Dronestrike-led foreign policy - bad timing?

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All you can ever do is make it difficult. Sufficient motivation can overcome so many obstacles.

--A

[Hashi Lebwohl]

An article about the ongoing drone strikes in Yemen written by Amy Goodman and Dennis Moynihan from Democracy Now.

There has been yet another violent attack with mass casualties. This was not the act of a lone gunman, or of an armed student rampaging through a school. It was a group of families en route to a wedding that was killed. The town was called Radda—not in Colorado, not in Connecticut, but in Yemen. The weapon was not an easy-to-obtain semiautomatic weapon, but missiles fired from U.S. drones. On Thursday, Dec. 12, 17 people were killed, mostly civilians. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has consistently tracked U.S. drone attacks, recently releasing a report on the six months following President Barack Obama’s major address on drone warfare before the National Defense University (NDU) last May. In that speech, Obama promised that “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured—the highest standard we can set.” The BIJ summarized, “Six months after President Obama laid out U.S. rules for using armed drones, a Bureau analysis shows that covert drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed more people than in the six months before the speech.” In a nation that abhors the all-too-routine mass killing in our communities, why does our government consistently kill so many innocents abroad?

I am wondering when people are going to start wanting to try Mr. Obama for "war crimes" like they want to try Mr. Bush? Mr. Bush recently had to cancel an overseas trip because a group where he was going to be going was threatening to try and have him arrested and put on trial.

In his NDU address, Obama said, “We act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people.” Neither Obama nor any of his aides have explained just what kind of threat the wedding convoy presented to the American people.

I refuse to believe that we face any imminent threat of an attack on United States soil by any terror group at this time. Sure, there will always be those who want to deal death here but they aren't trying to sneak in and commit some plot on a weekly basis. This is the real world, not some Tom Clancy novel.

[Cail]

Blah blah blah terrorists. Blah blah blah war. Blah blah blah danger.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

An internal investigation has begun into the drone strike in Yemen last month, the one which targeted a wedding party.

The Obama administration has launched an internal investigation of a drone strike that reportedly killed 12 people in Yemen last month. The victims were on their way to a wedding when they were apparently mistaken for an al-Qaeda convoy. NBC News reports the strike was carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC. The White House probe comes after the human rights group Reprieve released new video showing the victims’ burned corpses lined up on the ground for burial. In a statement, Reprieve said: "In bombing a wedding, the U.S. government has demonstrated that they either don’t know or don’t care who they were targeting. As a result, 12 innocent lives have been lost and many more destroyed … We can only hope [the] internal investigation is robust and that it results in needed policy change and reparation for those affected."

The key phrase here is the one which has been the major problem with the drone program ever since it got started under Bush: either we do not know who we are targeting, we do not care who we are targeting, or both. Is the subject a young male in a Middle Eastern country? Yes? That means he must be a terrorist--kill him.

[wayfriend]

Hashi, every single War, or war, we have been in has involved civilian casualties. As has every single war anyone else has been in.

You can say "either someone does not know who they were targeting, they do not care who they are targeting, or both" about allof them. (You might also mention making a mistake as another option, if you wanted to actually be fair.)

Unless you can include some sort of reason why this is different than all those other cases (and have it be a reason that actually matters, as opposed to, say, "because its drones") you will only sound like a partisan mouthpiece for haymaking.

[SerScot]

Wayfriend,

True, but this is the first war when high explosives have been deployed at a wedding to take out one person on a terrorist watch list knowing that innocents will be killed to take out that indivdual.

[Zarathustra]

Unless you can include some sort of reason why this is different than all those other cases (and have it be a reason that actually matters, as opposed to, say, "because its drones") you will only sound like a partisan mouthpiece for haymaking.

It doesn't have to be different to still be undesirable. And you don't have to be partisan to point out undesirable aspects of war. But you might be partisan to criticize others for criticizing undesirable aspects of war. What's the problem with just agreeing that this is bad, without calling each other partisan for something that both sides have pointed out? I seem to remember lots of complaints about collateral damage during the Iraq War under Bush's watch. So where was this "it happens in ever war" attitude then? Well, it was most likely on the Bush-supporter side of the debate. The two have just switched positions. So your response that "this is partisan" is just you taking your place in this partisan dance of ironic finger-pointing.

Noting the undesirable effects of any war is the only way to do a "cost/benefit" analysis to see if it's worth all the death. While it's true that all war involves collateral damage, it's never inappropriate or necessarily partisan to take this first step in that analysis.

However, it's also true that asking what's different about this instance can be instructive. You've asked, so here's an answer: the entire point with drones is that they're supposed to be "surgical" strikes, which limit our exposure and the mistakes of a wider bombing campaign or offensive. While this strategy seems to be protecting our men, if it's not effectively performing on the other side of that equation, then something about our strategy might be wrong.

