Por que Drone Strikes?
Let me paint a nice scenario for you: It’s sunny September in the hills near Peshawar, Pakistan and Abdul is having some late night tea with a few trusted associates inside his penthouse villa, which sits inside a dusty compound. There are a few armed guards, Abdullah’s wife and kids, as well as his wife’s extended family and a guard’s family in from Khyber to see a doctor in the nearby city.
At about midnight a Hellfire missile is launched from 3 miles above, leveling the home and killing everyone inside. Abdullah was a commander in Tehrik-i-Taliban, a fundamentalist organization with ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as Al Qaeda. Abdul was killed, what the organizers of the attack might call a stepping stone to peace in the region. I think that’s the most asinine idea of progress in the history of the War on Terror.
The first problem is simply the potential for unacceptable collateral damage. These men are guerrilla fighters, for them there is no bunker or base. Their crisis centers, hospitals and command posts are also their homes which they share with family. I once heard a young woman tell me she is a fan of Israeli policy because they fight terrorists and “terrorists hide behind women and children.” True, it is cowardly and disgusting for them to actively kill and injure civilians and then return home to put their family in danger as well, but what is the goal here? Are we punishing them for what they have done or are we trying to destroy their organization?
During the Soviet War in Afghanistan my father was a higher up commander, making many contacts with pro Operation Cyclone politicians here in the states. After the war, he spent much time and effort attempting to rebuild Afghanistan into a somewhat free nation, with his area of focus being education. He used to tell me about the people he fought with, and you can probably expect they were hardly scholars or West Point trained officers.
They were regular people. They just had to be dedicated, literate and have a decent mind for guerilla warfare and strategic gains. They had to keep supplies and intelligence coming in, not hard in the hills of Afghanistan and Pakistan when people support you and goods are always coming in from “mystery sources”.
Do we honestly think that killing Abdullah will leave some sort of tremendous vacuum within the terrorist organization? It’s not as if Abdul was any sort of genius, he inherited his position through the millions of dollars sent to Tehrik-i-Taliban from an unnamed, oil rich Arab state.
He simply couldn’t find a wife or get into college at home, so he chose this route. He could also be the son of a local tribal leader or an ever higher-up in the organization. Why do we kill so many others just to make sure we nail this clown? It’s not just killing civilians; it’s what killing civilians does to the entire war effort.
What I speak of is the exponential loss of potential support. Every man, woman and child killed in the strike had an extended group of family and friends of their own. Even if Person X had no beef with the West before, they damn sure have some now. With every strike, especially the ones with less than acceptable levels of intelligence that end with hitting a wedding, we create X to the X power new Taliban supporters. Once again, what is the goal here? Sure, the family and friends of the people lost in the strike were most likely not Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty, but what ever happened to hearts and minds?
I’m not here to cry out to you about human rights, these strikes set us back in that department as well as our entire effort to rid the area of violent fundamentalism. There have been some informal studies done in the tribal areas regarding the strikes with "good" results but there is hardly a Pro-America movement in northwest Pakistan as of today. Results look mixed to me. I can't take a study such as this seriously when the person who posted the results starts ranting about the "the country he loves" for a few paragraphs at the end.
Do I propose the end of drone strikes all together? Absolutely not, they are an unbelievably economic and safe way to carry out close air support, interdiction and armed reconnaissance as long as ordnance is not used frivolously. I do propose we rethink the value of high level assassinations of terrorists. It has proven ineffective in destroying these organizations, as there are plenty more willing to take Abdul’s spot near the top. These men do not deserve to live, but at what cost do they need to die?
Next week: How everyone thought the Arab Spring movements were going to lead to democracy in the region and how hilarious I think that is.
Foreign Affairs , the Council on Foreign Relations and the Rand Corporation all argue that the targeted drone strikes have been a tremendously effective way of disrupting Al-Qaeda and have reduced its operation capability tremendously. Given that no serious Islamic terror attack in the US has happened, and the ones we have caught have been lone wolves , I think their contention carries some weight.
Now , the ethics of assassinating US citizens with drones are questionable - and on that there's plenty of argument.
Is there any reason for those sources to not conclude that drone strikes have been a tremendously effective way of disrupting Al-Qaeda?
Of course , everyone is wrapped up in a giant conspiracy to deceive us. If we rained lollipops from the sky instead of bombs , we would have no terror attacks
1 - Drone strikes against Muslim and Arab communities create new resistance groups because of the indiscriminate nature of their violence. These groups may resort to acts of terror against the US/it's interests especially in countries where there is limited civil society and/or governments unresponsive to their people (countries under US occupation or that are being bombed by the US). These new groups don't need to be affiliated with any existing groups. Hence witnessing "lone wolf" groups is actually a bad sign, not a good one as it indicates that the US is creating new enemies and "bin ladens". All it takes is killing someone's family to turn an engineer, banker or normal middle class guy into someone who will want to resist the US and act against it.
