone died on the other side of the world.

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My Comment: The reality is that drone warfare is just as messy and bloody as any other form of warfare. The difference is that you are not there physically .... but you are there mentally and (more importantly) spiritually.

Pentagon: No Skynet In Our Future

Pentagon: A Human Will Always Decide When a Robot Kills You -- Danger Room

The Pentagon wants to make perfectly clear that every time one of its flying robots releases its lethal payload, it’s the result of a decision made by an accountable human being in a lawful chain of command. Human rights groups and nervous citizens fear that technological advances in autonomy will slowly lead to the day when robots make that critical decision for themselves. But according to a new policy directive issued by a top Pentagon official, there shall be no SkyNet, thank you very much.

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My Comment: Why is it that I do not believe in the Pentagon?

A Kill List For Me, But Not For You

Kill Lists For Me, But Not For Thee -- William A. Jacobson, Legal Insurrection

The use of drone strikes has been expanded dramatically under Obama. The personal involvement of the President in the intimate details of targeting and kill lists is new to this administration.

It’s not something Democrats like to talk about. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz denied knowledge of the kill lists, promting this response from Glenn Greenwald, The remarkable, unfathomable ignorance of Debbie Wasserman Schultz

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Previous Post: Drone-Warfare Rulebook


My Comment: William Jacobson is right .... a double standard is being played out here. But with the Republicans in disarray, the media turning a blind eye, and the anti-war left absent .... my betting is that it is business as usual for drone strikes and targeted killings.

Is America's Debate On Using Drones About To Begin?

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Death From Afar -- The Economist

America uses drones a lot, in secret and largely unencumbered by declared rules. Worries about that abound, not least in the administration.

DRONES are hardly synonymous with harmony. But in the last election debate neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney disagreed over what is now America’s main tactic in fighting the long war on terrorism: ever-greater use of armed drones for targeted killings in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the badlands of Yemen and Somalia, and, no doubt before long, north Mali, where an al-Qaeda affiliate has recently taken root. Just a few days before the debate, the CIA’s director, David Petraeus, reportedly asked the White House for a big expansion in the agency’s fleet of missile-carrying drones. It is part of the agency’s decade-long evolution from an intelligence organisation to a paramilitary one.

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My Comment: Here is an easy prediction. If President Obama wins his re-election .... there will be no debate. If Romney becomes President, I predict that within 6 months demands for a debate will be voiced by Democrat members in Congress and their media allies. As to what do I want .... we should have had this debate years ago.

Why No Debate On President Obama's Drone Program

Image credit: U.S. Air Force

Obama's Drone Program Escapes Liberal Scrutiny in Campaign -- Naureen Khan, National Interest

Liberal protests against the tactics Bush used to target terrorists have given way largely to silence.

Liberals had plenty to say about the moral and legal implications of torture, wiretapping and other tools that George W. Bush employed to fight the war on terror. But President Obama’s equally controversial escalation of drone strikes against al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Pakistan has been almost completely absent from presidential politics this year.

“This is a central issue in American foreign policy, it is vital to the way in which the United States responds in the short term to potential terrorist threats, and to the long term nature of the U.S. response, as well as the legal framework that will control—or not—drone use by other countries,” said James Cavallaro, a law professor at Stanford University who co-authored “Living Under Drones,” a study analyzing the impact of the strikes on civilians in Pakistan. “It should have been an issue that was debated much more robustly and it warrants much greater attention by the presidential candidates.”

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My Comment: The Washington Post editorial board is raising some questions .... but Naureen Khan is right .... the main stream media and the liberal pundit class were brutal and tough on President Bush over his interrogation policy of captured Al Qaeda terrorists .... but have been largely silent on President Obama's policy of targeted assassinations .... even against Americans.

Is This A Valid Reason For Killing A 16-Year-Old American In A Drone Strike?

Team Obama's Justification For Killing A 16-Year-Old American In A Drone Strike Is Stunning

Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to President Obama's reelection campaign, recently became the first person on Team Obama to address the killing of 16-year-old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, Conor Friedersdorf of the The Atlantic reports.

Abdulrahman was the son of New Mexico-born cleric and al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Alwaki. Both were killed in separate drone strikes last year.

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My Comment: Breitbart is right .... this is one issue that Democrats DO NOT want to talk about. What's my take .... Americans have already been targeted and killed, of course there should be a public debate on it.

What Drone War?

America's Scandalous Drone War Goes Unmentioned in the Campaign -- James Joyner, New Republic

A new study released this week by researchers at Stanford and NYU has found that American drone strikes in Pakistan are killing far more civilians than advertised, taking out few high value targets, and have become the primary recruiting tool for the terrorist groups the policy is aimed at combating. The report, “Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan,” is based on “more than 130 interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts, and review of thousands of pages of documentation and media reporting” conducted over nine months.

