From Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting back on Oct. 3, 2010 by Peter Hart
Apparently not, judging by the Washington Post's October 3 story ("Military Drones Aid CIA's mission") about the CIA's expansion of its drone war in Pakistan. It is "part of a high-stakes attempt by the Obama administration to deal decisive blows to Taliban insurgents," and also "a significant evolution of an already controversial targeted killing program."
Post readers get details from "a U.S. official"--who says things like, "Our intelligence has gotten a lot better." The only other perspective comes from Bruce Reidel at Brookings, who is "a former CIA analyst who led the Obama administration's initial overhaul of its Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy." In other words, not much of a critic.
There are obviously fundamental questions about this policy--such as whether it's legal, something Jim Lobe wrote about recently for Inter Press Service (4/2/10).
Tags: CIA, Jim Lobe, Pakistan
Inter Press Service story from April 2010 ...
Legality of Drone Strikes Still in Question
By Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON, Apr 2, 2010 (IPS) - While welcoming an initial effort by the administration of President Barack Obama to offer a legal justification for drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists overseas, human rights groups say critical questions remain unanswered.
In an address to an international law group last week, State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh insisted that such operations were being conducted in full compliance with international law.
"The U.S. is in armed conflict with al Qaeda as well as the Taliban and associated forces in response to the horrific acts of 9/11 and may use force consistent with its right to self-defence under international law," he said. "...(I)ndividuals who are part of such armed groups are belligerents and, therefore, lawful targets under international law."
Moreover, he went on, "U.S. targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war," which require limiting attacks to military objectives and that the damage caused to civilians by those attacks would not be excessive.
While right-wing commentators expressed satisfaction with Koh's evocation of the "right to self-defence" - the same justification used by President George W. Bush - human rights groups were circumspect.
"We are encouraged that the administration has taken the legal surrounding drone strikes seriously," said Jonathan Manes of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "While this was an important and positive first step, a number of controversial questions were left unanswered."
"We still don't know what criteria the government uses to determine that a civilian is acting like a fighter, and can therefore be killed, and... whether there are any geographical limits on where drone strikes can be used to target and kill individuals," he told IPS.
"He didn't really say anything that we took issue with," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), who also complained about the lack of details.
"But it still leaves unanswered the question of how far the war paradigm he's talking about extends. Will it extend beyond, say, ungoverned areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen? Because you don't want to leave a legal theory out there that could be exploited by a country like Russia or China to knock off its political enemies on the streets of a foreign city," he added.
Drone attacks, which have increased significantly under Obama, are widely considered to have become the single-most effective weapon in Washington's campaign disrupt al Qaeda and affiliated groups, especially in the frontier areas of western Pakistan.
In Obama's first year in office, more strikes were carried out than in the previous eight years under his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), they reportedly killed "several hundred" al Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban militants since Obama in 2009, forcing many of them to flee their border hideouts for large cities where precision attacks would be much harder to carry out without causing heavy civilian casualties.
But the strikes - as well as cruise-missile attacks carried out by the U.S. military against suspected terrorist targets in Yemen and Somalia - have drawn growing criticism from some human rights groups and legal scholars, notably the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings, Philip Alston, who have argued that several aspects of these operations may violate international law.
Their focus has been less on the use of drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Washington's forces are engaged in active hostilities and the Pentagon has implemented relatively transparent procedures to maximise compliance with the laws of war, than on the frontier areas of Pakistan and other "ungoverned" areas where al Qaeda and Taliban militants have gained refuge. The CIA, whose procedures remain secret, is in charge of drone operations.
The weapon itself "is one of the least problematic from a civilian-protection standpoint, because drones can hover over their targets and observe whether civilians are present before delivering a payload, and because they carry relatively small and precisely guided munitions," noted Malinowski.
"The question is a legal one: under what circumstances can you use lethal force at all? Our view has always been that it should be limited to zones of active armed conflict where normal arrest operations are not feasible."
A related question involves who may be targeted. While many authorities insist lethal force can be used under the laws of war against those who are actively participating in armed conflict, the U.S. has used defined participation in very broad terms, including membership in - or even financial support of - an armed group.
In his remarks to the American Society for International Law, Koh, who was one of the harshest and most outspoken critics of the Bush administration's legal tactics in its "global war on terror", acknowledged some of these concerns, noting that his speech "is obviously not the occasion for a detailed legal opinion."
"(W)hether a particular individual will be targeted in a particular location will depend upon considerations specific to each case, including those related to the imminence of the threat, the sovereignty of the other states involved, and the willingness and ability of those states to suppress the threat the target poses," he said.
Koh added that Washington will ensure the application of the principles of "distinction" and "proportionality" in the laws of war.
While noting criticism that the use of lethal force against some individuals far removed from the battlefield could amount to an "unlawful extra-judicial killing", he insisted that "a state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defence is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force."
"Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust, and advanced technologies have helped to make our targeting even more precise," he said.
Alston, the U.N. rapporteur, was far from satisfied with these assurances, however, calling Koh's statement "evasive".
He "was essentially arguing that 'You've got to trust us. I've looked at this very carefully. I'm very sensitive to these issues. And all is well,'" he told an interviewer on 'Democracy Now' Thursday.
"The speech did not provide essential information about the drone/targeted killing programme, including the number and rate of civilian casualties, and the internal oversight and controls on targeted killing, especially within the CIA," said Manes of the ACLU, which has filed a lawsuit to acquire that information.
Tom Parker of Amnesty International was more scathing about Koh's position, suggesting that it was one more concession - along with indefinite detention and special military tribunals for suspected terrorists - to the framework created by Bush's "global war on terror".
"The big issue is where the war is and whether it's a war, and we couldn't disagree more strongly as to the tenor of Koh's comments," he said. "It goes back to the idea of an unbounded global war on terror where terror is hardly defined at all."
*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Friday, January 7, 2011
Thursday, October 14, 2010
New America Foundation raises unaddressed issues in U.S.-Pakistan military ops
Video from the New America Foundation, one of the groups taking action to inject debate into the largely closed and classified U.S. military pursuits within the borders of Pakistan presents a legal approach not previously offered on U.S.-Pakistan relations and campaigns.
This legal framework is directly related to the relegated priorities of arresting the occurrences of civilian victims and casualties, the unpopularity among the resident population of the attacks and their value in neutralizing terrorists, Pakistan's sovereign duty to its citizenry, frailty of legal arguments supporting the CIA's drone program and the prosecution of a classified and therefore supposedly covert war inside an overt one. Relegated, that is, beneath the priority of executing leadership in international terrorist cells or organizations (extrajudicial killing being a related issue of separate special importance) and implementing a technology that allows targets (and collateral victims) to be eliminated while soldiers prosecuting the attack operate from safety half the world away.
Featured Speaker
Christopher Rogers
Pakistan Field Fellow, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
BACKUP LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9yQMj289Hg
In the event the embedded video won't work, please use the YouTube link above.
This legal framework is directly related to the relegated priorities of arresting the occurrences of civilian victims and casualties, the unpopularity among the resident population of the attacks and their value in neutralizing terrorists, Pakistan's sovereign duty to its citizenry, frailty of legal arguments supporting the CIA's drone program and the prosecution of a classified and therefore supposedly covert war inside an overt one. Relegated, that is, beneath the priority of executing leadership in international terrorist cells or organizations (extrajudicial killing being a related issue of separate special importance) and implementing a technology that allows targets (and collateral victims) to be eliminated while soldiers prosecuting the attack operate from safety half the world away.
Featured Speaker
Christopher Rogers
Pakistan Field Fellow, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
BACKUP LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9yQMj289Hg
In the event the embedded video won't work, please use the YouTube link above.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Pakistan erupts in the news; U.S. rift threatens West's policy in Central Asia
From a possible revision of ally status for Pakistan with the U.S. to the average Pakistani being sick to death of the CIA using robots to kill their children, Pakistani spies insisting the Taliban kill for purposes of intimidation to no chance for suggesting in U.S. media that drone attacks are not the best strategy, Pakistan is in the news and coming undone in America's unending quest to simplify the lines drawn by 9/11 into Us and Them, cowboys and radical religious guys who won't sleep or stop praying to play with their children until every last cowboy is dead.
Should the U.S. Give Up on Pakistan? The Atlantic Monthly online
By Max Fisher | October 07, 2010 4:25pm
Does Anyone Object to U.S. Drone Wars in Pakistan? Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
10/04/2010 by Peter Hart
Blasts kill 8 at Sufi shrine in Pakistan; Los Angeles Times
No one claims responsibility for the attacks in Karachi, which injured 65. Militants have targeted shrines and mosques serving adherents of non-orthodox Muslim doctrines.
By Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times
October 8, 2010
Hamburg mosque which links 9/11 to the badlands of Pakistan; London Guardian
Ian Traynor reports from Germany on an abandoned prayer hall in the spotlight again after US terror alerts
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 October 2010 19.41 BST
Pakistan criticizes drone strikes
By the CNN Wire Staff
October 7, 2010 -- Updated 1709 GMT (0109 HKT)
Should the U.S. Give Up on Pakistan? The Atlantic Monthly online
By Max Fisher | October 07, 2010 4:25pm
Does Anyone Object to U.S. Drone Wars in Pakistan? Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
10/04/2010 by Peter Hart
Blasts kill 8 at Sufi shrine in Pakistan; Los Angeles Times
No one claims responsibility for the attacks in Karachi, which injured 65. Militants have targeted shrines and mosques serving adherents of non-orthodox Muslim doctrines.
By Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times
October 8, 2010
Hamburg mosque which links 9/11 to the badlands of Pakistan; London Guardian
Ian Traynor reports from Germany on an abandoned prayer hall in the spotlight again after US terror alerts
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 October 2010 19.41 BST
Pakistan criticizes drone strikes
By the CNN Wire Staff
October 7, 2010 -- Updated 1709 GMT (0109 HKT)
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Oct. 3 report on drone strike at funeral for drone strike victims
This illuminating article posted by the Denver chapter of an autonomous political action group, Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement (Denver). Note the lead to these compelling and utterly disturbing source stories:
CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones''They want to kill people with software that doesn't work'by Chris Williams, TheRegister.co.uk, Sept. 24
And also,
"CIA used pirated, inaccurate software to target drone attacks: lawsuit"by Daniel Tencer, RawStory.com, also dated Sept. 24
Drones kill 28 people, then hit the funeral
www.raimd.wordpress.com
A recent string of bombings, killing dozens in Pakistan, has the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or “drone,” making headlines once again. So-called “Predator Drones” have become one of imperialism’s favorite tools of oppression. Bombing attacks by these vehicles are being carried out consistently and more frequently than ever. (1).
Predator Drones are center stage as the US ups its assault on Pakistan’s northwest border region. At least 28 people were killed as a result of drone strikes in South Waziristan during the week of September 19 (2). The week’s two bloodiest attacks, responsible for more than a dozen deaths, took place on September 22. The initial strike launched two missiles at a targeted vehicle, killing seven. A funeral was arranged for the victims in the following hours; subsequently, this funeral was also targeted by a drone strike, resulting in more deaths yet. This absurd sequence mirrors an incident that took place last summer. On the morning of Tuesday 23 June 2009, unmanned drones killed more than 45 people in a series of bombings including a strike on a funeral procession for victims of the earlier assault (3).
Violence caused by drone missiles has sparked outrage in Pakistan, where drones have killed at least 1,700 people(4). The mutilation caused by the bombings makes compiling a solid count of the deaths all but impossible. Even so, it is clear that hundreds of those killed have been civilians (5). Drones have been a fixture in Pakistan for over five years; however, US officials do not officially comment on any drone activities. The attacks fall under the veil of CIA secrecy. It is clear, nonetheless, that using drones has become particularly attractive to decision-makers in the past two years. Estimated death tolls clearly show drone attacks being responsible for more deaths in 2009 alone than in the four years between 2004-2008 combined (6).
With mounting numbers of casualties, drone attacks have become known for their haphazard destruction. Missiles fired from the unpiloted vehicles are often grossly off-target. This, and general belligerence have contributed to the high civilian deaths which have, embarrassingly for the US, included Amerikan citizens (7).
Part of the cause of the vehicle’s reckless imprecision is being revealed in an ongoing lawsuit. Accusations and evidence depict the as CIA consciously utilizing faulty targeting software in the unmanned vehicles. IISI, a small, Massachusetts-based software company alleges that IT firm “Netezza” facilitated the CIA with a pirated, and knowingly-unreliable, version of their software to the CIA for use in US drone vehicles. The location-analysis software in turn may have produced locations up to 13 meters off target (8). IISI was pressured to meet a quick deadline to provide the software, when the company voiced reservations, Netezza allegedly went ahead and reverse-engineered the program themselves. The IISI Chief Technology Officer summarized his earliest feelings on the situation, stating, “they want to kill people with my software that doesn’t work” (9). The lawsuit aims to halt use of the pirated software by Netezza and its clients, including the CIA. IISI has expressed concern that the buggy software may lead to loss of innocent life. Unfortunately, the host of civilian deaths cannot be declared a mere “software issue.” Such recklessness is hardwired into the logic of imperialism.
Predator Drones are becoming a standard instrument in the oppression of Third World peoples by . As RAIM has noted (xhttp://raimd.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/imperialism-drones-on/), US drones are now deployed everywhere from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and recently on the militarized US/Mexico border. Israel used US-provided drones in attacks on Gaza in December 2008. The First World is looking to a high technology, impersonal approach of fighting their battles. These machines cause much destruction, but high-tech gadgetry will not defeat Third Wold resistance. As comrade Lin Biao wrote in “Long Live the Victory of People’s War!”
However highly developed modern weapons and technical equipment may be and however complicated the methods of modern warfare, in the final analysis the outcome of a war will be decided by the sustained fighting of the ground forces, by the fighting at close quarters on battlefields, by the political consciousness of the men, by their courage and spirit of sacrifice. Here the weak points of U.S. imperialism will be completely laid bare, while the superiority of the revolutionary people will be brought into full play. The reactionary troops of U.S. imperialism cannot possibly be endowed with the courage and the spirit of sacrifice possessed by the revolutionary people. The spiritual atom bomb which the revolutionary people possess is a far more powerful and useful weapon than the physical atom bomb. (10)
The Third World majority, collectively terrorized by imperialism, must collectively defeat imperialism. The enemy’s extravagant technology cannot hold up against People’s War.
Notes.
1. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann’s drones database at the New America Foundation
xxhttp://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones
2. xxhttp://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/2010921181212227907.html
3. xxhttp://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/06/200962317958264507.html
3. Ibid. Protest
4.xxhttp://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones#2010chart
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. xxhttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/09/cia_drones_killed_us_citizens.html
8. xxhttp://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/cia-inaccurate-software-drone-attacks/
9. Ibid.
CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones''They want to kill people with software that doesn't work'by Chris Williams, TheRegister.co.uk, Sept. 24
And also,
"CIA used pirated, inaccurate software to target drone attacks: lawsuit"by Daniel Tencer, RawStory.com, also dated Sept. 24
Drones kill 28 people, then hit the funeral
www.raimd.wordpress.com
A recent string of bombings, killing dozens in Pakistan, has the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or “drone,” making headlines once again. So-called “Predator Drones” have become one of imperialism’s favorite tools of oppression. Bombing attacks by these vehicles are being carried out consistently and more frequently than ever. (1).
