Drones have gained us nothing
A US drone strike killed a dozen people in a convoy in Yemen on Dec. 12.
The New York Times reported, “Most of the dead appeared to be people suspected of being militants linked to Al Qaeda, according to tribal leaders in the area, but there were also reports that several civilians had been killed.”
Reuters reported, “their party was mistaken for an al Qaeda convoy, local security officials said,”and according to other news organizations, the strike was mistaken for a wedding party and most casualties were civilians.
Civilian casualties from drone attacks strikes at the logic of using drones. As President Barak Obama said on May 23: “Conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and are likely to cause more civilian casualties and more local outrage.”
However according to a counter-terrorism intelligence source for the CIA and Department of Defense who was assigned to a team that directed the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was an 80 percent civilian-casualty rate.
Granted, the number of civilian casualties from drone strikes has significantly reduced since 2009.
Peter Bergen wrote, “Starting in 2009, the civilian casualty rate from drone strikes has been on a markedly downward trajectory in Pakistan.”
He cites the New America Foundation, claiming there were no civilian deaths due to drone strikes since 2009. However according to the NAF there were a few officially confirmed killings. Human Rights Watch in its 102-page report, Between a Drone and Al-Qaeda’: The Civilian Cost of US Targeted Killings in Yemen, claims a much larger civilian casualty rate than officially acknowledged.
A 2011 drone strike killed US-born Anwar al-Awlaki, described by investigators as a leader of al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate. Given that he was a native born US Citizen, the question of targets by drones is gnarly, and given that it was problematic to reach him by other means, there are pragmatic, though problematic legal, reasons to kill him remotely with a Hellfire missile. In this case, it cannot be denied that he was associated with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who attempted the 2009 Christmas Day bombing of an American airliner, and he was a member of al Qaeda (AQAP).
The Fog of War is complicated, but an asymmetric conflict involving non-government jihadist forces and the United States military is especially convoluted bringing a new level of confusion with collateral casualties. We should have learned this lesson from the quagmire of Vietnam.
Rather than sending troops into an armed or unarmed village, we deployed unmanned airborne drones to do the dirty work. It seemed too good to be true, and it was. The panacea of easy, precise drone strikes doesn’t seem so easy or precise when examined in any detail. President Barack Obama focused his May 23 speech before the National Defense University on those “inspired by larger notions of violent jihad” rather than survivors of non-combatant strikes. He said, “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured — the highest standard we can set.” But the recent strike on a wedding party on Dec. 12 belies his soaring rhetoric.
Killing of innocents by occidental forces obviously inspires more widespread radicalization than a jihadist cleric could. It might be worthwhile to remember that the Code of Hammurabi was written in ancient Babylon or present day Iraq. In the Code of Hammurabi, it says (in ancient Babylonian), “If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye. If one break a man’s bone, they shall break his bone.” From the Hammurabi Code came Mosaic Law: an eye for an eye. Its origins are from the Middle East, and while it may not align nicely with United States Constitutional Law, it remains incarnate in the region nonetheless.
When Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani child shot by the Taliban, met with President Barack Obama and his family in October, she delivered him one message: halt drone strikes in Pakistan. As it was a private meeting in the Oval Office, no press were allowed to witness the embarrassment of our President by an international human rights icon over drones.
In a Joint letter to President Obama on Drone Strikes and Targeted Killings on Dec. 4, from the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Center for Human Rights & Global Justice, NYU School of Law, Center for Civilians in Conflict, Center for Constitutional Rights Global Justice Clinic, NYU School of Law, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Foundations requested three clarifications:
- Set a standard for who may be targeted
- Elucidate the feasibility of capture rather than kill
- Commit to investigating credible reports of civilian deaths
The joint commission is merely demanding precision in an imprecise arena. Barack Obama, a Constitutional Lawyer himself, should respect the need for accuracy in crafting law and policies. The ubiquitous vague terms bandied about since 9/11 are as damaging to the order of law as terrorism itself. We can survive as a nation the tragic destruction of a few building, but can we survive the breakdown of law?
What is the precise legal definition of a terrorist?
If a politician wants to halt any discussion of a potentially dangerous individual, he/she simply calls the person a terrorist. That’s it. No more discussion. We assume that a terrorist is one who plans and executes the mass murder of civilians, but the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki is thorny, as it was never defined exactly what he was. While it is true he encouraged the killing of innocents with his online AQAP magazine, Inspire, and showed the Boston Marathon bombers (after his death) how to build a bomb out of a pressure cooker, was he a mass murderer or just an American citizen exercising his Constitutional 1st Amendment right to free speech, no matter how ugly, ill-informed or rash?
Because he never had his day in court, we were not able to answer through the judiciary those questions of the legality of killing him by a drone strike. It is not enough for a president or legislator to claim that such drone strikes are legal; a court of law must uphold that assertion.
While it may be seem silly to litigate a court battle over a deranged and delusional man such as Anwar al-Awlaki, it becomes more serious when domestic protesters of the Iraq war are called “terrorist sympathizers”. Even Senator Edward M. Kennedy was placed on the terrorist watch list in 2004. He strongly opposed the Iraq War from the start, and the US Government will not acknowledge if this is why he couldn’t fly from Boston to Washington, but it raises larger questions of government accountability for errors abroad and at home.
John Brennen during his Senate confirmation hearings to direct the CIA in February said that the US should offer condolence payments to victims of drone strikes. But Medea Benjamin reported in October that, the compensation fund meant for Pakistani drone victims is going to US-based NGOs instead. A true purpose has led to an untrue result.
My intelligence source said while he killed a few hundred, or maybe a couple thousand people in Afghanistan and Iraq during his years in the Intelligence Community, the only improvement he saw was vast upgrading to the bases. He was paid handsomely and he asserted that contractors such as Haliburton, KBR, SAIC, etc. were getting immensely wealthy while he killed innocents. He suffers from PTSD, is struggling with his health and is unable to work. Survivors from the wedding in Yemen are anguished. Some may become radicalized. Others may find the power to forgive. None of this will mitigate radicalization here or abroad. President Obama noted of radicalization, a “pull towards extremism appears to have led to the shooting at Fort Hood and the bombing of the Boston Marathon.”
Overall we gain nothing.
Douglas Christian is a multimedia Capitol Hill reporter. He has covered the 2016 Democratic and Republican conventions as a photographer and has produced numerous audio and video reports for Talk Media News. He has written scores of articles and op-ed pieces for the Baltimore Post Examiner, touching on politics to the arts and to hi-tech.
Douglas has worked as a photographer for decades. He has produced a few books on Oriental rugs; one was on Armenian Oriental rugs and the other was published by Rizzoli and co-authored by his uncle entitled, ‘Oriental Rugs of the Silk Route’. Douglas attended the Putney School in Vermont, a tiny progressive school in Vermont, where he became enthralled with photography and rebuilt a 4×5 camera. Later during college, he attended the Ansel Adams Workshop at Yosemite, where he determined to pursue photography. He transferred to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and received a BFA from Tufts. He has photographed an array of people including politicos such as William F. Buckley, Jr., George McGovern, Edward Teller and Cesar Chavez. His photography URL is www.photographystudio.com. His twitter feed is @xiwix. He currently resides in Washington, D.C.