2- Contrary to conventional rhetoric, the US isn't fighting an organised terror network called Al Qaeda led by its former ally osama bin laden (this is a small part). The US is fighting an ideology and a culture. This ideology/culture is one of resistance to US aggression / hegemony. It's the same thing it fought in Vietnam and in Latin America. It takes different forms depending on the culture of the country in question, the time/context and the nature of US aggression / hegemony. Hierarchical organisations like Hizbollah in Lebanon, the republic of Iran or the Al Sadr Brigades in Iraq in the case of Shia Islam, or secular Arab nationalism/socialism in the case of the governments of Nasser era Egypt or Baathist Iraq and Syria. Or relatively small spontaneous armed militias and/or covert groups in the case of Sunni Islam globally (not necessarily networked), but predominantly in the middle east (an example would be the murder of the US ambassador to Libya this week, or the resistance to occupation in Iraq). I suggest you read some of the literature by ex-CIA analysts/operatives like Robert Baer / Michael Scheuer (hardly the most dovish guys). Robert Baer's "See No Evil" is particularly insightful. If you don't have time to read their books, but can spare a couple of hours, check out interviews / talks with them on "Conversations with history" series by the University of California. Those interviews tend to be well researched.
3 - We haven't even talked about the US's role in Pakistan and the culture of resistance there or Afghanistan and it's specific dynamic (taliban and others).
You don't have to agree with my opinion below or be sympathetic to the plight of Muslims/Middle Easterners to recognise that the nature of Arab/Muslim resistance that may take the form of terror attacks is very different form the mainstream rhetoric by the intellectual midgets/corporate stooges at the Council on Foreign Relations; nor do you have to agree with me to recognise the US actions that often push these movements in that direction.
My take: Ultimately i think diplomacy, de-militarisation of America's engagement with the middle east and islamic world is the best way for the US to gain long term security for its people and for its interests, but i don't think that there is enough leadership to pursue this while the empire is still growing. I think the US government/leadership currently considers terrorism/resistance as an inconvenient problem and a convenient excuse in it's hegemony of the middle east and central asia (it's new imperial frontier circling Russia and China).
That's all I have to say on this topic. I'm not going to comment on US foreign policy online for the next month or more. I much prefer discussing economics or political economy as it relates to finance / real estate on WSO as well as finance culture.
Really , drone strikes create resistance groups - who knew. Certainly not the major think-tanks who investigated and published articles on this topic. Guys , read Foreign Affairs or some of the existing opinion on this topic before forming your own. Just because a strategy has a downside , doesn't mean it's a net loser
hey dude, wrong forum for these posts.
so are you saying that drone strikes are a function of getting a second round interview with a MM Asset Management firm?
This has been a really good discussion, and I enjoyed reading it. But I think this should be posted in a CNN Ireporter blog. What does this have to do with WSO?
I will take a little collateral damage over putting our soldiers in harms way any day.
I find your idea that drone strikes will be phased out and become more of a "total war" tool completely laughable. There is no fundamental difference between a drone strike and conventional pilot flown air strikes (besides cost efficiencies and no risk to the pilot's life). Nukes and chemical weapons are total war tools because they blanket an area and make it unusable for a period of time....therefore, not precision weapons of war.
Your main problem seems to be with the "collateral damage" and that the commander's death didn't really create a massive vacuum. I am going to address the collateral damage point first and honestly my generally feeling is..... too fucking bad. If we were talking about a crowded market place or a hotel full of people maybe we could have a discussion about that, but this was a precision strike killing a known terrorist commander in a single building. The fact that his family and others were in the same building is a combination of his fault and theirs and should not be a deterrent in our strike process. If he wasn't in the same building as them they would have been alright.
Second, you talk about his death not creating a vacuum in the organization and with this point I think you truly show your naivete. Do you honestly think just killing one man would end the fighting? Do you think killing Hitler would have ended the Nazi party or stopped WWII?
Much like the Giants secondary experiences season after season, you weaken and destroy an organization not just by destroying the key guys, but by killing their reserves and potential replacements. When you kill an experienced commander or other high ranking terrorist, you not only kill the man, you kill his all of his experience and depth of knowledge. Much like when an esteemed and charismatic college professor dies from old age, his job can be replaced, but he cannot.
I'm pretty sure that "too fucking bad" is exactly what Al-Qaeda thought when they plotted 9/11. Awesome mindset bro.