[wayfriend]

Wayfriend,

True, but this is the first war when high explosives have been deployed at a wedding to take out one person on a terrorist watch list knowing that innocents will be killed to take out that indivdual.

(a) even the scathing article admits that the innocent victims were "were on their way to a wedding", not "at" a wedding, and (b) the scathing article also indicates that they thought it was "an Al-Qaeda convoy", not a wedding (or a wedding party even). So no one had any intent to blow up a wedding, as far as I can see. Let's be fair.

[Rawedge Rim]

Heck, if we could just convince insurgents and terrorists to move out of the civilian areas and hang out in the wilderness, then we wouldn't have to worry about collateral damage. Otherwise I really don't see a way not to have collateral damage, other than by adhereing to Cail's isolationist philosophy.

[Cail]

Cail's philosophy isn't isolationist, it's non-interference.

[SerScot]

RR,

Would you be cool with bombing a wedding to kill an AQ bigwig who happens to be in attendance?

[Rawedge Rim]

RR,

Would you be cool with bombing a wedding to kill an AQ bigwig who happens to be in attendance?

If the only way to kill Hitler would have been to bomb him while he was attending a wedding, would you have been cool with that?

[TheFallen]

RR, your Hitler question is Monday morning quarterbacking at its most blatant and thus a false comparison. Let alone the fact that okay, killing Hitler might have led Germany to sue for peace... if Obama drones an al-Qaeda bigwig, how likely do you think it is that someone empowered to speak for al-Qaeda as a whole will suddenly pop up and sign a viable ceasefire or surrender? Such a person does not exist... for the umpteenth time, we're not dealing with nation states and their leaders here.

The other key point surely is that, unlike killing Hitler at a wedding party, the Obama administration is droning suspects based upon what it believes their future actions may be. And don't forget that the Obama admin doesn't always consider it necessary even to bother with identifying those it targets. As often as not, as discussed earlier in this thread, it targets unidentified individuals in what it considers might be suspicious locations or performing what it thinks might be be suspicious-looking activities.

[Rawedge Rim]

RR, your Hitler question is Monday morning quarterbacking at its most blatant and thus a false comparison. Let alone the fact that okay, killing Hitler might have led Germany to sue for peace... if Obama drones an al-Qaeda bigwig, how likely do you think it is that someone empowered to speak for al-Qaeda as a whole will suddenly pop up and sign a viable ceasefire or surrender? Such a person does not exist... for the umpteenth time, we're not dealing with nation states and their leaders here.

The other key point surely is that, unlike killing Hitler at a wedding party, the Obama administration is droning suspects based upon what it believes their future actions may be. And don't forget that the Obama admin doesn't always consider it necessary even to bother with identifying those it targets. As often as not, as discussed earlier in this thread, it targets unidentified individuals in what it considers might be suspicious locations or performing what it thinks might be be suspicious-looking activities.

and what you don't understand is that it's not the Obama administration, its the USA. The last administration used drones, this one does, and the next will also use them, until someone comes up with a counter for them.

It seems to me that those of you against this want to either just accept that it's the price of being a nation, or put boots on the ground and risk US lives on the hopes that they get someone who has declared war on us.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Unless you can include some sort of reason why this is different than all those other cases (and have it be a reason that actually matters, as opposed to, say, "because its drones") you will only sound like a partisan mouthpiece for haymaking.

There are two reasons why the situation right now is different:
1) we are not at war. In order to be at war Congress must issue a declaration of war; our current political philosophy that the President has the unilateral authority to declare when and where we are at war is unconstitutional and both major parties are at fault for allowing it to continue. Yes, the argument could be made "Congress cannot declare war against a state-less organization like Al Queda" and that argument is true; nevertheless, we are still misusing the military to fight an invisible enemy who hides inside the population in foreign nations. We should have learned the lesson not to engage an enemy like this back in Vietnam.
2) we do not have to be launching drones packed with explosives at targets, even targets who are Al Queda operatives. Unless an AQ operative is carrying out an active plot against the United States itself, there is no reason to kill them. To kill someone for something they might possibly do in the future is to engage in fortune-telling--we know that this person is going to do x next week so we will kill them now. How do you know they will? What if something happens and they don't do what they were planning to do? Increase the security at military bases, embassies, and consulates and make damned certain that anyone who shoots at those structures meets a quick death but beyond that if someone is not shooting at us or trying to blow up a building then they aren't deserving of death.

The Hitler analogy also fails because the Reich was an established government whose soldiers wore uniforms and took orders. Truthfully, if you go back in time and kill Hitler then almost nothing would have changed--the military would have continued on its course unabated. At best, they would have decided to hold on to already-captured territory and negotiate for a cease-fire. They probably also wouldn't have invaded Russia--that was stupid on Hitler's part. Anyway....