Predator Drones are center stage as the US ups its assault on Pakistan’s northwest border region. At least 28 people were killed as a result of drone strikes in South Waziristan during the week of September 19 (2). The week’s two bloodiest attacks, responsible for more than a dozen deaths, took place on September 22. The initial strike launched two missiles at a targeted vehicle, killing seven. A funeral was arranged for the victims in the following hours; subsequently, this funeral was also targeted by a drone strike, resulting in more deaths yet. This absurd sequence mirrors an incident that took place last summer. On the morning of Tuesday 23 June 2009, unmanned drones killed more than 45 people in a series of bombings including a strike on a funeral procession for victims of the earlier assault (3).
Violence caused by drone missiles has sparked outrage in Pakistan, where drones have killed at least 1,700 people(4). The mutilation caused by the bombings makes compiling a solid count of the deaths all but impossible. Even so, it is clear that hundreds of those killed have been civilians (5). Drones have been a fixture in Pakistan for over five years; however, US officials do not officially comment on any drone activities. The attacks fall under the veil of CIA secrecy. It is clear, nonetheless, that using drones has become particularly attractive to decision-makers in the past two years. Estimated death tolls clearly show drone attacks being responsible for more deaths in 2009 alone than in the four years between 2004-2008 combined (6).
With mounting numbers of casualties, drone attacks have become known for their haphazard destruction. Missiles fired from the unpiloted vehicles are often grossly off-target. This, and general belligerence have contributed to the high civilian deaths which have, embarrassingly for the US, included Amerikan citizens (7).
Part of the cause of the vehicle’s reckless imprecision is being revealed in an ongoing lawsuit. Accusations and evidence depict the as CIA consciously utilizing faulty targeting software in the unmanned vehicles. IISI, a small, Massachusetts-based software company alleges that IT firm “Netezza” facilitated the CIA with a pirated, and knowingly-unreliable, version of their software to the CIA for use in US drone vehicles. The location-analysis software in turn may have produced locations up to 13 meters off target (8). IISI was pressured to meet a quick deadline to provide the software, when the company voiced reservations, Netezza allegedly went ahead and reverse-engineered the program themselves. The IISI Chief Technology Officer summarized his earliest feelings on the situation, stating, “they want to kill people with my software that doesn’t work” (9). The lawsuit aims to halt use of the pirated software by Netezza and its clients, including the CIA. IISI has expressed concern that the buggy software may lead to loss of innocent life. Unfortunately, the host of civilian deaths cannot be declared a mere “software issue.” Such recklessness is hardwired into the logic of imperialism.
Predator Drones are becoming a standard instrument in the oppression of Third World peoples by . As RAIM has noted (xhttp://raimd.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/imperialism-drones-on/), US drones are now deployed everywhere from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and recently on the militarized US/Mexico border. Israel used US-provided drones in attacks on Gaza in December 2008. The First World is looking to a high technology, impersonal approach of fighting their battles. These machines cause much destruction, but high-tech gadgetry will not defeat Third Wold resistance. As comrade Lin Biao wrote in “Long Live the Victory of People’s War!”
However highly developed modern weapons and technical equipment may be and however complicated the methods of modern warfare, in the final analysis the outcome of a war will be decided by the sustained fighting of the ground forces, by the fighting at close quarters on battlefields, by the political consciousness of the men, by their courage and spirit of sacrifice. Here the weak points of U.S. imperialism will be completely laid bare, while the superiority of the revolutionary people will be brought into full play. The reactionary troops of U.S. imperialism cannot possibly be endowed with the courage and the spirit of sacrifice possessed by the revolutionary people. The spiritual atom bomb which the revolutionary people possess is a far more powerful and useful weapon than the physical atom bomb. (10)
The Third World majority, collectively terrorized by imperialism, must collectively defeat imperialism. The enemy’s extravagant technology cannot hold up against People’s War.
Notes.
1. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann’s drones database at the New America Foundation
xxhttp://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones
2. xxhttp://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/2010921181212227907.html
3. xxhttp://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/06/200962317958264507.html
3. Ibid. Protest
4.xxhttp://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones#2010chart
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. xxhttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/09/cia_drones_killed_us_citizens.html
8. xxhttp://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/cia-inaccurate-software-drone-attacks/
9. Ibid.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
UK Guardian: U.S. Military drones lent to CIA program for "covert" ops in Pakistan
At least British newspaper editors believe nation-states are supposed to declare war formally and publicly before breezing into a so-called demilitarized zone (Federally Administered Tribal Areas or FATA; not unlike its meta-linguistic cousin, the convenient geographic designation, "Afpak") to drop 300-pound missiles on designated combatants and their families. In the place of working out a deal with an unstable regime operating in the militarized shell of a former dictatorship-avec-parliament (in reference to General Pervez Musharraf). Doesn't mean David Cameron's government is going to want to help impoverished people living in rural Pakistan.
A caveat: Extraordinary Edition would like to editorially acknowledge Islamabad's politicians ... are politicians. Thusly shall they slither and writhe between their constituents and unimaginable power offered them by their counterparts in stronger states. Guardian article appears below.
US secretly shifts armed drones to fight terrorists in Pakistan
The Pentagon and CIA are stepping up America's secret war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan by secretly diverting aerial drones and missiles from Afghanistan.
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 5:23PM BST 03 Oct 2010
Predator drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained is passed to Islamabad
Predator and Reaper drones have been lent by the US military to the CIA as part of a shift in strategy that underlines the Obama administration's view that Pakistan is unable or unwilling to target Islamist sanctuaries on its own soil.
Tensions between the US and Pakistan have flared after a key route used to supply American troops in Afghanistan was shut after three Pakistani soldiers were killed in an attack by a Nato helicopter gunship.
On Friday, insurgents attacked fuel tankers in Pakistan in another indication of the increasing vulnerability of Western supply routes.
The additional drones enabled the CIA to increase the number of strikes in Pakistan in September, averaging five strikes a week that month, up from an average of two to three per week.
This increase in drone activity was partly aimed at disrupting a suspected terrorist plot to strike in Western Europe. Americans officials believe Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders are behind plots potentially aimed at Britain, France and Germany.
American surveillance drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained passed to Islamabad. But Pakistan has formally banned US military operations on its soil, citing the country's sovereignty.
But the CIA has secretly conducted missile strikes launched from drones with Pakistani complicity. This has allowed Pakistan to condemn the strikes, which are strongly opposed by its predominantly anti-American population.
"You have to deal with the sanctuaries," said John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, told the Wall Street Journal. "I've pushed very, very hard with the Pakistanis regarding that." Mr Kerry discussed the issue with Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, in Washington last week.
The secret arrangement between the Pentagon and CIA underlines the consensus in the Obama administration that safe havens on Pakistani territory near the Afghan border is the major obstacle to success in the war in Afghanistan.
"When it comes to drones, there's no mission more important right now than hitting targets in the tribal areas, and that's where additional equipment's gone," an American official told the Wall Street Journal.
"It's not the only answer, but it's critical to both homeland security and force protection in Afghanistan."
The proposal for the CIA to use military resources emerged during last year's Afghanistan-Pakistan policy review. There was resistance from some at the Pentagon who argued that the drones were needed against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Since taking command in Afghanistan in July, Gen. Petraeus has placed greater focus on the tribal areas of Pakistan, according to military and other government officials.
A caveat: Extraordinary Edition would like to editorially acknowledge Islamabad's politicians ... are politicians. Thusly shall they slither and writhe between their constituents and unimaginable power offered them by their counterparts in stronger states. Guardian article appears below.
US secretly shifts armed drones to fight terrorists in Pakistan
The Pentagon and CIA are stepping up America's secret war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan by secretly diverting aerial drones and missiles from Afghanistan.
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 5:23PM BST 03 Oct 2010
Predator drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained is passed to Islamabad
Predator and Reaper drones have been lent by the US military to the CIA as part of a shift in strategy that underlines the Obama administration's view that Pakistan is unable or unwilling to target Islamist sanctuaries on its own soil.
Tensions between the US and Pakistan have flared after a key route used to supply American troops in Afghanistan was shut after three Pakistani soldiers were killed in an attack by a Nato helicopter gunship.
On Friday, insurgents attacked fuel tankers in Pakistan in another indication of the increasing vulnerability of Western supply routes.
The additional drones enabled the CIA to increase the number of strikes in Pakistan in September, averaging five strikes a week that month, up from an average of two to three per week.
This increase in drone activity was partly aimed at disrupting a suspected terrorist plot to strike in Western Europe. Americans officials believe Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders are behind plots potentially aimed at Britain, France and Germany.
American surveillance drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained passed to Islamabad. But Pakistan has formally banned US military operations on its soil, citing the country's sovereignty.
But the CIA has secretly conducted missile strikes launched from drones with Pakistani complicity. This has allowed Pakistan to condemn the strikes, which are strongly opposed by its predominantly anti-American population.
"You have to deal with the sanctuaries," said John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, told the Wall Street Journal. "I've pushed very, very hard with the Pakistanis regarding that." Mr Kerry discussed the issue with Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, in Washington last week.
The secret arrangement between the Pentagon and CIA underlines the consensus in the Obama administration that safe havens on Pakistani territory near the Afghan border is the major obstacle to success in the war in Afghanistan.
"When it comes to drones, there's no mission more important right now than hitting targets in the tribal areas, and that's where additional equipment's gone," an American official told the Wall Street Journal.
"It's not the only answer, but it's critical to both homeland security and force protection in Afghanistan."
The proposal for the CIA to use military resources emerged during last year's Afghanistan-Pakistan policy review. There was resistance from some at the Pentagon who argued that the drones were needed against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Since taking command in Afghanistan in July, Gen. Petraeus has placed greater focus on the tribal areas of Pakistan, according to military and other government officials.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
CIA publicly announces its increase in drone attacks in Pakistan
C.I.A. Steps Up Drone Attacks on Taliban in Pakistan
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: September 27, 2010
WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan in recent weeks, American officials said. The strikes are part of an effort by military and intelligence operatives to try to cripple the Taliban in a stronghold being used to plan attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.
As part of its covert war in the region, the C.I.A. has launched 20 attacks with armed drone aircraft thus far in September, the most ever during a single month, and more than twice the number in a typical month. This expanded air campaign comes as top officials are racing to stem the rise of American casualties before the Obama administration’s comprehensive review of its Afghanistan strategy set for December. American and European officials are also evaluating reports of possible terrorist plots in the West from militants based in Pakistan.
The strikes also reflect mounting frustration both in Afghanistan and the United States that Pakistan’s government has not been aggressive enough in dislodging militants from their bases in the country’s western mountains. In particular, the officials said, the Americans believe the Pakistanis are unlikely to launch military operations inside North Waziristan, a haven for Taliban and Qaeda operatives that has long been used as a base for attacks against troops in Afghanistan.
Beyond the C.I.A. drone strikes, the war in the region is escalating in other ways. In recent days, American military helicopters have launched three airstrikes into Pakistan that military officials estimate killed more than 50 people suspected of being members of the militant group known as the Haqqani network, which is responsible for a spate of deadly attacks against American troops.
Such air raids by the military remain rare, and officials in Kabul said Monday that the helicopters entered Pakistani airspace on only one of the three raids, and acted in self-defense after militants fired rockets at an allied base just across the border in Afghanistan. At the same time, the strikes point to a new willingness by military officials to expand the boundaries of the campaign against the Taliban and Haqqani network — and to an acute concern in military and intelligence circles about the limited time to attack Taliban strongholds while American “surge” forces are in Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials have angrily criticized the helicopter attacks, saying that NATO’s mandate in Afghanistan does not extend across the border in Pakistan.
As evidence of the growing frustration of American officials, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has recently issued veiled warnings to top Pakistani commanders that the United States could launch unilateral ground operations in the tribal areas should Pakistan refuse to dismantle the militant networks in North Waziristan, according to American officials.
“Petraeus wants to turn up the heat on the safe havens,” said one senior administration official, explaining the sharp increase in drone strikes. “He has pointed out to the Pakistanis that they could do more.”
Special Operations commanders have also been updating plans for cross-border raids, which would require approval from President Obama. For now, officials said, it remains unlikely that the United States would make good on such threats to send American troops over the border, given the potential blowback inside Pakistan, an ally.
But that could change, they said, if Pakistan-based militants were successful in carrying out a terrorist attack on American soil. American and European intelligence officials in recent days have spoken publicly about growing evidence that militants may be planning a large-scale attack in Europe, and have bolstered security at a number of European airports and railway stations.
“We are all seeing increased activity by a more diverse set of groups and a more diverse set of threats,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano before a Senate panel last week.
The senior administration official said the strikes were intended not only to attack Taliban and Haqqani fighters, but also to disrupt any plots directed from or supported by extremists in Pakistan’s tribal areas that were aimed at targets in Europe. “The goal is to suppress or disrupt that activity,” the official said.
The 20 C.I.A. drone attacks in September represent the most intense bombardment by the spy agency since January, when the C.I.A. carried out 11 strikes after a suicide bomber killed seven agency operatives at a remote base in eastern Afghanistan.
According to one Pakistani intelligence official, the recent drone attacks have not killed any senior Taliban or Qaeda leaders. Many senior operatives have already fled North Waziristan, he said, to escape the C.I.A. drone campaign.
Over all the spy agency has carried out 74 drone attacks this year, according to the Web site The Long War Journal, which tracks the strikes. A vast majority of the attacks — which usually involve several drones firing multiple missiles or bombs — have taken place in North Waziristan.
The Obama administration has enthusiastically embraced the C.I.A.’s drone program, an ambitious and historically unusual war campaign by American spies. According to The Long War Journal, the spy agency in 2009 and 2010 has launched nearly four times as many attacks as it did during the final year of the Bush administration.
One American official said that the recent strikes had been aimed at several groups, including the Haqqani network, Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. The United States, he said, hopes to “keep the pressure on as long as we can.”
But the C.I.A.’s campaign has also raised concerns that the drone strikes are fueling anger in the Muslim world. The man who attempted to detonate a truck filled with explosives in Times Square told a judge that the C.I.A. drone campaign was one of the factors that led him to attack the United States.
In a meeting with reporters on Monday, General Petraeus indicated that it was new intelligence gathering technology that helped NATO forces locate the militants killed by the helicopter raids against militants in Pakistan.
In particular, he said, the military has expanded its fleet of reconnaissance blimps that can hover over hide-outs thought to belong to the Taliban in eastern and southern Afghanistan.
The intelligence technology, General Petraeus said, has also enabled the expanded campaign of raids by Special Operations commandos against Taliban operatives in those areas.
Rod Nordland and Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: September 27, 2010
WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan in recent weeks, American officials said. The strikes are part of an effort by military and intelligence operatives to try to cripple the Taliban in a stronghold being used to plan attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.
As part of its covert war in the region, the C.I.A. has launched 20 attacks with armed drone aircraft thus far in September, the most ever during a single month, and more than twice the number in a typical month. This expanded air campaign comes as top officials are racing to stem the rise of American casualties before the Obama administration’s comprehensive review of its Afghanistan strategy set for December. American and European officials are also evaluating reports of possible terrorist plots in the West from militants based in Pakistan.
The strikes also reflect mounting frustration both in Afghanistan and the United States that Pakistan’s government has not been aggressive enough in dislodging militants from their bases in the country’s western mountains. In particular, the officials said, the Americans believe the Pakistanis are unlikely to launch military operations inside North Waziristan, a haven for Taliban and Qaeda operatives that has long been used as a base for attacks against troops in Afghanistan.
Beyond the C.I.A. drone strikes, the war in the region is escalating in other ways. In recent days, American military helicopters have launched three airstrikes into Pakistan that military officials estimate killed more than 50 people suspected of being members of the militant group known as the Haqqani network, which is responsible for a spate of deadly attacks against American troops.