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My Comment: The Afghan/Pak conflict, the involvement of US forces in Yemen, the battle against extremist forces in Africa, and God only knows what other conflicts we are involved in .... there has been no public debate/media coverage/anti-war demonstrations/or pundit commentary on the continuing use (and expansion) of drone warfare in some (if not all) of these conflicts. An unbelievable situation in view of the fact that America's drone war inflicts huge numbers of casualties, has a budget that is in the billions, and is growing at an exponential rate that will soon even eclipse the Air Force's fleet of manned aircraft. I guess the reason why there is no debate is because the Republicans approve of it, the Democrats do not want to alienate a certain part of their base, and the American public are not interested.

The Pros And Cons Of U.S. Drone Strikes In Pakistan

Ho New/Reuters

Targeted Killing, Pro And Con: What To Make Of U.S. Drone Strikes In Pakistan -- Joshua Foust, The Atlantic

A new report excoriates the United States' unmanned aerial strikes against terrorists in South Asia. But are there better alternatives?

A new report, "Living Under Drones," jointly authored by Stanford University and New York University -- and reviewed yesterday by Conor Friedersdorf here at The Atlantic -- is harshly critical of the drone campaign in Pakistan. The report argues that the U.S. narrative of drone strikes -- precise, accurate, and limited -- is false. Citing 130 interviews and a review of media reports, the authors argue that the civilian toll from drone strikes is far higher than acknowledged, that many problems with the drone campaign go unreported, and that more government transparency is essential to gaining a better understanding of the campaign and its consequences.

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WNU Editor: The "Living Under Drones" report is here.

When Drone Strikes Go Wrong

Why Drone Strikes Cede ‘Hearts and Minds’ to Taliban -- Robert Dreyfuss, The Diplomat

An incident in Kunar illustrates how NATO's confused approach to counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is failing to meet its objectives.

The intricacies of Afghanistan’s mosaic of tribes, sub-tribes and clans, and its ethnic and sectarian fault lines have befuddled the American enterprise there since 2001. Although U.S. intelligence officials and military specialists have tried to create maps of the power structure in rural areas – including who owes allegiance to the Taliban and who doesn’t – for the most part it’s been a decade-long fool’s errand, since, among other things, those allegiances often change without notice.

That’s why the August 18 drone attack in Kunar province, which killed dozens of Afghans, is so disturbing.

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My Comment: In a society that remembers grievances from decades ago, the U.S. is going to one day experience "blow-back" from these intelligence errors.

A Philosopher Makes The Moral Case For U.S. Drones

MQ-9 Reaper. Wikipedia

The Philosopher Making The Moral Case For US Drones: 'There's No Downside' -- Rory Carroll, The Guardian

It's one of the US's most controversial policies; one that resulted in large numbers of civilian deaths overseas. So why does Bradley Strawser see targeted killing as a moral obligation?

At first sight, Bradley Strawser resembles a humanities professor from central casting. He has a beard, wears jeans, quotes Augustine and calls himself, only half in jest, a hippie. He opposes capital punishment and Guantánamo Bay, calls the Iraq invasion unjust and scorns neo-conservative foreign policy hawks. "Whatever a neocon is, I'm the opposite."

His office overlooks a placid campus in Monterey, an oasis of California sun and Pacific zephyrs, and he lives up the road in Carmel, a forested beauty spot with an arts colony aura. Strawser has published works on metaphysics and Plato and is especially fond of Immanuel Kant.

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My Comment: I personally do not object to drone strikes per se .... if you see an enemy combatant .... you take him out. And while I would prefer taking prisoners .... I am also aware that we do not live in a perfect world. Collateral damage and civilian casualties will always occur in a war zone .... the best that we can do is try our best to minimize it.

Two Commentaries On The Growing Use Drones

File photo of a Predator drone flying above the USS Carl Vinson (Courtesy Reuters/Handout).

Head of Drone Company Asks Why You're So Worried About Drones -- Connor Simpson, The Atlantic

Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your grow op. Drones are flying across American skies and there's nothing we can do about it. The head of a drone company especially doesn't care about your privacy concerns because you don't have anything to hide, right?

Douglas MacDonald is the director of special operations and president of a North Dakota chapter of Unmanned Applications Institute International, a company that trains people how to fly and operate drones, and he really doesn't care about your privacy.

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Reuters

The Moral Hazard of Drones -- John Kaag and Sarah Kreps, New York Times

As the debate on the morality of the United States’ use of unmanned aerial vehicles (“U.A.V.’s,” also known as drones) has intensified in recent weeks, several news and opinion articles have appeared in the media. Two, in particular, both published this month, reflect the current ethical divide on the issue. A feature article in Esquire by Tom Junod censured the “Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama” for the administration’s policy of targeted killings of suspected militants; another, “The Moral Case for Drones,” a news analysis by The Times’ Scott Shane, gathered opinions from experts that implicitly commended the administration for replacing Dresden-style strategic bombing with highly precise attacks that minimize collateral damage.

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My Comment: What's my take .... when it comes to drones .... sadly .... Pandora's Box was opened a long time ago. We now have only one option .... and that is to get use to them.