Now...let's consider the opposing view to my own. If you are going to take the war to Al Queda and you are going to fight them whenever and wherever they appear, then you have to take the fight to them on their level and you have to go all in. Don't just launch some drones at good targets and try to take out the leaders. No, go after the States which support them, up to and including Saudi Arabia. They want to cloak their actions with the trappings of Islam? Fine--carry the war to the religion they claim to represent. Drone the mosques. Drone the madrases. Launch a drone at the Kaaba itself. Raise the stakes so high that they cannot afford to continue playing. At some point even the most militant amongst them will realize that being a terrorist isn't worth it because the things they are fighting to preserve will not exist any more.

Truthfully I can live with either position: either pull out completely and quit killing people without actual reason to kill them or go all in and make them regret deciding to become a terrorist in the first place. It is the current "well, we want to fight AQ but we don't really want to do what it takes to win" that is driving me crazy. We are trying to implement the half-assed, half-hearted, and ball-less solution that will never work.

[wayfriend]

What people forget...

Drones kill fewer civilians, as a percentage of total fatalities, than any other military weapon. [link]

But for extremists who are indeed plotting violence against innocents, he said, “all the evidence we have so far suggests that drones do better at both identifying the terrorist and avoiding collateral damage than anything else we have.” [link]

Using drones is also far less bloody than asking allies to hunt down terrorists on the United States’ behalf. The Pakistani and Yemeni militaries, for example, are known to regularly torture and execute detainees, and they often indiscriminately bomb civilian areas or use scorched-earth tactics against militant groups. [link]

[Cail]

What Wayfriend forgets......

We're creating more hatred and more terrorists by bombing nations that we're not at war with. The only people who win in this sort of fight are military contractors and politicians who wish to remain in power by creating fear.

[wayfriend]

The 6 big myths that turned us against drone strikes

#4 Drone strikes create more terrorists

The impression that drone strikes create additional terrorists is not entirely grounded in reality. The truth is that Islamist extremism is midwifed by the ideology of global jihad and political Islam.

The bulk of the Taliban fighters come from the Punjab province that has become a hub of extremism in recent years. These fighters come from urban, middle class families. Neither the Punjab province faces drone strikes nor have these militants ever lost a relative and family member in any of the drone strikes. The history of Islamic extremism in Pakistan dates back to days much earlier the use of the drone technology. [link]

‘Minimal’ drone effects on Pakistan militant recruits: ICG

ISLAMABAD: US drone strikes in Pakistan have a “minimal” impact on militant recruitment, a respected think tank said Tuesday, contrary to arguments the controversial programme creates more extremists than it kills. [link]

Doh! Stupid fact-based opinion ...

[Cail]

The 6 big myths that turned us against drone strikes

#4 Drone strikes create more terrorists

The impression that drone strikes create additional terrorists is not entirely grounded in reality. The truth is that Islamist extremism is midwifed by the ideology of global jihad and political Islam.

The bulk of the Taliban fighters come from the Punjab province that has become a hub of extremism in recent years. These fighters come from urban, middle class families. Neither the Punjab province faces drone strikes nor have these militants ever lost a relative and family member in any of the drone strikes. The history of Islamic extremism in Pakistan dates back to days much earlier the use of the drone technology. [link]

‘Minimal’ drone effects on Pakistan militant recruits: ICG

ISLAMABAD: US drone strikes in Pakistan have a “minimal” impact on militant recruitment, a respected think tank said Tuesday, contrary to arguments the controversial programme creates more extremists than it kills. [link]

Doh! Stupid fact-based opinion ...

I am once again amazed at how much you have in common with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

You do realize that AQ's stated reason for waging terror against the US is our intervention in the ME, right?

[Rawedge Rim]

The 6 big myths that turned us against drone strikes

#4 Drone strikes create more terrorists

The impression that drone strikes create additional terrorists is not entirely grounded in reality. The truth is that Islamist extremism is midwifed by the ideology of global jihad and political Islam.

The bulk of the Taliban fighters come from the Punjab province that has become a hub of extremism in recent years. These fighters come from urban, middle class families. Neither the Punjab province faces drone strikes nor have these militants ever lost a relative and family member in any of the drone strikes. The history of Islamic extremism in Pakistan dates back to days much earlier the use of the drone technology. [link]

‘Minimal’ drone effects on Pakistan militant recruits: ICG

ISLAMABAD: US drone strikes in Pakistan have a “minimal” impact on militant recruitment, a respected think tank said Tuesday, contrary to arguments the controversial programme creates more extremists than it kills. [link]

Doh! Stupid fact-based opinion ...

I am once again amazed at how much you have in common with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

You do realize that AQ's stated reason for waging terror against the US is our intervention in the ME, right?

and our having the temerity to have troops in Islamic lands, even if it was by invite of the government there.

Of course things like mocking the Prophet will also get war declared by AQ, but who cares about that?