Such air raids by the military remain rare, and officials in Kabul said Monday that the helicopters entered Pakistani airspace on only one of the three raids, and acted in self-defense after militants fired rockets at an allied base just across the border in Afghanistan. At the same time, the strikes point to a new willingness by military officials to expand the boundaries of the campaign against the Taliban and Haqqani network — and to an acute concern in military and intelligence circles about the limited time to attack Taliban strongholds while American “surge” forces are in Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials have angrily criticized the helicopter attacks, saying that NATO’s mandate in Afghanistan does not extend across the border in Pakistan.
As evidence of the growing frustration of American officials, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has recently issued veiled warnings to top Pakistani commanders that the United States could launch unilateral ground operations in the tribal areas should Pakistan refuse to dismantle the militant networks in North Waziristan, according to American officials.
“Petraeus wants to turn up the heat on the safe havens,” said one senior administration official, explaining the sharp increase in drone strikes. “He has pointed out to the Pakistanis that they could do more.”
Special Operations commanders have also been updating plans for cross-border raids, which would require approval from President Obama. For now, officials said, it remains unlikely that the United States would make good on such threats to send American troops over the border, given the potential blowback inside Pakistan, an ally.
But that could change, they said, if Pakistan-based militants were successful in carrying out a terrorist attack on American soil. American and European intelligence officials in recent days have spoken publicly about growing evidence that militants may be planning a large-scale attack in Europe, and have bolstered security at a number of European airports and railway stations.
“We are all seeing increased activity by a more diverse set of groups and a more diverse set of threats,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano before a Senate panel last week.
The senior administration official said the strikes were intended not only to attack Taliban and Haqqani fighters, but also to disrupt any plots directed from or supported by extremists in Pakistan’s tribal areas that were aimed at targets in Europe. “The goal is to suppress or disrupt that activity,” the official said.
The 20 C.I.A. drone attacks in September represent the most intense bombardment by the spy agency since January, when the C.I.A. carried out 11 strikes after a suicide bomber killed seven agency operatives at a remote base in eastern Afghanistan.
According to one Pakistani intelligence official, the recent drone attacks have not killed any senior Taliban or Qaeda leaders. Many senior operatives have already fled North Waziristan, he said, to escape the C.I.A. drone campaign.
Over all the spy agency has carried out 74 drone attacks this year, according to the Web site The Long War Journal, which tracks the strikes. A vast majority of the attacks — which usually involve several drones firing multiple missiles or bombs — have taken place in North Waziristan.
The Obama administration has enthusiastically embraced the C.I.A.’s drone program, an ambitious and historically unusual war campaign by American spies. According to The Long War Journal, the spy agency in 2009 and 2010 has launched nearly four times as many attacks as it did during the final year of the Bush administration.
One American official said that the recent strikes had been aimed at several groups, including the Haqqani network, Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. The United States, he said, hopes to “keep the pressure on as long as we can.”
But the C.I.A.’s campaign has also raised concerns that the drone strikes are fueling anger in the Muslim world. The man who attempted to detonate a truck filled with explosives in Times Square told a judge that the C.I.A. drone campaign was one of the factors that led him to attack the United States.
In a meeting with reporters on Monday, General Petraeus indicated that it was new intelligence gathering technology that helped NATO forces locate the militants killed by the helicopter raids against militants in Pakistan.
In particular, he said, the military has expanded its fleet of reconnaissance blimps that can hover over hide-outs thought to belong to the Taliban in eastern and southern Afghanistan.
The intelligence technology, General Petraeus said, has also enabled the expanded campaign of raids by Special Operations commandos against Taliban operatives in those areas.
Rod Nordland and Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Tom Engelhardt on the Perfect American Weapon
"When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there’s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight."
Tom Engelhardt
Article dates back to June 24, 2010
America Detached from War
Bush’s Pilotless Dream, Smoking Drones, and Other Strange Tales from the Crypt
Available on Tomdispatch.com
Admittedly, before George W. Bush had his fever dream, the U.S. had already put its first unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drone surveillance planes in the skies over Kosovo in the late 1990s. By November 2001, it had armed them with missiles and was flying them over Afghanistan.
In November 2002, a Predator drone would loose a Hellfire missile on a car in Yemen, a country with which we weren’t at war. Six suspected al-Qaeda members, including a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer the USS Cole would be turned into twisted metal and ash -- the first “targeted killings” of the American robotic era.
Just two months earlier, in September 2002, as the Bush administration was “introducing” its campaign to sell an invasion of Iraq to Congress and the American people, CIA Director George Tenet and Vice President Dick Cheney “trooped up to Capitol Hill” to brief four top Senate and House leaders on a hair-raising threat to the country. A “smoking gun” had been uncovered.
According to “new intelligence,” Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had in his possession unmanned aerial vehicles advanced enough to be armed with biological and chemical weaponry. Worse yet, these were capable -- so the CIA director and vice president claimed -- of spraying those weapons of mass destruction over cities on the east coast of the United States. It was just the sort of evil plan you might have expected from a man regularly compared to Adolf Hitler in our media, and the news evidently made an impression in Congress.
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, for example, said that he voted for the administration's resolution authorizing force in Iraq because "I was told not only that [Saddam had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard."
In a speech in October 2002, President Bush then offered a version of this apocalyptic nightmare to the American public. Of course, like Saddam’s supposed ability to produce “mushroom clouds” over American cities, the Iraqi autocrat’s advanced UAVs (along with the ships needed to position them off the U.S. coast) were a feverish fantasy of the Bush era and would soon enough be forgotten. Instead, in the years to come, it would be American pilotless drones that would repeatedly attack Iraqi urban areas with Hellfire missiles and bombs.
In those years, our drones would also strike repeatedly in Afghanistan, and especially in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan, where in an escalating “secret” or “covert” war, which has been no secret to anyone, multiple drone attacks often occur weekly. They are now considered so much the norm that, with humdrum headlines slapped on (“U.S. missile strike kills 12 in NW Pakistan”), they barely make it out of summary articles about war developments in the American press.
And yet those robotic planes, with their young “pilots” (as well as the camera operators and intelligence analysts who make up a drone “crew”) sitting in front of consoles 7,000 miles away from where their missiles and bombs are landing, have become another kind of American fever dream. The drone is our latest wonder weapon and a bragging point in a set of wars where there has been little enough to brag about.
CIA director Leon Panetta has, for instance, called the Agency’s drones flying over Pakistan “the only game in town” when it comes to destroying al-Qaeda; a typically anonymous U.S. official in a Washington Post report claims of drone missile attacks, “We’re talking about precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare”; or as Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command told author Peter Singer, speaking of the glories of drones: “They don't get hungry. They are not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.”
Seven thousand of them, the vast majority surveillance varieties, are reportedly already being operated by the military, and that’s before swarms of “mini-drones” come on line. Our American world is being redefined accordingly.
In February, Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post caught something of this process when he spent time with Colonel Eric Mathewson, perhaps the most experienced Air Force officer in drone operations and on the verge of retirement. Mathewson, reported Jaffe, was trying to come up with an appropriately new definition of battlefield “valor” -- a necessity for most combat award citations -- to fit our latest corps of pilots at their video consoles. “Valor to me is not risking your life," the colonel told the reporter. "Valor is doing what is right. Valor is about your motivations and the ends that you seek. It is doing what is right for the right reasons. That to me is valor."
Smoking Drones
These days, CIA and administration officials troop up to Capitol Hill to offer briefings to Congress on the miraculous value of pilotless drones: in disrupting al-Qaeda, destroying its leadership or driving it “deeper into hiding,” and taking out key figures in the Taliban. Indeed, what started as a 24/7 assassination campaign against al-Qaeda’s top leadership has already widened considerably. The “target set” has by now reportedly expanded to take in ever lower-level militants in the tribal borderlands. In other words, a drone assassination campaign is morphing into the first full-scale drone war (and, as in all wars from the air, civilians are dying in unknown numbers).
If the temperature is again rising in Washington when it comes to these weapons, this time it’s a fever of enthusiasm for the spectacular future of drones (which the Air Force has plotted out to the year 2047), of a time when single pilots should be able to handle multiple drones in operations in the skies over some embattled land, and of a far more distant moment when those drones should be able to handle themselves, flying, fighting, and making key decisions about just who to take out without a human being having to intervene.
When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there’s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight.
Now it's the United States whose UAVs are ever more powerfully weaponized. It's the U.S. which is developing a 22-ton tail-less drone 20 times larger than a Predator that can fly at Mach 7 and (theoretically) land on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier. It's the Pentagon which is planning to increase the funding of drone development by 700% over the next decade.
Admittedly, there is a modest counter-narrative to all this enthusiasm for our robotic prowess, “precision,” and “valor.” It involves legal types like Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions. He recently issued a 29-page report criticizing Washington’s “ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe.” Unless limits are put on such claims, and especially on the CIA’s drone war over Pakistan, he suggests, soon enough a plethora of states will follow in America’s footprints, attacking people in other lands “labeled as terrorists by one group or another.”
Such mechanized, long-distance warfare, he also suggests, will breach what respect remains for the laws of war. “Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield,” he wrote, “and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing.”
Similarly, the ACLU has filed a freedom of information lawsuit against the U.S. government, demanding that it “disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas, as well as the ground rules regarding when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and the number of civilian casualties they have caused.”
But pay no mind to all this. The arguments may be legally compelling, but not in Washington, which has mounted a half-hearted claim of legitimate “self-defense,” but senses that it’s already well past the point where legalities matter. The die is cast, the money committed. The momentum for drone war and yet more drone war is overwhelming.
It’s a done deal. Drone war is, and will be, us.
A Pilotless Military
If there are zeitgeist moments for products, movie stars, and even politicians, then such moments can exist for weaponry as well. The robotic drone is the Lady Gaga of this Pentagon moment.
It’s a moment that could, of course, be presented as an apocalyptic nightmare in the style of the Terminator movies (with the U.S. as the soul-crushing Skynet), or as a remarkable tale of how “networking technology is expanding a homefront that is increasingly relevant to day-to-day warfare” (as Christopher Drew recently put it in the New York Times). It could be described as the arrival of a dystopian fantasy world of one-way slaughter verging on entertainment, or as the coming of a generation of homegrown video warriors who work “in camouflage uniforms, complete with combat boots, on open floors, with four computer monitors on each desk... and coffee and Red Bull help[ing] them get through the 12-hour shifts.” It could be presented as the ultimate in cowardice -- the killing of people in a world you know nothing about from thousands of miles away -- or (as Col. Mathewson would prefer) a new form of valor.
The drones -- their use expanding exponentially, with ever newer generations on the drawing boards, and the planes even heading for “the homeland” -- could certainly be considered a demon spawn of modern warfare, or (as is generally the case in the U.S.) a remarkable example of American technological ingenuity, a problem-solver of the first order at a time when few American problems seem capable of solution. Thanks to our technological prowess, it’s claimed that we can now kill them, wherever they may be lurking, at absolutely no cost to ourselves, other than the odd malfunctioning drone. Not that even all CIA operatives involved in the drone wars agree with that one. Some of them understand perfectly well that there’s a price to be paid.
As it happens, the enthusiasm for drones is as much a fever dream as the one President Bush and his associates offered back in 2002, but it’s also distinctly us. In fact, drone warfare fits the America of 2010 tighter than a glove. With its consoles, chat rooms, and “single shooter” death machines, it certainly fits the skills of a generation raised on the computer, Facebook, and video games. That our valorous warriors, their day of battle done, can increasingly leave war behind and head home to the barbecue (or, given American life, the foreclosure) also fits an American mood of the moment.
The Air Force “detachments” that “manage” the drone war from places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are “detached” from war in a way that even an artillery unit significantly behind the battle lines or an American pilot in an F-16 over Afghanistan (who could, at least, experience engine failure) isn’t. If the drone presents the most extreme version thus far of the detachment of human beings from the battlefield (on only one side, of course) and so launches a basic redefinition of what war is all about, it also catches something important about the American way of war.
After all, while this country garrisons the world, invests its wealth in its military, and fights unending, unwinnable frontier wars and skirmishes, most Americans are remarkably detached from all this. If anything, since Vietnam when an increasingly rebellious citizens’ army proved disastrous for Washington’s global aims, such detachment has been the goal of American war-making.
As a start, with no draft and so no citizen’s army, war and the toll it takes is now the professional business of a tiny percentage of Americans (and their families). It occurs thousands of miles away and, in the Bush years, also became a heavily privatized, for-profit activity. As Pratap Chatterjee reported recently, “[E]very US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. All told, about 239,451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world.” And a majority of those contractors aren’t even U.S. citizens.
If drones have entered our world as media celebrities, they have done so largely without debate among that detached populace. In a sense, our wars abroad could be thought of as the equivalent of so many drones. We send our troops off and then go home for dinner and put them out of mind. The question is: Have we redefined our detachment as a new version of citizenly valor (and covered it over by a constant drumbeat of “support for our troops”)?
Under these circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that a “pilotless” force should, in turn, develop the sort of contempt for civilians that can be seen in the recent flap over the derogatory comments of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal and his aides about Obama administration officials.
The Globalization of Death
Maybe what we need is the return of George W. Bush’s fever dream from the American oblivion in which it’s now interred. He was beyond wrong, of course, when it came to Saddam Hussein and Iraqi drones, but he wasn’t completely wrong about the dystopian Drone World to come. There are now reportedly more than 40 countries developing versions of those pilot-less planes. Earlier this year, the Iranians announced that they were starting up production lines for both armed and unarmed drones. Hezbollah used them against Israel in the 2006 summer war, years after Israel began pioneering their use in targeted killings of Palestinians.
Right now, in what still remains largely a post-Cold War arms race of one, the U.S. is racing to produce ever more advanced drones to fight our wars, with few competitors in sight. In the process, we’re also obliterating classic ideas of national sovereignty, and of who can be killed by whom under what circumstances. In the process, we may not just be obliterating enemies, but creating them wherever our drones buzz overhead and our missiles strike.
We are also creating the (il)legal framework for future war on a frontier where we won’t long be flying solo. And when the first Iranian, or Russian, or Chinese missile-armed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of "terrorists," we won’t like it one bit. When the first “suicide drones” appear, we’ll like it even less. And if drones with the ability to spray chemical or biological weapons finally do make the scene, we’ll be truly unnerved.
In the 1990s, we were said to be in an era of “globalization” which was widely hailed as good news. Now, the U.S. and its detached populace are pioneering a new era of killing that respects no boundaries, relies on the self-definitions of whoever owns the nearest drone, and establishes planetary free-fire zones. It’s a nasty combination, this globalization of death.
Tom Engelhardt
Article dates back to June 24, 2010
America Detached from War
Bush’s Pilotless Dream, Smoking Drones, and Other Strange Tales from the Crypt
Available on Tomdispatch.com
Admittedly, before George W. Bush had his fever dream, the U.S. had already put its first unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drone surveillance planes in the skies over Kosovo in the late 1990s. By November 2001, it had armed them with missiles and was flying them over Afghanistan.
In November 2002, a Predator drone would loose a Hellfire missile on a car in Yemen, a country with which we weren’t at war. Six suspected al-Qaeda members, including a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer the USS Cole would be turned into twisted metal and ash -- the first “targeted killings” of the American robotic era.
Just two months earlier, in September 2002, as the Bush administration was “introducing” its campaign to sell an invasion of Iraq to Congress and the American people, CIA Director George Tenet and Vice President Dick Cheney “trooped up to Capitol Hill” to brief four top Senate and House leaders on a hair-raising threat to the country. A “smoking gun” had been uncovered.