This kind of thinking is precisely why people in that region hate the US. If a single American citizen is killed in the Middle East, we're outraged and need to do something about it. Meanwhile, we're bombing their land and sometimes killing innocent persons. Yes, we are protecting our ideals and "security," but what about theirs? The whole reason these insurgents exist is because there are extreme religious ideals that they seek to protect; by blowing shit up as a foreign power on their land, we're just inciting further negative sentiment.
just too many misinfored americans...the level of ignorance is staggering and institutionalized...i assume most users here are anglo, mono-lingual, who have never lived or traveled abroad. And by traveled I don't mean backpacking in comfortable european nations re foreign affairs, this is a rag magazine, parroting semi-offical policy
Completely agree with you on the point of American ignorance. People in America grow up in a post-WWII bubble. The notion of American exceptionalism, or that we are somehow exempt from acting humbly on the world stage, is totally wrong. Our economic might has been used to form a pseudo-empire where we police the world, but this cannot last. As mentioned before, current foreign policy simply incites further hatred for what America stands for and makes an attack like 9/11 a near certainty.
In Soviet-Afghan wars? That was very true. They sent volunteer fighters too. In the current Afghan war? Not a chance.
So where do you think their money comes from? Aid money is sent as funding for madrassas and other forms of religious charity.
The issue of drone strikes has long been debated and the question of risk versus gain is critical. Is the benefit of taking out an HVT (high value target) worth the cost of alienating countless others? I'll tell you that you think too little of our leaders if you think they don't do the calculus every time a Hellfire is sent down range. The thresholds for conducting strikes are quite high and collateral damage is always considered.
Ultimately, we have a choice. We can systematically take out the top leaders from AQ, TTP, and LET using drones or we can let them run around the FATA freely. When they run around freely, they can plan, train, and multiply. I can unequivocally tell you that the strikes, more than any other effort, have decimated these groups' leadership and brain trust. The drones are crucial because politically they are tolerable from the Pakistani side. Of course they complain, but I'll tell you that the Pakistani government was probably pretty psyched when we got Baitullah Mehsud. The only time the Pakistani government has a real issue with US drone strikes is when we start targeting those groups who they are either supporting or looking to negotiate with.
The question I think we need to ask ourselves is whether these people who we are "alienating" with these strikes can ever be convinced that the US is anything other than the enemy. If we stopped bombing tomorrow, would their opinions change? I can almost guarantee the answer is no. The second the Taliban fled across the border to seek shelter with their Pashtun brothers, it was over. The second foreign members of AQ started marrying into Pashtun families in the tribal areas, it was over. There is a reason that places like Waziristan are safe havens for AQ. They were a safe haven before we started dropping bombs, and I don't believe the bombs are the major factor affecting people's attitudes.
The challenge is quantifying the collateral impact of the strikes, both in terms of numbers of non-combatants killed and sentiment. Access to these areas is just too difficult.
I think the moral argument can be debated, and I certainly think our strategy needs to be more sophisticated than only using drones. Drones are NOT the whole answer, but they have been extremely affective. I'd strongly argue that the other areas of our policy towards Pakistan are far more flawed than the use of drones. The Pakistani government is too corrupt, the military too powerful. There is too much mistrust between the two countries. Pakistan has become a welfare state. The inmates are running the asylum in the tribal areas. The specter of war with India, real or imagined, weighs heavily on the psyche of the country and there is great concern over who will have influence in Afghanistan when the US leaves. These issues, not drone strikes, need to be addressed.
Here's some interesting reading as well. By no means do I believe this comes close to representing the average person walking the bazaar in Wana, but they do provide a different perspective than the one you often hear coming out of Pakistan.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\01\02\story_2-1-2010_pg3_5
http://archives.dawn.com/archives/19917
Hey man, I'm sorry it's raining bombs in your home town. Maybe you'd have a different perspective if they weren't so accurate.
You think it's disgusting that there is collateral damage when eliminating a terrorist. I think it's absolutely disgusting that you think that's disgusting. We're talking about the people that are posing a constant threat to your dumb ass while you sit in your house writing your bullshit opinion without any exposure to the topic in real life. Go show this little post to a soldier who spent a few rounds in Afghanistan and see what he thinks of your sympathy for terrorist's associates (be it family or others). It's easy to ridicule the system as a bystander with anecdotal evidence of what goes on out there. It's a lot harder after you've been through it. When there's one opportunity to take out a high value target that is threatening the livelihood of everyone in this great country, we damn well better take it no matter how many "innocent" associates are killed in the process. Fucking liberal hippies I swear. It's like listening to a kid that hasn't ever had a taste of the real world.
This whole post is the most elegant way I could tell you to go fuck yourself.
I grew up in Peshawar for many years and lived in Islamabad as well. I have lived through all of this, I have seen the after effects of war and my family is half of what it should be because of it. I have also worked alongside soldiers in Afghanistan while working in logistics there and many veterans are close friends of mine, please take your tone down 4-5 notches.
BTW @ VirginiaTech: Take Afghanistan's natural resources? They don't have any, that's why they are so poor. Terrorists usually set up camp in hell holes, not in Miami or Paris.
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