The many Catch-22s of drones

In a rather unsurprising report on the effectiveness of drone strikes, written by "several former senior intelligence and military officials" and released today by the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank, the conclusion is this:

There is no indication that a U.S. strategy to destroy Al Qaeda has curbed the rise of Sunni Islamic extremism, deterred the establishment of Shia Islamic extremist groups or advanced long-term U.S. security interests.

It's the old whack-a-mole conundrum inside an exponential paradox--we kill one terrorist and thereby create 10 others; we kill those 10 and create another 100, and so on. Killing terrorists propagates terrorists, yet neglecting them exposes us to death. We can on occasion apprehend them rather than kill them, but then what? Gitmo? Which creates more terrorists? Criminal trials? Which ratchets up politically motivated Republican hysteria and fear-mongering?

Then there's the other, even larger political problem for the Obama administration. If it were to curb or delete its drone-strike program and a terrorist attack on domestic soil ensued, then that would be, as they say, all she wrote. The final two years of this administration's staggering to the finish line would be lethally crippled.

And its successor, the Clinton administration? It would triple down on drones--with convenient, inner-neocon verve--to avert the above, politically dangerous prospect. We'd be slaughtering terrorists by the dozens--and creating hundreds and thousands more.

And then there's this:

The report raised warnings that other countries might adopt the same rationale as the United States has for carrying out lethal strikes outside of declared war zones... Russia could use armed drones in Ukraine under the justification that it was killing anti-Russian terrorists.... "In such circumstances," the report asked, "how could the United States credibly condemn Russian targeted killings?"

Finally, an easy question to answer. It couldn't.

 

Comments

[Peter G]

The argument about fighting extremists creating more tenfold has little foundation. There will always be a very limited number of people in any population ready to engage in such militant action and their prime motivations have little to do with military actions. These are not live and let live people. If the argument were true you'd still be fighting German and Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese terrorists. But you aren't because nation states exist that are capable of restraining their own loonies.

The subtleties of drones and their uses do not stand in technical isolation. Their ability to remain on station unobserved for long periods of time coupled with signals intelligence creates an opportunity that the whole world SHOULD share. If your beef is with some leader hiding in safely in the weeds knocking out the troops will not answer. Taking out the chief sends a much more powerful message. Call me evil but I think more Assads and Ghaddafis need to find their end or live in the light that the end may come soon depending on what they do.