According to “new intelligence,” Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had in his possession unmanned aerial vehicles advanced enough to be armed with biological and chemical weaponry. Worse yet, these were capable -- so the CIA director and vice president claimed -- of spraying those weapons of mass destruction over cities on the east coast of the United States. It was just the sort of evil plan you might have expected from a man regularly compared to Adolf Hitler in our media, and the news evidently made an impression in Congress.
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, for example, said that he voted for the administration's resolution authorizing force in Iraq because "I was told not only that [Saddam had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard."
In a speech in October 2002, President Bush then offered a version of this apocalyptic nightmare to the American public. Of course, like Saddam’s supposed ability to produce “mushroom clouds” over American cities, the Iraqi autocrat’s advanced UAVs (along with the ships needed to position them off the U.S. coast) were a feverish fantasy of the Bush era and would soon enough be forgotten. Instead, in the years to come, it would be American pilotless drones that would repeatedly attack Iraqi urban areas with Hellfire missiles and bombs.
In those years, our drones would also strike repeatedly in Afghanistan, and especially in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan, where in an escalating “secret” or “covert” war, which has been no secret to anyone, multiple drone attacks often occur weekly. They are now considered so much the norm that, with humdrum headlines slapped on (“U.S. missile strike kills 12 in NW Pakistan”), they barely make it out of summary articles about war developments in the American press.
And yet those robotic planes, with their young “pilots” (as well as the camera operators and intelligence analysts who make up a drone “crew”) sitting in front of consoles 7,000 miles away from where their missiles and bombs are landing, have become another kind of American fever dream. The drone is our latest wonder weapon and a bragging point in a set of wars where there has been little enough to brag about.
CIA director Leon Panetta has, for instance, called the Agency’s drones flying over Pakistan “the only game in town” when it comes to destroying al-Qaeda; a typically anonymous U.S. official in a Washington Post report claims of drone missile attacks, “We’re talking about precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare”; or as Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command told author Peter Singer, speaking of the glories of drones: “They don't get hungry. They are not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.”
Seven thousand of them, the vast majority surveillance varieties, are reportedly already being operated by the military, and that’s before swarms of “mini-drones” come on line. Our American world is being redefined accordingly.
In February, Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post caught something of this process when he spent time with Colonel Eric Mathewson, perhaps the most experienced Air Force officer in drone operations and on the verge of retirement. Mathewson, reported Jaffe, was trying to come up with an appropriately new definition of battlefield “valor” -- a necessity for most combat award citations -- to fit our latest corps of pilots at their video consoles. “Valor to me is not risking your life," the colonel told the reporter. "Valor is doing what is right. Valor is about your motivations and the ends that you seek. It is doing what is right for the right reasons. That to me is valor."
Smoking Drones
These days, CIA and administration officials troop up to Capitol Hill to offer briefings to Congress on the miraculous value of pilotless drones: in disrupting al-Qaeda, destroying its leadership or driving it “deeper into hiding,” and taking out key figures in the Taliban. Indeed, what started as a 24/7 assassination campaign against al-Qaeda’s top leadership has already widened considerably. The “target set” has by now reportedly expanded to take in ever lower-level militants in the tribal borderlands. In other words, a drone assassination campaign is morphing into the first full-scale drone war (and, as in all wars from the air, civilians are dying in unknown numbers).
If the temperature is again rising in Washington when it comes to these weapons, this time it’s a fever of enthusiasm for the spectacular future of drones (which the Air Force has plotted out to the year 2047), of a time when single pilots should be able to handle multiple drones in operations in the skies over some embattled land, and of a far more distant moment when those drones should be able to handle themselves, flying, fighting, and making key decisions about just who to take out without a human being having to intervene.
When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there’s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight.
Now it's the United States whose UAVs are ever more powerfully weaponized. It's the U.S. which is developing a 22-ton tail-less drone 20 times larger than a Predator that can fly at Mach 7 and (theoretically) land on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier. It's the Pentagon which is planning to increase the funding of drone development by 700% over the next decade.
Admittedly, there is a modest counter-narrative to all this enthusiasm for our robotic prowess, “precision,” and “valor.” It involves legal types like Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions. He recently issued a 29-page report criticizing Washington’s “ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe.” Unless limits are put on such claims, and especially on the CIA’s drone war over Pakistan, he suggests, soon enough a plethora of states will follow in America’s footprints, attacking people in other lands “labeled as terrorists by one group or another.”
Such mechanized, long-distance warfare, he also suggests, will breach what respect remains for the laws of war. “Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield,” he wrote, “and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing.”
Similarly, the ACLU has filed a freedom of information lawsuit against the U.S. government, demanding that it “disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas, as well as the ground rules regarding when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and the number of civilian casualties they have caused.”
But pay no mind to all this. The arguments may be legally compelling, but not in Washington, which has mounted a half-hearted claim of legitimate “self-defense,” but senses that it’s already well past the point where legalities matter. The die is cast, the money committed. The momentum for drone war and yet more drone war is overwhelming.
It’s a done deal. Drone war is, and will be, us.
A Pilotless Military
If there are zeitgeist moments for products, movie stars, and even politicians, then such moments can exist for weaponry as well. The robotic drone is the Lady Gaga of this Pentagon moment.
It’s a moment that could, of course, be presented as an apocalyptic nightmare in the style of the Terminator movies (with the U.S. as the soul-crushing Skynet), or as a remarkable tale of how “networking technology is expanding a homefront that is increasingly relevant to day-to-day warfare” (as Christopher Drew recently put it in the New York Times). It could be described as the arrival of a dystopian fantasy world of one-way slaughter verging on entertainment, or as the coming of a generation of homegrown video warriors who work “in camouflage uniforms, complete with combat boots, on open floors, with four computer monitors on each desk... and coffee and Red Bull help[ing] them get through the 12-hour shifts.” It could be presented as the ultimate in cowardice -- the killing of people in a world you know nothing about from thousands of miles away -- or (as Col. Mathewson would prefer) a new form of valor.
The drones -- their use expanding exponentially, with ever newer generations on the drawing boards, and the planes even heading for “the homeland” -- could certainly be considered a demon spawn of modern warfare, or (as is generally the case in the U.S.) a remarkable example of American technological ingenuity, a problem-solver of the first order at a time when few American problems seem capable of solution. Thanks to our technological prowess, it’s claimed that we can now kill them, wherever they may be lurking, at absolutely no cost to ourselves, other than the odd malfunctioning drone. Not that even all CIA operatives involved in the drone wars agree with that one. Some of them understand perfectly well that there’s a price to be paid.
As it happens, the enthusiasm for drones is as much a fever dream as the one President Bush and his associates offered back in 2002, but it’s also distinctly us. In fact, drone warfare fits the America of 2010 tighter than a glove. With its consoles, chat rooms, and “single shooter” death machines, it certainly fits the skills of a generation raised on the computer, Facebook, and video games. That our valorous warriors, their day of battle done, can increasingly leave war behind and head home to the barbecue (or, given American life, the foreclosure) also fits an American mood of the moment.
The Air Force “detachments” that “manage” the drone war from places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are “detached” from war in a way that even an artillery unit significantly behind the battle lines or an American pilot in an F-16 over Afghanistan (who could, at least, experience engine failure) isn’t. If the drone presents the most extreme version thus far of the detachment of human beings from the battlefield (on only one side, of course) and so launches a basic redefinition of what war is all about, it also catches something important about the American way of war.
After all, while this country garrisons the world, invests its wealth in its military, and fights unending, unwinnable frontier wars and skirmishes, most Americans are remarkably detached from all this. If anything, since Vietnam when an increasingly rebellious citizens’ army proved disastrous for Washington’s global aims, such detachment has been the goal of American war-making.
As a start, with no draft and so no citizen’s army, war and the toll it takes is now the professional business of a tiny percentage of Americans (and their families). It occurs thousands of miles away and, in the Bush years, also became a heavily privatized, for-profit activity. As Pratap Chatterjee reported recently, “[E]very US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. All told, about 239,451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world.” And a majority of those contractors aren’t even U.S. citizens.
If drones have entered our world as media celebrities, they have done so largely without debate among that detached populace. In a sense, our wars abroad could be thought of as the equivalent of so many drones. We send our troops off and then go home for dinner and put them out of mind. The question is: Have we redefined our detachment as a new version of citizenly valor (and covered it over by a constant drumbeat of “support for our troops”)?
Under these circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that a “pilotless” force should, in turn, develop the sort of contempt for civilians that can be seen in the recent flap over the derogatory comments of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal and his aides about Obama administration officials.
The Globalization of Death
Maybe what we need is the return of George W. Bush’s fever dream from the American oblivion in which it’s now interred. He was beyond wrong, of course, when it came to Saddam Hussein and Iraqi drones, but he wasn’t completely wrong about the dystopian Drone World to come. There are now reportedly more than 40 countries developing versions of those pilot-less planes. Earlier this year, the Iranians announced that they were starting up production lines for both armed and unarmed drones. Hezbollah used them against Israel in the 2006 summer war, years after Israel began pioneering their use in targeted killings of Palestinians.
Right now, in what still remains largely a post-Cold War arms race of one, the U.S. is racing to produce ever more advanced drones to fight our wars, with few competitors in sight. In the process, we’re also obliterating classic ideas of national sovereignty, and of who can be killed by whom under what circumstances. In the process, we may not just be obliterating enemies, but creating them wherever our drones buzz overhead and our missiles strike.
We are also creating the (il)legal framework for future war on a frontier where we won’t long be flying solo. And when the first Iranian, or Russian, or Chinese missile-armed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of "terrorists," we won’t like it one bit. When the first “suicide drones” appear, we’ll like it even less. And if drones with the ability to spray chemical or biological weapons finally do make the scene, we’ll be truly unnerved.
In the 1990s, we were said to be in an era of “globalization” which was widely hailed as good news. Now, the U.S. and its detached populace are pioneering a new era of killing that respects no boundaries, relies on the self-definitions of whoever owns the nearest drone, and establishes planetary free-fire zones. It’s a nasty combination, this globalization of death.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Playing catchup with drone attack stories
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sept. 14, 2010
Record level of US airstrikes hit Afghan militants
By ASIF SHAHZAD AND KIMBERLY DOZIER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS
Excerpt-
ISLAMABAD -- Drone aircraft unleashed two missile attacks in a lawless tribal region on the Afghan border Tuesday, making September the most intense period of U.S. strikes in Pakistan since they began in 2004, intelligence officials said.
The stepped-up campaign is focused on a small area of farming villages and mountainous, thickly forested terrain controlled by the Haqqani network, a ruthless American foe in Afghanistan, U.S. officials say. There is some evidence the network is being squeezed as a result, one official said.
American officials said the airstrikes were designed to degrade the Haqqanis' operations on the Pakistani side of the border, creating a "hammer-and-anvil" effect as U.S. special operations forces carry out raids against their fighters across the frontier in Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing classified operations.
The missiles have killed more than 50 people in 12 strikes since Sept. 2 in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan, according to an Associated Press tally based on Pakistani intelligence officials' reports. Many struck around Datta Khel, a town of about 40,000 people that sits on a strategically vital road to the Afghan border.
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From Huffington Post Sept. 10, 2010
CIA May Send Predator Drones Into Yemen
Excerpt-
WASHINGTON — The White House, in an effort to turn up the heat against al-Qaida's branch in Yemen, is considering adding the CIA's armed Predator drones to the fight, two U.S. officials said Wednesday.
The drones are among CIA resources that could be assigned to an existing mission by U.S. special operations forces, a senior U.S. official told The Associated Press. The official said such options were in the planning stages and would be done only with the cooperation of the Yemeni leadership in Sanaa.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.
The fact that the White House is considering supplying CIA weapons and other resources to the clandestine counterterrorist fight in Yemen was first reported in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
Yemen is the base of operations for al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the militant group that claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner last Christmas Day and counts American-born rebel cleric Anwar al-Awlaki among its leadership. The U.S. military has been working with the Yemeni counterterrorist forces for years, and that cooperation has increased under the Obama administration.
But officials say the U.S. hasn't yet brought as much pressure to bear against AQAP as they have against its parent organization, Osama bin Laden's Pakistan-based al-Qaida, and that a range of tools and tactics were being considered.
Among the CIA's most lethal tools, armed Predator drones are already hunting high-value militant targets in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions. The idea is to reassign some of those to the U.S. special operations forces assisting local counterterrorist forces in Yemen.
But U.S. officials may have a hard time selling the concept to the Yemeni government in Sanaa, where reports of the potential use of drones has already touched off controversy.
A CIA drone strike made headlines in Yemen, in November 2002, when it killed an American citizen along with a group of al-Qaida operatives. Drones became shorthand in Yemen for a weak government allowing foreign forces to have their way.
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A previously referenced New Yorker article from October, 2009 ...
The Predator War: What are the risks of the C.I.A.’s covert drone program? by Jane Mayer
A brief excerpt of note ...
"Before September 11th, the C.I.A., which had been chastened by past assassination scandals, refused to deploy the Predator for anything other than surveillance. Daniel Benjamin, the State Department’s counterterrorism director, and Steven Simon, a former counterterrorism adviser, report in their 2002 book 'The Age of Sacred Terror' that the week before Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. George Tenet, then the agency’s director, argued that it would be 'a terrible mistake' for 'the Director of Central Intelligence to fire a weapon like this.'
Yet once America had suffered terrorist attacks on its own soil the agency’s posture changed, and it petitioned the White House for new authority. Within days, President Bush had signed a secret Memorandum of Notification, giving the C.I.A. the right to kill members of Al Qaeda and their confederates virtually anywhere in the world. Congress endorsed this policy, passing a bill called the Authorization for Use of Military Force. Bush’s legal advisers modeled their rationale on Israel’s position against terrorism, arguing that the U.S. government had the right to use lethal force against suspected terrorists in “anticipatory” self-defense. By classifying terrorism as an act of war, rather than as a crime, the Bush Administration reasoned that it was no longer bound by legal constraints requiring the government to give suspected terrorists due process."
Record level of US airstrikes hit Afghan militants
By ASIF SHAHZAD AND KIMBERLY DOZIER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS
Excerpt-
ISLAMABAD -- Drone aircraft unleashed two missile attacks in a lawless tribal region on the Afghan border Tuesday, making September the most intense period of U.S. strikes in Pakistan since they began in 2004, intelligence officials said.
The stepped-up campaign is focused on a small area of farming villages and mountainous, thickly forested terrain controlled by the Haqqani network, a ruthless American foe in Afghanistan, U.S. officials say. There is some evidence the network is being squeezed as a result, one official said.
American officials said the airstrikes were designed to degrade the Haqqanis' operations on the Pakistani side of the border, creating a "hammer-and-anvil" effect as U.S. special operations forces carry out raids against their fighters across the frontier in Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing classified operations.
The missiles have killed more than 50 people in 12 strikes since Sept. 2 in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan, according to an Associated Press tally based on Pakistani intelligence officials' reports. Many struck around Datta Khel, a town of about 40,000 people that sits on a strategically vital road to the Afghan border.
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From Huffington Post Sept. 10, 2010
CIA May Send Predator Drones Into Yemen
Excerpt-
WASHINGTON — The White House, in an effort to turn up the heat against al-Qaida's branch in Yemen, is considering adding the CIA's armed Predator drones to the fight, two U.S. officials said Wednesday.
The drones are among CIA resources that could be assigned to an existing mission by U.S. special operations forces, a senior U.S. official told The Associated Press. The official said such options were in the planning stages and would be done only with the cooperation of the Yemeni leadership in Sanaa.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.
The fact that the White House is considering supplying CIA weapons and other resources to the clandestine counterterrorist fight in Yemen was first reported in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
Yemen is the base of operations for al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the militant group that claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner last Christmas Day and counts American-born rebel cleric Anwar al-Awlaki among its leadership. The U.S. military has been working with the Yemeni counterterrorist forces for years, and that cooperation has increased under the Obama administration.
But officials say the U.S. hasn't yet brought as much pressure to bear against AQAP as they have against its parent organization, Osama bin Laden's Pakistan-based al-Qaida, and that a range of tools and tactics were being considered.
Among the CIA's most lethal tools, armed Predator drones are already hunting high-value militant targets in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions. The idea is to reassign some of those to the U.S. special operations forces assisting local counterterrorist forces in Yemen.
But U.S. officials may have a hard time selling the concept to the Yemeni government in Sanaa, where reports of the potential use of drones has already touched off controversy.
A CIA drone strike made headlines in Yemen, in November 2002, when it killed an American citizen along with a group of al-Qaida operatives. Drones became shorthand in Yemen for a weak government allowing foreign forces to have their way.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
A previously referenced New Yorker article from October, 2009 ...
The Predator War: What are the risks of the C.I.A.’s covert drone program? by Jane Mayer
A brief excerpt of note ...
"Before September 11th, the C.I.A., which had been chastened by past assassination scandals, refused to deploy the Predator for anything other than surveillance. Daniel Benjamin, the State Department’s counterterrorism director, and Steven Simon, a former counterterrorism adviser, report in their 2002 book 'The Age of Sacred Terror' that the week before Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. George Tenet, then the agency’s director, argued that it would be 'a terrible mistake' for 'the Director of Central Intelligence to fire a weapon like this.'
Yet once America had suffered terrorist attacks on its own soil the agency’s posture changed, and it petitioned the White House for new authority. Within days, President Bush had signed a secret Memorandum of Notification, giving the C.I.A. the right to kill members of Al Qaeda and their confederates virtually anywhere in the world. Congress endorsed this policy, passing a bill called the Authorization for Use of Military Force. Bush’s legal advisers modeled their rationale on Israel’s position against terrorism, arguing that the U.S. government had the right to use lethal force against suspected terrorists in “anticipatory” self-defense. By classifying terrorism as an act of war, rather than as a crime, the Bush Administration reasoned that it was no longer bound by legal constraints requiring the government to give suspected terrorists due process."
Monday, August 9, 2010
Excellent blog post on ABC News tribute to the murderous glory of UAV drones
Nice work from whoever is behind http://www.spider-topihitam.com
This excerpt cuts to the core of the issue (at this point I wish there was one):
"In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable 'restraint.' They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?"
By David Walsh
14 January 2010
American television news becomes more and more unwatchable, especially in its reports on the expanding wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Perfectly coiffed, interchangeable news and anchor people repeat White House and Pentagon lies. “In-depth” reports provide nothing in the way of meaningful commentary or analysis. In general, everything is done to hide the truth from the American people.
Diane Sawyer, promoted to hosting ABC’s prime time evening news program a few weeks ago, and the rest of that network’s news personalities are in the forefront of the government’s disinformation campaign. it is worth noting that Sawyer, who began her television career doing the weather in Louisville, Kentucky, went to work for the Nixon administration in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War and stayed with the disgraced former president through his forced resignation, helping him write his memoirs.
US drone in flight On Tuesday night’s evening news, Sawyer and two colleagues, David Muir and bill Weir, spent six or seven minutes extolling the merits of the US Air Force’s Predator drones and their deadly attacks in Afghanistan. The Predators, according to Pakistani government and media sources, murdered some 700 civilians in that country in 2009, but the CIA-US military program of killings by drone attack on that side of the border is “covert,” without the official sanction of the Islamabad regime (emphasis ExEd).
Thus, Sawyer and company had to be satisfied with covering the US military’s increased use of drones in Afghanistan. According to a companion piece by Weir on its web site, ABC News was “granted exclusive access to the ground control station at the California [Air Force] base, one of six in the country where the planes are flown.” In other words, the broadcast report was a component part of the military’s official propaganda effort, prepared and vetted with the collaboration of Pentagon officials. A drone control station Sawyer introduced the story from Kabul, alerting her viewers to “the war you do not see, the skyrocketing use of drones.”
She went on to explain in Orwellian fashion that the “potentially lethal” drones were “another new strategy against the rising tide of violence in this country.” Yesterday, Sawyer told her audience, “drones assisted in taking out 16 of the enemy.” she noted that airmen 8,000 miles from Afghanistan were pushing the buttons, sending 500-pound bombs or Hellfire missiles hurtling to the ground. The Obama administration has overseen a sharp increase in the drone program, notes ABC, to “400 hours a day, a 300 percent increase.” From 100 three years ago, the number of drones in use has jumped to 1,200.
Muir writes on the ABC web site: “On this one California base alone, over the last six months, not one hour has gone by when Air Force pilots haven’t been watching over Afghanistan through the eyes of a at least one Predator drone. the technology has been such a game-changer that over the next year, the Air Force will now train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.”
Sawyer proudly tells us that the drone is a “high-tech symbol of American might.”
About one minute of the segment is devoted to the moral issues involved in bombing people from halfway around the world. it raises, the ABC anchorwoman notes, “new questions about what’s right and wrong,” before she quickly passes on to the “exclusive” footage shot in the California control center. Here, Muir explains, “Each drone is controlled by a two-man team, seated in front of a video screen clutching a joystick. On the screens, the men see live video from the drones in Afghanistan, picking out armed enemies on the ground who have no idea they’re being watched. The pilot can launch a missile simply by pulling a trigger. “The drones send back images in the blink of an eye—it takes just 1.7 seconds for the imagery to travel through 12 time zones. The video travels from the drone to a satellite and then down to a classified location in Europe. From there, it flows through a fiber optic nerve across the Atlantic Ocean to reach the California base. But it’s not finished—the signal then branches out to other bases, the Pentagon, and right back to the ground commander in Afghanistan.” He goes on: “We watched as a pilot monitored insurgents planting an IED [improvised explosive device] in northern Afghanistan. It made a good target, and with the punch of a button, a Hellfire missile launched, taking the insurgents out.”
As the WSWS has noted on more than one occasion in recent years, US government officials and media personalities have had no difficulty in adopting the lingo of the Mafia. ABC’s Weir reports on efforts by the American military team on the ground to determine whether a given group of Afghans seems an appropriate target to be wiped out. In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable “restraint.” They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?
As a final comment, Weir declares, “Even if he could have proven it [the potential slaughter of the children] was an honest mistake, the captain tells me that killing these five children would have undone months of work winning over local elders, and that has become the key battle in this war.”
What can one say? This is the moral state of the American media: the murder of poverty-stricken children by missiles or bombs might, after all, be no more than an “honest mistake” (and therefore pardonable), but, on the downside, it could prove an inconvenience to US war aims (and therefore should be avoided, if possible).
Bill Weir’s résumé indicates that he is well suited to deal with life-and-death questions in Central Asia. A graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California (where a typical student, according to one commentator, “tends to be devoutly Christian, right-wing, Republican,” and wealthy), Weir began his career as a weekend sportscaster at a radio station in Austin, Minnesota. He worked his way up to sports anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2002, where he hosted a weekly program that aired after Monday Night Football. He has also written and developed three television pilots for the USA and FX networks.
On the ABC web site, Muir concludes that “the drone pilots know their work is important. Every minute in the cockpit helps defend their military colleagues on the battlefield and improve their chances of getting home alive.” The entire “news report” Tuesday was nothing more nor less than a defense of neo-colonial warfare and mass murder by well-paid hirelings of the American establishment.
This excerpt cuts to the core of the issue (at this point I wish there was one):
"In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable 'restraint.' They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?"
By David Walsh
14 January 2010
American television news becomes more and more unwatchable, especially in its reports on the expanding wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Perfectly coiffed, interchangeable news and anchor people repeat White House and Pentagon lies. “In-depth” reports provide nothing in the way of meaningful commentary or analysis. In general, everything is done to hide the truth from the American people.
Diane Sawyer, promoted to hosting ABC’s prime time evening news program a few weeks ago, and the rest of that network’s news personalities are in the forefront of the government’s disinformation campaign. it is worth noting that Sawyer, who began her television career doing the weather in Louisville, Kentucky, went to work for the Nixon administration in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War and stayed with the disgraced former president through his forced resignation, helping him write his memoirs.
US drone in flight On Tuesday night’s evening news, Sawyer and two colleagues, David Muir and bill Weir, spent six or seven minutes extolling the merits of the US Air Force’s Predator drones and their deadly attacks in Afghanistan. The Predators, according to Pakistani government and media sources, murdered some 700 civilians in that country in 2009, but the CIA-US military program of killings by drone attack on that side of the border is “covert,” without the official sanction of the Islamabad regime (emphasis ExEd).
Thus, Sawyer and company had to be satisfied with covering the US military’s increased use of drones in Afghanistan. According to a companion piece by Weir on its web site, ABC News was “granted exclusive access to the ground control station at the California [Air Force] base, one of six in the country where the planes are flown.” In other words, the broadcast report was a component part of the military’s official propaganda effort, prepared and vetted with the collaboration of Pentagon officials. A drone control station Sawyer introduced the story from Kabul, alerting her viewers to “the war you do not see, the skyrocketing use of drones.”
She went on to explain in Orwellian fashion that the “potentially lethal” drones were “another new strategy against the rising tide of violence in this country.” Yesterday, Sawyer told her audience, “drones assisted in taking out 16 of the enemy.” she noted that airmen 8,000 miles from Afghanistan were pushing the buttons, sending 500-pound bombs or Hellfire missiles hurtling to the ground. The Obama administration has overseen a sharp increase in the drone program, notes ABC, to “400 hours a day, a 300 percent increase.” From 100 three years ago, the number of drones in use has jumped to 1,200.
Muir writes on the ABC web site: “On this one California base alone, over the last six months, not one hour has gone by when Air Force pilots haven’t been watching over Afghanistan through the eyes of a at least one Predator drone. the technology has been such a game-changer that over the next year, the Air Force will now train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.”
Sawyer proudly tells us that the drone is a “high-tech symbol of American might.”
About one minute of the segment is devoted to the moral issues involved in bombing people from halfway around the world. it raises, the ABC anchorwoman notes, “new questions about what’s right and wrong,” before she quickly passes on to the “exclusive” footage shot in the California control center. Here, Muir explains, “Each drone is controlled by a two-man team, seated in front of a video screen clutching a joystick. On the screens, the men see live video from the drones in Afghanistan, picking out armed enemies on the ground who have no idea they’re being watched. The pilot can launch a missile simply by pulling a trigger. “The drones send back images in the blink of an eye—it takes just 1.7 seconds for the imagery to travel through 12 time zones. The video travels from the drone to a satellite and then down to a classified location in Europe. From there, it flows through a fiber optic nerve across the Atlantic Ocean to reach the California base. But it’s not finished—the signal then branches out to other bases, the Pentagon, and right back to the ground commander in Afghanistan.” He goes on: “We watched as a pilot monitored insurgents planting an IED [improvised explosive device] in northern Afghanistan. It made a good target, and with the punch of a button, a Hellfire missile launched, taking the insurgents out.”
As the WSWS has noted on more than one occasion in recent years, US government officials and media personalities have had no difficulty in adopting the lingo of the Mafia. ABC’s Weir reports on efforts by the American military team on the ground to determine whether a given group of Afghans seems an appropriate target to be wiped out. In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable “restraint.” They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?
As a final comment, Weir declares, “Even if he could have proven it [the potential slaughter of the children] was an honest mistake, the captain tells me that killing these five children would have undone months of work winning over local elders, and that has become the key battle in this war.”
What can one say? This is the moral state of the American media: the murder of poverty-stricken children by missiles or bombs might, after all, be no more than an “honest mistake” (and therefore pardonable), but, on the downside, it could prove an inconvenience to US war aims (and therefore should be avoided, if possible).
Bill Weir’s résumé indicates that he is well suited to deal with life-and-death questions in Central Asia. A graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California (where a typical student, according to one commentator, “tends to be devoutly Christian, right-wing, Republican,” and wealthy), Weir began his career as a weekend sportscaster at a radio station in Austin, Minnesota. He worked his way up to sports anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2002, where he hosted a weekly program that aired after Monday Night Football. He has also written and developed three television pilots for the USA and FX networks.
On the ABC web site, Muir concludes that “the drone pilots know their work is important. Every minute in the cockpit helps defend their military colleagues on the battlefield and improve their chances of getting home alive.” The entire “news report” Tuesday was nothing more nor less than a defense of neo-colonial warfare and mass murder by well-paid hirelings of the American establishment.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Obama Administration Keeping Blackwater Armed and Dangerous in Afghanistan
Nation magazine story Jeremy Scahill dated June 19
An excerpt appears below ...
"Blackwater is up for sale and its shadowy owner, Erik Prince, is rumored to be planning to move to the United Arab Emirates as his top deputies face indictment for a range of alleged crimes, yet the company remains a central part of President Obama's Afghanistan war. Now, Blackwater's role is expanding.
On Friday, the US State Department awarded Blackwater another 'diplomatic security' contract to protect US officials in Afghanistan. CBS News reports that the $120 million deal is for "protective services" at the US consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. Blackwater has another security contract in Afghanistan worth $200 million and trains Afghan forces. The company also works for the CIA and the US military and provides bodyguards for US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry as well as US lawmakers and other officials who visit the country. The company has four forward operating bases in Afghanistan and Prince has boasted that Blackwater's counter-narcotics forces have called in NATO airstrikes."
An excerpt appears below ...
"Blackwater is up for sale and its shadowy owner, Erik Prince, is rumored to be planning to move to the United Arab Emirates as his top deputies face indictment for a range of alleged crimes, yet the company remains a central part of President Obama's Afghanistan war. Now, Blackwater's role is expanding.
On Friday, the US State Department awarded Blackwater another 'diplomatic security' contract to protect US officials in Afghanistan. CBS News reports that the $120 million deal is for "protective services" at the US consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. Blackwater has another security contract in Afghanistan worth $200 million and trains Afghan forces. The company also works for the CIA and the US military and provides bodyguards for US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry as well as US lawmakers and other officials who visit the country. The company has four forward operating bases in Afghanistan and Prince has boasted that Blackwater's counter-narcotics forces have called in NATO airstrikes."
Sunday, June 6, 2010
A discussion between two people regarding U.S. drone strikes.
The individual who tipped ExEd off to the Newsy.com drone ethics debate video had this to say in referencing said video ...
"I agree with questioning the ethics in the use of UAV's. Drones are used to kill "the enemy," while the flyers of the drones are clear and out of any danger. It creates an unfair fight to be "hunted by robots," as you say. No longer is this man against man, but man against machine. It doesn't seem fair for the civilians that lose their lives to this kind of sneak-attack warfare ..."
"The video debates the recent drone attacks in Pakistan. It debates the effectiveness of the drones in finding the enemy, and whether they working to resolve conflicts or just create more anger and hate. The failed Time Square bombing by Faisal Shahzad obviously answers this question. The drone attacks in Pakistan directly influenced his decision to bomb Time Square. He certainly cannot be the only example of this, as I am sure similar images of hate is simmering in the minds of other people who have lost family members to US attacks."
These thoughtful and concerned comments prompted my response, which after writing, I thought worthwhile to share with everyone else here--
"You raise a notion I don't think gets any play at all in the media. You hear an argument that goes, "Attacking civilians in regions where terrorists lives inevitably gives rise to recruitment of more terrorists and attacks like Times Square and the Detroit Christmas attempt." This one sort of fades into the din of "We must stop the terrorists at all costs, never letting up at any point in the day," which is more like what our servicemen and women get to hear all the time.
What you do not hear is a theory or line of reasoning that goes, 'Terrorists [those who use violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims--Oxford English Dictionary] use their precious resources to strike where they can, when they can based on the support they have from populations outside their group dependent on public opinion and recent developments. They cannot strike anywhere they want whenever they want.' What happens when that public support dwindles to a whisper and their resources dry up too far for them to raise airfare for one person beyond 500 miles? These ideas you do not see in the media much of anywhere.
The drone ethics debate, as you've seen, is highly marginalized at present. Why is the debate relegated to blips on the horizon of mainstream media coverage and deep fringes of internet fora? There are reasons. Typical reasons but not necessarily good ones. Military actions are subsidized by taxpayer and citizen support, but they are not beholden to it. Most military actions are classified, and discussing troop movements publicly is speech unprotected by the First Amendment under the definition of sedition. But drone missions come with a special controversy: they are moved further and further from public purview. From U.S. military operations in Afghanistan away to JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command at the forward operating base in Bagram. From JSOC to the CIA. And we are told CIA agents have a different exposure to U.S. law than U.S. soldiers. And finally from the CIA, who administers the flights into Pakistan, to private contractors like Blackwater/Xe and similar companies, some of Pakistani and Afghan origin.
The way I see it, the push for accountability to the public on killing civilians in the hunt for terrorists whose "high value" is actually quite disputable, profiles of the victims doled out to the media on a need-to-know basis, has to come from the public.
If the public says, 'Drones kill bad guys, our soldiers don't come into harm's way,' then that's the world we live in now. I think it sounds like the last Terminator movie for reasons not rooted in science fiction. But that's my piece.
If the public says, 'I really don't want more women and children killed by unmanned missile strikes, no matter who you're targeting, because I wouldn't want that to happen to me or to my children,' then enough public outcry could actually get the drone program decommissioned and put a stop to some of this Fox News type spin with might-makes-right, the Empire will emerge victorious, the ends justify the means always and we're mandated by our God to win in the Middle East mindless silliness that keeps us damning the torpedoes and lodging U.S. presence further into central Asia and the Middle East with no end in sight."
I welcome readers to this discussion. If you feel moved to post a comment, please help continue the thread and thank you.
"I agree with questioning the ethics in the use of UAV's. Drones are used to kill "the enemy," while the flyers of the drones are clear and out of any danger. It creates an unfair fight to be "hunted by robots," as you say. No longer is this man against man, but man against machine. It doesn't seem fair for the civilians that lose their lives to this kind of sneak-attack warfare ..."
"The video debates the recent drone attacks in Pakistan. It debates the effectiveness of the drones in finding the enemy, and whether they working to resolve conflicts or just create more anger and hate. The failed Time Square bombing by Faisal Shahzad obviously answers this question. The drone attacks in Pakistan directly influenced his decision to bomb Time Square. He certainly cannot be the only example of this, as I am sure similar images of hate is simmering in the minds of other people who have lost family members to US attacks."
These thoughtful and concerned comments prompted my response, which after writing, I thought worthwhile to share with everyone else here--
"You raise a notion I don't think gets any play at all in the media. You hear an argument that goes, "Attacking civilians in regions where terrorists lives inevitably gives rise to recruitment of more terrorists and attacks like Times Square and the Detroit Christmas attempt." This one sort of fades into the din of "We must stop the terrorists at all costs, never letting up at any point in the day," which is more like what our servicemen and women get to hear all the time.
What you do not hear is a theory or line of reasoning that goes, 'Terrorists [those who use violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims--Oxford English Dictionary] use their precious resources to strike where they can, when they can based on the support they have from populations outside their group dependent on public opinion and recent developments. They cannot strike anywhere they want whenever they want.' What happens when that public support dwindles to a whisper and their resources dry up too far for them to raise airfare for one person beyond 500 miles? These ideas you do not see in the media much of anywhere.
The drone ethics debate, as you've seen, is highly marginalized at present. Why is the debate relegated to blips on the horizon of mainstream media coverage and deep fringes of internet fora? There are reasons. Typical reasons but not necessarily good ones. Military actions are subsidized by taxpayer and citizen support, but they are not beholden to it. Most military actions are classified, and discussing troop movements publicly is speech unprotected by the First Amendment under the definition of sedition. But drone missions come with a special controversy: they are moved further and further from public purview. From U.S. military operations in Afghanistan away to JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command at the forward operating base in Bagram. From JSOC to the CIA. And we are told CIA agents have a different exposure to U.S. law than U.S. soldiers. And finally from the CIA, who administers the flights into Pakistan, to private contractors like Blackwater/Xe and similar companies, some of Pakistani and Afghan origin.
The way I see it, the push for accountability to the public on killing civilians in the hunt for terrorists whose "high value" is actually quite disputable, profiles of the victims doled out to the media on a need-to-know basis, has to come from the public.
If the public says, 'Drones kill bad guys, our soldiers don't come into harm's way,' then that's the world we live in now. I think it sounds like the last Terminator movie for reasons not rooted in science fiction. But that's my piece.
If the public says, 'I really don't want more women and children killed by unmanned missile strikes, no matter who you're targeting, because I wouldn't want that to happen to me or to my children,' then enough public outcry could actually get the drone program decommissioned and put a stop to some of this Fox News type spin with might-makes-right, the Empire will emerge victorious, the ends justify the means always and we're mandated by our God to win in the Middle East mindless silliness that keeps us damning the torpedoes and lodging U.S. presence further into central Asia and the Middle East with no end in sight."
I welcome readers to this discussion. If you feel moved to post a comment, please help continue the thread and thank you.
U.N. Report: U.S. Drones Do More Harm than Good
On a tip from a reader who monitors Newsy.com for multiple reverse angles on the same story appearing in television, print and online news media, this video contributes to opening further the debate on the use of drones in situations listed and described on this site.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
U.N. official urges U.S. to stop CIA drone attacks on al-Qaeda and Taliban
This is the battle of our time, between international law and the laws of strongest nations as determined by the powerful (who wield the strength, economic and political) in those nations. International law's only advantage is unity--bringing the strength of all the other represented nations to bear in opposition to some convenient view of justice held by the most powerful people in the most powerful nations and the economic interests their voices represent. The voices of the great masses governed by both the national and international governing bodies sound outside this nexus of power and are able to push into these powerful entities for recognition and cooperation. The question, then, becomes, "How many of us side with international law (typically framed as human rights), how many with national law (typically property rights framed as individual rights) and to what end?"
The legal community within the national government will make skillfully administered attempts to thwart these arguments of human rights against their unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with anti-personnel bombs and do their best to be dismissive of concerns as people meddling in business that isn't theirs, the business of special operations, classified missions, dangerous individuals and hunting irreparably bad people to their deaths. But the unmanned drone program--not just a robotic eye in the sky with no human operator, but an aircraft armed with 300-pound Hellfire missiles and vision limited to optics, a radio signal and available light--is subject to far more debate than it's been made to undergo since its implementation.
Washington Post story; excerpt appears below
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 3, 2010
A senior U.N. official said Wednesday that the United States should halt the CIA's drone campaign against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan, charging that the secrecy surrounding the strikes violates the legal principle of international accountability.
But a report by Philip Alston, the United Nations' special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, stopped short of declaring the CIA program illegal.
He presented a 29-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday that focused on "targeted killings" by countries such as Russia and Israel as well as the United States.
"It is an essential requirement of international law that States using targeted killings demonstrate that they are complying with the various rules governing their use in situations of armed conflict," Alston said in a news release. "The greatest challenge to this principle today comes from the program operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. . . . The international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, how it ensures killings are legal, and what follow-up there is when civilians are illegally killed."
Alston said some commentators have argued that CIA personnel involved in drone killings are committing war crimes because, unlike the military, they are "unlawful combatants." But, he said, "this argument is not supported" by international humanitarian law.
The legal community within the national government will make skillfully administered attempts to thwart these arguments of human rights against their unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with anti-personnel bombs and do their best to be dismissive of concerns as people meddling in business that isn't theirs, the business of special operations, classified missions, dangerous individuals and hunting irreparably bad people to their deaths. But the unmanned drone program--not just a robotic eye in the sky with no human operator, but an aircraft armed with 300-pound Hellfire missiles and vision limited to optics, a radio signal and available light--is subject to far more debate than it's been made to undergo since its implementation.
Washington Post story; excerpt appears below
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 3, 2010
A senior U.N. official said Wednesday that the United States should halt the CIA's drone campaign against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan, charging that the secrecy surrounding the strikes violates the legal principle of international accountability.
But a report by Philip Alston, the United Nations' special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, stopped short of declaring the CIA program illegal.
He presented a 29-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday that focused on "targeted killings" by countries such as Russia and Israel as well as the United States.
"It is an essential requirement of international law that States using targeted killings demonstrate that they are complying with the various rules governing their use in situations of armed conflict," Alston said in a news release. "The greatest challenge to this principle today comes from the program operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. . . . The international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, how it ensures killings are legal, and what follow-up there is when civilians are illegally killed."
Alston said some commentators have argued that CIA personnel involved in drone killings are committing war crimes because, unlike the military, they are "unlawful combatants." But, he said, "this argument is not supported" by international humanitarian law.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
U.N. Official To Call For End Of CIA Drone Strikes
NPR report by Corey Flintoff
An excerpt appears below.
A soon-to-be-released United Nations report will call into question the use of unmanned aircraft for targeted killings in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. intelligence agencies.
The report, to be released next week by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, will call on the United States to stop allowing the Central Intelligence Agency to carry out drone attacks on suspected militants.
The special rapporteur, New York University law professor Philip Alston, told The New York Times that the CIA does not have the public accountability that's required of the U.S. military. Alston says the use of the drones and their firepower should be restricted to the armed forces.
"They have no legal authority to be killing anyone. They have committed the crime of murder under Pakistan's law."
- David Glazier, a professor at Loyola Law School, on the CIA's risk of criminal prosecution in the use of drones to target suspected militants.
Alston told The Associated Press that he sees "no legal prohibition on CIA agents" piloting the remotely controlled aircraft, but that the practice is undesirable because the C.I.A. doesn't comply with "any of the requirements as to transparency and accountability which are central to international humanitarian law."
An excerpt appears below.
A soon-to-be-released United Nations report will call into question the use of unmanned aircraft for targeted killings in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. intelligence agencies.
The report, to be released next week by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, will call on the United States to stop allowing the Central Intelligence Agency to carry out drone attacks on suspected militants.
The special rapporteur, New York University law professor Philip Alston, told The New York Times that the CIA does not have the public accountability that's required of the U.S. military. Alston says the use of the drones and their firepower should be restricted to the armed forces.
"They have no legal authority to be killing anyone. They have committed the crime of murder under Pakistan's law."
- David Glazier, a professor at Loyola Law School, on the CIA's risk of criminal prosecution in the use of drones to target suspected militants.
Alston told The Associated Press that he sees "no legal prohibition on CIA agents" piloting the remotely controlled aircraft, but that the practice is undesirable because the C.I.A. doesn't comply with "any of the requirements as to transparency and accountability which are central to international humanitarian law."
Monday, May 24, 2010
Drones and Democracy
Story on Truthout.org Sunday, May 23, 2010 by Kathy Kelly and Joshua Brollier
A particularly brutal excerpt ...
"The social worker recalled arriving at a home that was hit, in Miranshah, at about 9:00 PM, close to one year ago. The house was beside a matchbox factory, near the degree college. The drone strike had killed three people. Their bodies, carbonized, were fully burned. They could only be identified by their legs and hands. One body was still on fire when he reached there. Then he learned that the charred and mutilated corpses were relatives of his who lived in his village, two men and a boy aged seven or eight. They couldn't pick up the charred parts in one piece. Finding scraps of plastic, they transported the body parts away from the site. Three to four others joined in to help cover the bodies in plastic and carry them to the morgue.
But these volunteers and nearby onlookers were attacked by another drone strike, 15 minutes after the initial one. Six more people died. One of them was the brother of the man killed in the initial strike.
The social worker said that people are now afraid to help when a drone strike occurs because they fear a similar fate from a second attack. People will wait several hours after an attack just to be sure. Meanwhile, some lives will be lost that possibly could have been saved."
A particularly brutal excerpt ...
"The social worker recalled arriving at a home that was hit, in Miranshah, at about 9:00 PM, close to one year ago. The house was beside a matchbox factory, near the degree college. The drone strike had killed three people. Their bodies, carbonized, were fully burned. They could only be identified by their legs and hands. One body was still on fire when he reached there. Then he learned that the charred and mutilated corpses were relatives of his who lived in his village, two men and a boy aged seven or eight. They couldn't pick up the charred parts in one piece. Finding scraps of plastic, they transported the body parts away from the site. Three to four others joined in to help cover the bodies in plastic and carry them to the morgue.
But these volunteers and nearby onlookers were attacked by another drone strike, 15 minutes after the initial one. Six more people died. One of them was the brother of the man killed in the initial strike.
The social worker said that people are now afraid to help when a drone strike occurs because they fear a similar fate from a second attack. People will wait several hours after an attack just to be sure. Meanwhile, some lives will be lost that possibly could have been saved."
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Aletho News: “What kind of democracy is America, where people do not ask these questions?”
From Aletho News Tuesday ...
“What kind of democracy is America, where people do not ask these questions?”
By Kathy Kelly and Josh Brollier | Pulse Media | May 18, 2010
Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) and Josh Brollier (Joshua@vcnv.org) are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence www.vcnv.org
Islamabad–On May 12th, the day after a U.S. drone strike killed 24 people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, two men from the area agreed to tell us their perspective as eyewitnesses of previous drone strikes.
One is a journalist, Safdar Dawar, General Secretary of the Tribal Union of Journalists. Journalists are operating under very difficult circumstances in the area, pressured by both militant groups and the Pakistani government. Six of his colleagues have been killed while reporting in North and South Waziristan. The other man, who asked us not to disclose his name, is from Miranshah city, the epicenter of North Waziristan. He works with the locally based Waziristan Relief Agency, a group of people committed to helping the victims of drone attacks and military actions. “If people need blood or medicine or have to go to Peshawar or some other hospital,” said the social worker, “I’m known for helping them. I also try to arrange funds and contributions.”
Both men emphasized that Pakistan’s government has only a trivial presence in the area. Survivors of drone attacks receive no compensation, and neither the military nor the government investigate consequences of the drone attacks.
“What kind of democracy is America, where people do not ask these questions?”
By Kathy Kelly and Josh Brollier | Pulse Media | May 18, 2010
Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) and Josh Brollier (Joshua@vcnv.org) are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence www.vcnv.org
Islamabad–On May 12th, the day after a U.S. drone strike killed 24 people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, two men from the area agreed to tell us their perspective as eyewitnesses of previous drone strikes.
One is a journalist, Safdar Dawar, General Secretary of the Tribal Union of Journalists. Journalists are operating under very difficult circumstances in the area, pressured by both militant groups and the Pakistani government. Six of his colleagues have been killed while reporting in North and South Waziristan. The other man, who asked us not to disclose his name, is from Miranshah city, the epicenter of North Waziristan. He works with the locally based Waziristan Relief Agency, a group of people committed to helping the victims of drone attacks and military actions. “If people need blood or medicine or have to go to Peshawar or some other hospital,” said the social worker, “I’m known for helping them. I also try to arrange funds and contributions.”
Both men emphasized that Pakistan’s government has only a trivial presence in the area. Survivors of drone attacks receive no compensation, and neither the military nor the government investigate consequences of the drone attacks.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
CIA director, national security adviser to meet with officials in Pakistan
Washington Post story by Karen DeYoung
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Excerpt - Officials say the administration has been pleased so far with Pakistani cooperation in the investigation, which has focused on any role insurgent groups there might have played in helping to train and otherwise assist bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad.
But officials said that Jones and Panetta intend to reiterate to the Pakistanis the importance that the administration places on more aggressive military action against groups allied with al-Qaeda in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA. Shahzad, a Pakistani American, has said he traveled to the region to train with elements of the Pakistani Taliban, officials say.
The bombing attempt has already given rise to questions from Congress about Pakistan's zeal in confronting radical groups; a successful attack in the United States would severely undermine a bilateral relationship that is a crucial part of the administration's Afghanistan war strategy.
"It's important they hear our latest thinking on the danger to all of us from the tribal areas. That's very, very real," said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the ongoing investigation and the intelligence relationship with Pakistan.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Excerpt - Officials say the administration has been pleased so far with Pakistani cooperation in the investigation, which has focused on any role insurgent groups there might have played in helping to train and otherwise assist bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad.
But officials said that Jones and Panetta intend to reiterate to the Pakistanis the importance that the administration places on more aggressive military action against groups allied with al-Qaeda in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA. Shahzad, a Pakistani American, has said he traveled to the region to train with elements of the Pakistani Taliban, officials say.
The bombing attempt has already given rise to questions from Congress about Pakistan's zeal in confronting radical groups; a successful attack in the United States would severely undermine a bilateral relationship that is a crucial part of the administration's Afghanistan war strategy.
"It's important they hear our latest thinking on the danger to all of us from the tribal areas. That's very, very real," said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the ongoing investigation and the intelligence relationship with Pakistan.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Drones and the Ethics of War
This essay, posted Friday, attempts to briefly address the emerging arguments in what appears to be a debate shaping together over the ethics of using armed unmanned aerial vehicles.
President Obama is quoted as saying in a speech, "We have an interest in reducing civilian casualties because I don’t want civilians killed." This sentiment has manifested itself in the contrary strident legal posturing of State Department legal adviser Harold Koh with no signs of halting, reducing or altering the methods of drone attacks, which have increased following the Times Square bombing attempt.
What's missing here is any human rights argument that human beings--combatants, non-combatants in proximity to or whose lives are entwined with those of combatants--have some kind of right to expect not to be hunted by robots with electric eyes being piloted by indoctrinated nationalists who believe what they are doing--no matter what it is--to be benevolent.
Further complicating this aspect of the issue is the tendency of comments to news outlets following various articles on drone attacks to maintain drones have the ability to "kill the bastards" while service men and women risk no physical danger. This line evades the key issue that children, villagers, farmers, unarmed inhabitants in an agrarian culture are not "the bastards," and the warfare of extermination is, on paper, a part of our past and not our future.
Until these discrepancies are addressed no productive debate on the ethics of UAVs and their use to murder civilians in relentless pursuit of "high-value targets" is going to take place. Rhetorically, we are left with the pre-World War II mentality of "might makes right," and nothing more sophisticated or justified.
From the website Pakistan Defense (defence.pk)
May 14th, 2010
Drones and the Ethics of War
by David E. Anderson
According to news reports, Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American charged with trying to use a weapon of mass destruction in the failed Times Square bombing, has told investigators he carried out the attempted bombing to avenge US drone attacks in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan.
Shahzad’s assertion adds more fuel to the simmering controversy over the ethics and effects of increasing reliance by both the CIA and the US military on unmanned drones to launch missile strikes against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, asked (“US pressure helps militants overseas focus efforts,” May 7) : “Have the stepped-up attacks in Pakistan—notable the Predator drone strikes—actually made Americans less safe? Have they had the perverse consequence of driving lesser insurgencies to think of targeting Times Square and American airliners, not just Kabul and Islamabad? In short, are they inspiring more attacks on American than they prevent? It is a hard question.”
The Times Square drone connection also follows on last year’s deadly attack on the CIA, when a suicide bomber, a Jordanian doctor linked to al-Qaeda, detonated his explosives at an American base in Khost in eastern Afghanistan, killing himself and seven CIA officers and contractors who were operating at the heart of the covert program overseeing US drone strikes in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal regions.
CIA director Leon Panetta has called lethal drone technology “the only game in town” for going after al-Qaeda, and Obama administration officials have strenuously defended both the legality of the strikes in Pakistan as well as their effectiveness in killing suspected militants. They also deny the drones are responsible for an unacceptable level of civilian deaths.
“In this ongoing armed conflict, the United States has the authority under international law, and the responsibility to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning an attack,’’ Harold Koh, the State Department’s legal adviser, told an audience of international legal scholars on March 25, according to the Wall Street Journal (“US defends legality of killing with drones”).
Since President Obama took office, the CIA has used drones to kill some 400 to 500 suspected militants, according to intelligence officials, the Journal reported. The officials say only some 20 civilians have been killed—a figure critics sharply challenge. In 2009, Pakistani officials said the strikes had killed some 700 civilians and only 14 terrorist leaders, or 50 civilians for every militant. A New America Foundation analysis of reported US drone strikes in northwest Pakistan from 2004 to 2010 says the strikes killed between 830 and 1210 individuals, of whom 550 to 850 were militants, or about two-thirds of the total on average.
More recently, an April 26 story in the Washington Post reported that the CIA has refined its techniques and made technological improvements that are reducing civilian deaths, and this week, in his joint news conference with President Karzai of Afghanistan, President Obama said, “I am ultimately accountable…for somebody who is not on the battlefield who got killed…and so we do not take that lightly. We have an interest in reducing civilian casualties not because it’s a problem for President Karzai; we have an interest in reducing civilian casualties because I don’t want civilians killed.”
Earlier this month, in a May 6 interview on National Public Radio, David Rohde, the New York Times reporter who was held captive for months by the Taliban in northern Pakistan, spoke about the US drone strikes and said, “I saw firsthand in north and south Waziristan that the drone strikes do have a major impact. They generally are accurate. The strikes that went on killed foreign militants or Afghan or Pakistani Taliban that went on around us. There were some civilians killed but generally the Taliban would greatly exaggerate the number of civilians killed. They inhibited their operations. Taliban leaders were very nervous about being tracked by drones. So they are effective in the short-term I would say…I don’t think the answer is, you know, endless drone strikes. The answer is definitely not sending American troops into Pakistan, into the tribal areas. That would just create a tremendous nationalist backlash. It has to be the Pakistanis doing it.”
Ethicists and religious leaders are beginning to challenge the morality of the drone program, arguing it violates international law as well as key precepts of just war theory. The Christian Century, for example, editorialized in mid-May (“Remote-control warfare,” May 18) that while the drone attacks have no doubt killed terrorists and leaders of al-Qaeda, “they raise troubling questions to those committed to the just war principle that civilians should never be targeted.”
Taking aim at one of the aspects of drone warfare that make it so popular with the military and with politicians—that it is a risk-free option for the US military because it avoids American casualties—the Century editors said: “According to the just war principles, it is better to risk the lives of one’s own combatants than the lives of enemy noncombatants.”
The “risk-free” idea is also being challenged. In a recent piece in the Jesuit magazine America (“A troubling disconnection,” March 15), Maryann Cusimano Love, an international relations professor at Catholic University, wrote that military (as opposed to CIA) drone operators suffer post-traumatic stress disorder at higher rates than soldiers in combat zones. “Operators see in detail the destruction and grisly human toll from their work,” she observed, and she quoted an air force commander who said, “There’s no detachment. Those employing the system are very involved at a personal level in combat. You hear the AK-47 going off, the intensity of the voice on the radio calling for help. You’re looking at him, 18 inches away from him, trying everything in your capability to get that person out of trouble.”
The Christian Century editors also noted that drone attacks on civilians have given militants a recruitment tool, citing an opinion piece by counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen and former army officer Andrew McDonald Exum published last year in the New York Times (May 17, 2009). “Every one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as the drone strikes have increased,” they wrote.
An even more emphatic critic of the use of drones is Mary Ellen O’Connell, an international law professor at the University of Notre Dame. “Neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration has been persuasive about its legal right to launch attacks in Pakistan,” she wrote in “Flying Blind,” an article also published in America magazine. “Even with the legal right to use military force, drone attacks must also conform to the traditional principles governing the rules of warfare, including those of distinction, necessity, proportion and humanity.’’
O’Connell argues that under the United Nations Charter, resort to military force on the territory of another state, in this case Pakistan, is permitted only when the attacking state is acting in self-defense, acting with U.N. Security Council authorization, or is invited to aid another state in the lawful use of force. “Pakistan did not attack the United States and is not responsible for those who did,” O’Connell wrote. “The United States has no basis, therefore, for attacking in self-defense on Pakistani territory.’’
In addition, she contends that while al-Qaeda is a violent terrorist group, “it should be treated as a criminal organization to which law enforcement rules apply. To do otherwise is violate fundamental human rights principles. Outside of war, the full body of human rights applies, including the prohibition on killing without warning.”
The only basis for the United States to lawfully use force in Pakistan would be if it had the consent of the country’s political leaders. It is not clear whether the US has such a valid invitation, according to O’Connell.
“Pakistan’s president has told US leaders not to attack certain groups that have cooperated with Islamabad,” O’Connell wrote. “The United States has done so anyway, insisting that Pakistan use more military force and threatening to carry out attacks itself if the government refuses. None of this can be squared with international law.”
As recently as May 12, the head of an influential religious party which is a junior partner in Pakistan’s ruling coalition denounced the most recent drone attacks as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty. “The recurring attacks on targets in tribal areas are blatant aggression against Pakistan and the military should shoot down intruding drones,” Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the Jamiat Ulema Islam party told reporters, as reported in the Gulf News.
The case of western Pakistan presents particular challenges, according to O’Connell: “There suspected militant leaders wear civilian clothes, and even the sophisticated cameras of a drone cannot reveal with certainty that a suspect is a militant. In such a situation international humanitarian law gives a presumption to civilian status.”
In an interview, O’Connell suggests that there is confusion about international law versus domestic national security law and that the scarcity of developed ethical analysis and discussion of drone warfare might have to do with the fact that the drone itself is “just a delivery vehicle.” The real ethical issue, she said, is “the greater propensity to kill” made possible by the “video game-like” quality of drone combat.
Gary Simpson, a theology professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota and the author of “War, Peace, and God: Rethinking the Just War Tradition” (Augsburg Fortress Press, 2007), acknowledges that although he hasn’t yet thought about ethics and drone warfare, “the ongoing evolution of weaponry always poses new questions. It changes the questions about proportionality”—referring to the just war principle that the benefits of war must be proportionate to the expected harm— “and the protection of one’s own forces over against the vulnerability of civilian populations.”
The House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs held hearings in March and April on the rise of the drones, the legality of unmanned targeting systems, and the future of war, and US Naval Academy ethics professor Edward Barrett testified that while unmanned weapons systems “are consistent with a society’s duty to avoid unnecessary risks to its combatants,” and they can “enhance restraint” on the part of the soldiers engaged in virtual warfare, they also “could encourage unjust wars” and “could facilitate the circumvention of legitimate authority and pursuit of unjust causes.”
It will be interesting to see whether Congress and the White House continue to involve ethicists and religious thinkers in future deliberations on these issues. Last December, just before President Obama gave his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on themes of just war, the White House gathered religious leaders at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for what was described as a briefing and discussion of the morality of war, according to the Washington Post. White House staff members took notes for the president.
For now, the Obama administration insists the use of drones in Pakistan is imperative in the fight against terrorism, and Amitai Etzioni, an international relations professor at George Washington University, writing recently in the Joint Force Quarterly (“Unmanned Aircraft Systems: The Moral and Legal Case”), has enumerated many of the reasons and offered multiple lines of supporting argument: “The United States and its allies can make a strong case that the main source of the problem is those who abuse their civilian status to attack truly innocent civilians and to prevent our military and other security forces from discharging their duties,” he says, and “we must make it much clearer that those who abuse their civilian status are a main reason for the use of UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] and targeted killing against them.”
But others, such as Kilcullen and Exum, argue drone combat exacerbates the problem of terrorism and contributes to the instability of Pakistan. “Having Osama bin Laden in one’s sights is one thing,” write Kilcullen and Exum. “Devoting precious resources to his capture or death, rather than focusing on protecting the Afghan and Pakistani populations, is another. The goal should be to isolate extremists from the communities in which they live.”
Missile strikes launched from the comfort of Langley, Virginia, a half a world away from Waziristan, are unlikely to do that and thus, to critics, remain morally problematic.
David E. Anderson, senior editor for Religion News Service, has also written for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on Afghanistan (“The Right War Gone Wrong”) and nuclear disarmament (“Trimming the Nuclear Arsenals”).
President Obama is quoted as saying in a speech, "We have an interest in reducing civilian casualties because I don’t want civilians killed." This sentiment has manifested itself in the contrary strident legal posturing of State Department legal adviser Harold Koh with no signs of halting, reducing or altering the methods of drone attacks, which have increased following the Times Square bombing attempt.
What's missing here is any human rights argument that human beings--combatants, non-combatants in proximity to or whose lives are entwined with those of combatants--have some kind of right to expect not to be hunted by robots with electric eyes being piloted by indoctrinated nationalists who believe what they are doing--no matter what it is--to be benevolent.
Further complicating this aspect of the issue is the tendency of comments to news outlets following various articles on drone attacks to maintain drones have the ability to "kill the bastards" while service men and women risk no physical danger. This line evades the key issue that children, villagers, farmers, unarmed inhabitants in an agrarian culture are not "the bastards," and the warfare of extermination is, on paper, a part of our past and not our future.
Until these discrepancies are addressed no productive debate on the ethics of UAVs and their use to murder civilians in relentless pursuit of "high-value targets" is going to take place. Rhetorically, we are left with the pre-World War II mentality of "might makes right," and nothing more sophisticated or justified.
From the website Pakistan Defense (defence.pk)
May 14th, 2010
Drones and the Ethics of War
by David E. Anderson
According to news reports, Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American charged with trying to use a weapon of mass destruction in the failed Times Square bombing, has told investigators he carried out the attempted bombing to avenge US drone attacks in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan.
Shahzad’s assertion adds more fuel to the simmering controversy over the ethics and effects of increasing reliance by both the CIA and the US military on unmanned drones to launch missile strikes against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, asked (“US pressure helps militants overseas focus efforts,” May 7) : “Have the stepped-up attacks in Pakistan—notable the Predator drone strikes—actually made Americans less safe? Have they had the perverse consequence of driving lesser insurgencies to think of targeting Times Square and American airliners, not just Kabul and Islamabad? In short, are they inspiring more attacks on American than they prevent? It is a hard question.”
The Times Square drone connection also follows on last year’s deadly attack on the CIA, when a suicide bomber, a Jordanian doctor linked to al-Qaeda, detonated his explosives at an American base in Khost in eastern Afghanistan, killing himself and seven CIA officers and contractors who were operating at the heart of the covert program overseeing US drone strikes in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal regions.
CIA director Leon Panetta has called lethal drone technology “the only game in town” for going after al-Qaeda, and Obama administration officials have strenuously defended both the legality of the strikes in Pakistan as well as their effectiveness in killing suspected militants. They also deny the drones are responsible for an unacceptable level of civilian deaths.
“In this ongoing armed conflict, the United States has the authority under international law, and the responsibility to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning an attack,’’ Harold Koh, the State Department’s legal adviser, told an audience of international legal scholars on March 25, according to the Wall Street Journal (“US defends legality of killing with drones”).
Since President Obama took office, the CIA has used drones to kill some 400 to 500 suspected militants, according to intelligence officials, the Journal reported. The officials say only some 20 civilians have been killed—a figure critics sharply challenge. In 2009, Pakistani officials said the strikes had killed some 700 civilians and only 14 terrorist leaders, or 50 civilians for every militant. A New America Foundation analysis of reported US drone strikes in northwest Pakistan from 2004 to 2010 says the strikes killed between 830 and 1210 individuals, of whom 550 to 850 were militants, or about two-thirds of the total on average.
More recently, an April 26 story in the Washington Post reported that the CIA has refined its techniques and made technological improvements that are reducing civilian deaths, and this week, in his joint news conference with President Karzai of Afghanistan, President Obama said, “I am ultimately accountable…for somebody who is not on the battlefield who got killed…and so we do not take that lightly. We have an interest in reducing civilian casualties not because it’s a problem for President Karzai; we have an interest in reducing civilian casualties because I don’t want civilians killed.”
Earlier this month, in a May 6 interview on National Public Radio, David Rohde, the New York Times reporter who was held captive for months by the Taliban in northern Pakistan, spoke about the US drone strikes and said, “I saw firsthand in north and south Waziristan that the drone strikes do have a major impact. They generally are accurate. The strikes that went on killed foreign militants or Afghan or Pakistani Taliban that went on around us. There were some civilians killed but generally the Taliban would greatly exaggerate the number of civilians killed. They inhibited their operations. Taliban leaders were very nervous about being tracked by drones. So they are effective in the short-term I would say…I don’t think the answer is, you know, endless drone strikes. The answer is definitely not sending American troops into Pakistan, into the tribal areas. That would just create a tremendous nationalist backlash. It has to be the Pakistanis doing it.”
Ethicists and religious leaders are beginning to challenge the morality of the drone program, arguing it violates international law as well as key precepts of just war theory. The Christian Century, for example, editorialized in mid-May (“Remote-control warfare,” May 18) that while the drone attacks have no doubt killed terrorists and leaders of al-Qaeda, “they raise troubling questions to those committed to the just war principle that civilians should never be targeted.”
Taking aim at one of the aspects of drone warfare that make it so popular with the military and with politicians—that it is a risk-free option for the US military because it avoids American casualties—the Century editors said: “According to the just war principles, it is better to risk the lives of one’s own combatants than the lives of enemy noncombatants.”
The “risk-free” idea is also being challenged. In a recent piece in the Jesuit magazine America (“A troubling disconnection,” March 15), Maryann Cusimano Love, an international relations professor at Catholic University, wrote that military (as opposed to CIA) drone operators suffer post-traumatic stress disorder at higher rates than soldiers in combat zones. “Operators see in detail the destruction and grisly human toll from their work,” she observed, and she quoted an air force commander who said, “There’s no detachment. Those employing the system are very involved at a personal level in combat. You hear the AK-47 going off, the intensity of the voice on the radio calling for help. You’re looking at him, 18 inches away from him, trying everything in your capability to get that person out of trouble.”
The Christian Century editors also noted that drone attacks on civilians have given militants a recruitment tool, citing an opinion piece by counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen and former army officer Andrew McDonald Exum published last year in the New York Times (May 17, 2009). “Every one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as the drone strikes have increased,” they wrote.
An even more emphatic critic of the use of drones is Mary Ellen O’Connell, an international law professor at the University of Notre Dame. “Neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration has been persuasive about its legal right to launch attacks in Pakistan,” she wrote in “Flying Blind,” an article also published in America magazine. “Even with the legal right to use military force, drone attacks must also conform to the traditional principles governing the rules of warfare, including those of distinction, necessity, proportion and humanity.’’
O’Connell argues that under the United Nations Charter, resort to military force on the territory of another state, in this case Pakistan, is permitted only when the attacking state is acting in self-defense, acting with U.N. Security Council authorization, or is invited to aid another state in the lawful use of force. “Pakistan did not attack the United States and is not responsible for those who did,” O’Connell wrote. “The United States has no basis, therefore, for attacking in self-defense on Pakistani territory.’’
In addition, she contends that while al-Qaeda is a violent terrorist group, “it should be treated as a criminal organization to which law enforcement rules apply. To do otherwise is violate fundamental human rights principles. Outside of war, the full body of human rights applies, including the prohibition on killing without warning.”
The only basis for the United States to lawfully use force in Pakistan would be if it had the consent of the country’s political leaders. It is not clear whether the US has such a valid invitation, according to O’Connell.
“Pakistan’s president has told US leaders not to attack certain groups that have cooperated with Islamabad,” O’Connell wrote. “The United States has done so anyway, insisting that Pakistan use more military force and threatening to carry out attacks itself if the government refuses. None of this can be squared with international law.”
As recently as May 12, the head of an influential religious party which is a junior partner in Pakistan’s ruling coalition denounced the most recent drone attacks as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty. “The recurring attacks on targets in tribal areas are blatant aggression against Pakistan and the military should shoot down intruding drones,” Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the Jamiat Ulema Islam party told reporters, as reported in the Gulf News.
The case of western Pakistan presents particular challenges, according to O’Connell: “There suspected militant leaders wear civilian clothes, and even the sophisticated cameras of a drone cannot reveal with certainty that a suspect is a militant. In such a situation international humanitarian law gives a presumption to civilian status.”
In an interview, O’Connell suggests that there is confusion about international law versus domestic national security law and that the scarcity of developed ethical analysis and discussion of drone warfare might have to do with the fact that the drone itself is “just a delivery vehicle.” The real ethical issue, she said, is “the greater propensity to kill” made possible by the “video game-like” quality of drone combat.
Gary Simpson, a theology professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota and the author of “War, Peace, and God: Rethinking the Just War Tradition” (Augsburg Fortress Press, 2007), acknowledges that although he hasn’t yet thought about ethics and drone warfare, “the ongoing evolution of weaponry always poses new questions. It changes the questions about proportionality”—referring to the just war principle that the benefits of war must be proportionate to the expected harm— “and the protection of one’s own forces over against the vulnerability of civilian populations.”
The House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs held hearings in March and April on the rise of the drones, the legality of unmanned targeting systems, and the future of war, and US Naval Academy ethics professor Edward Barrett testified that while unmanned weapons systems “are consistent with a society’s duty to avoid unnecessary risks to its combatants,” and they can “enhance restraint” on the part of the soldiers engaged in virtual warfare, they also “could encourage unjust wars” and “could facilitate the circumvention of legitimate authority and pursuit of unjust causes.”
It will be interesting to see whether Congress and the White House continue to involve ethicists and religious thinkers in future deliberations on these issues. Last December, just before President Obama gave his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on themes of just war, the White House gathered religious leaders at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for what was described as a briefing and discussion of the morality of war, according to the Washington Post. White House staff members took notes for the president.
For now, the Obama administration insists the use of drones in Pakistan is imperative in the fight against terrorism, and Amitai Etzioni, an international relations professor at George Washington University, writing recently in the Joint Force Quarterly (“Unmanned Aircraft Systems: The Moral and Legal Case”), has enumerated many of the reasons and offered multiple lines of supporting argument: “The United States and its allies can make a strong case that the main source of the problem is those who abuse their civilian status to attack truly innocent civilians and to prevent our military and other security forces from discharging their duties,” he says, and “we must make it much clearer that those who abuse their civilian status are a main reason for the use of UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] and targeted killing against them.”
But others, such as Kilcullen and Exum, argue drone combat exacerbates the problem of terrorism and contributes to the instability of Pakistan. “Having Osama bin Laden in one’s sights is one thing,” write Kilcullen and Exum. “Devoting precious resources to his capture or death, rather than focusing on protecting the Afghan and Pakistani populations, is another. The goal should be to isolate extremists from the communities in which they live.”
Missile strikes launched from the comfort of Langley, Virginia, a half a world away from Waziristan, are unlikely to do that and thus, to critics, remain morally problematic.
David E. Anderson, senior editor for Religion News Service, has also written for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on Afghanistan (“The Right War Gone Wrong”) and nuclear disarmament (“Trimming the Nuclear Arsenals”).
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Drones attack Taliban targets in Pakistan
Financial Times story by Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad
Published: May 12 2010 03:10
CIA-flown pilot-less drone aircraft on Tuesday fired more than 15 missiles at a suspected Taliban stronghold in Pakistan’s lawless north Waziristan region killing at least 24 suspected militants.
The attack was the biggest of its kind since the failed attempt by Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born US national, to blow up New York’s Times Square on May 1.
Tuesday’s attack, said by a Pakistani intelligence official to be “Washington’s payback”, follows claims by US officials that Mr Shahzad is connected to Taliban militants. Mr Shahzad was arrested last week.
The Pakistani intelligence official said the missiles hit two targets – a vehicle driving three militants through a village and a nearby compound used for the training of recruits.
The attack took place in an area known to be controlled by Gul Bahadur, a Taliban commander.
In the past few months, US officials have increasingly acknowledged Pakistan’s growing importance as an ally in Washington’s efforts to secure the Afghanistan-Pakistan region where al-Qaeda and Taliban militants continue to pose a major resistance.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan’s foreign minister, on Tuesday said relations between the US and Pakistan continued to improve, brushing aside concerns over tensions after the failed New York bombing attempt. “There is nothing to worry about, our relationship is smooth and it is moving towards a partnership,” he said.
But a foreign ministry official in Islamabad warned that further US attacks on Pakistani soil of the kind seen on Tuesday will “inevitably bring in frictions of the kind that no one wants to see. You can’t bomb a country increasingly and expect cordial relations at the same time.”
Published: May 12 2010 03:10
CIA-flown pilot-less drone aircraft on Tuesday fired more than 15 missiles at a suspected Taliban stronghold in Pakistan’s lawless north Waziristan region killing at least 24 suspected militants.
The attack was the biggest of its kind since the failed attempt by Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born US national, to blow up New York’s Times Square on May 1.
Tuesday’s attack, said by a Pakistani intelligence official to be “Washington’s payback”, follows claims by US officials that Mr Shahzad is connected to Taliban militants. Mr Shahzad was arrested last week.
The Pakistani intelligence official said the missiles hit two targets – a vehicle driving three militants through a village and a nearby compound used for the training of recruits.
The attack took place in an area known to be controlled by Gul Bahadur, a Taliban commander.
In the past few months, US officials have increasingly acknowledged Pakistan’s growing importance as an ally in Washington’s efforts to secure the Afghanistan-Pakistan region where al-Qaeda and Taliban militants continue to pose a major resistance.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan’s foreign minister, on Tuesday said relations between the US and Pakistan continued to improve, brushing aside concerns over tensions after the failed New York bombing attempt. “There is nothing to worry about, our relationship is smooth and it is moving towards a partnership,” he said.
But a foreign ministry official in Islamabad warned that further US attacks on Pakistani soil of the kind seen on Tuesday will “inevitably bring in frictions of the kind that no one wants to see. You can’t bomb a country increasingly and expect cordial relations at the same time.”
Sunday, May 9, 2010
US drone strikes kill 10 in Pakistan
Associated Press story May 9
By RASOOL DAWAR (AP)
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Suspected U.S. missiles struck a house in Taliban-dominated northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, killing 10 people in the latest American strike targeting militant leaders, intelligence officials said.
The strikes were in North Waziristan, a tribal region that has long been a haven for Taliban- and al-Qaida-linked militant networks battling American and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan. The suspect in the recent failed car bombing in New York's Times Square has claimed he trained in a militant camp somewhere in Waziristan.
Two Pakistani intelligence officials said the two missiles hit the house of local tribesman Awal Gul in Enzer Kasa village of the Datta Khel area.
Ten people were killed, including an unknown number of militants who were staying at the home, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.
It was not immediately clear whether Gul had any ties to militant groups.
The U.S. has used missiles to target militant hide-outs in North Waziristan dozens of times in recent months. Pakistan, a key U.S. ally, officially protests the strikes on its territory as violations of its sovereignty, but it is believed to secretly aid them. The U.S. rarely discusses the unmanned-drone-fired strikes, which are part of a covert CIA program.
In recent months, North Waziristan has become a new haven for Pakistani Taliban leaders who have fled a Pakistani army offensive in their previous stronghold, neighboring South Waziristan.
The Pakistani Taliban, while linked to the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida, have primarily directed their attacks at targets inside Pakistan, making them a priority for the army.
The Pakistani army has held off on waging an offensive against other militant networks that are based in North Waziristan, despite U.S. pressure, because it does not want to antagonize powerful insurgent groups there that have so far attacked only targets in Afghanistan, not Pakistani cities.
On Sunday morning, Pakistani army helicopters pounded insurgent hide-outs in the Shana Garhi area of the Orakzai tribal region, killing at least eight militants, local official Jahanzeb Khan said.
Pakistan security forces are carrying out an operation against insurgents who escaped the military offensive in South Waziristan. Some have taken refuge in the Orakzai tribal region, which lies next to North Waziristan, and other neighboring tribal areas.
Associated Press writer Hussain Afzal in Peshawar contributed to this report.
By RASOOL DAWAR (AP)
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Suspected U.S. missiles struck a house in Taliban-dominated northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, killing 10 people in the latest American strike targeting militant leaders, intelligence officials said.
The strikes were in North Waziristan, a tribal region that has long been a haven for Taliban- and al-Qaida-linked militant networks battling American and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan. The suspect in the recent failed car bombing in New York's Times Square has claimed he trained in a militant camp somewhere in Waziristan.
Two Pakistani intelligence officials said the two missiles hit the house of local tribesman Awal Gul in Enzer Kasa village of the Datta Khel area.
Ten people were killed, including an unknown number of militants who were staying at the home, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.
It was not immediately clear whether Gul had any ties to militant groups.
The U.S. has used missiles to target militant hide-outs in North Waziristan dozens of times in recent months. Pakistan, a key U.S. ally, officially protests the strikes on its territory as violations of its sovereignty, but it is believed to secretly aid them. The U.S. rarely discusses the unmanned-drone-fired strikes, which are part of a covert CIA program.
In recent months, North Waziristan has become a new haven for Pakistani Taliban leaders who have fled a Pakistani army offensive in their previous stronghold, neighboring South Waziristan.
The Pakistani Taliban, while linked to the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida, have primarily directed their attacks at targets inside Pakistan, making them a priority for the army.
The Pakistani army has held off on waging an offensive against other militant networks that are based in North Waziristan, despite U.S. pressure, because it does not want to antagonize powerful insurgent groups there that have so far attacked only targets in Afghanistan, not Pakistani cities.
On Sunday morning, Pakistani army helicopters pounded insurgent hide-outs in the Shana Garhi area of the Orakzai tribal region, killing at least eight militants, local official Jahanzeb Khan said.
Pakistan security forces are carrying out an operation against insurgents who escaped the military offensive in South Waziristan. Some have taken refuge in the Orakzai tribal region, which lies next to North Waziristan, and other neighboring tribal areas.
Associated Press writer Hussain Afzal in Peshawar contributed to this report.
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