General Interest Review 00006

Predator Drones

Predator Drones are small military aircraft with the capability to fire missiles. They are unique in that they do not require a pilot to operate. Instead they can be flown remotely from a faraway location via satellite. Effectively, this takes the human equation out of warfare for the side that has drones. For the receiving end, people are still highly at risk of casualty and subjected to death should the drone's missile, known unrepentantly as the Hellfire, connect with them. Currently the United States is the only country using drones. The U.S. military acknowledges using drones in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has used them in Yemen and the Balkan region of Eastern Europe in the past. Reports recently have all but confirmed that the CIA is using the drones in the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan where the Taliban is hiding. Reports have also been slipping out that they drones are also in use in Somalia, both to protect cargo ships from attacks by pirates and against Al Shabbab, the al Qaida-linked militant arm in Somalia.

Though leaders are likely to never acknowledge it, the drones drive another stake into the heart of the official U.S. policy that says it won't have anything to do with assassinations. This seems to be the product of a lessening of degree over history. The CIA has been accused on a number of occasions of aiding assassination plots in other countries. though it has never admitted to it. Now, with a clear, ill-defined enemy (that is, any terrorist organization that can be linked to al Qaida), the rules apparently need not be followed, and the plans are laid out for the public under the guise that the program is top secret. While it doesn't help enemies, this chastens the program against criticism from outside the government.

The end goal is to rid the world of the heads of these terrorists organizations that can be located, and hope that no others flourish in their wake. But the drones set up the conditions for new terrorists to flourish in their wake. One of the most high profile drone attacks against a supposed Usama bin Laden hideout, during the Clinton administration, killed civillians. A drone attack in October, 2006, against a religious school in Pakistan, also killed civillians. When missiles are fired into a place where people are located, civillians will die. Thinking that their family, friends (and they themselves, if they happen to survive) will not be radicalized by such an event, flies in the face of most logic, not to mention human nature. The U.S. is hoping for a reasoned, humane response to an assault that is unreasonable when looked at from both sides and grotesque (not to mention terrorist, considering the indiscriminate nature and assault on personal liberty).

For those interested in divorcing themselves from reality and considering the matter on a military strategic level, using the drones in Pakistan -- where al Qaida number 2 Ayman al Zawahiri and Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud were targeted (Mehsud was killed) -- even flies in the face of sound planning. To allow the drones into Pakistan, the U.S. had to let the government there pick most of the targets. This effectively takes the U.S. out of the part of the process which is the whole point of the process. To kill someone, you must identify who you are going to kill. Maybe the sought after Taliban are common enemies of the Pakistani government and the CIA right now, but what happens when Pakistan becomes impatient that their targets aren't being executed? That's anyone's guess -- because the program isn't even officially acknowledged.

On either level, and especially with the program's expansion to Somalia rumored over the past week, the playing field envisioned currently seems to be an idealistic one -- where there is no American or Pakistani military suffering, and where targets are dispatched that will fully disrupt the terrorist network in Southwest Asia. But because there is no accountability, and no way to know what the exact rubric is for the targets being selected, the future looks a lot murkier. (In fact, it is already murky. Mehsud alone took more than a dozen tries to execute. How many civillians died in the process is not known. They did not die, according to the CIA, because the program does not exist). Right now, the alleged high value of the targets justifies the use of the drones. But it's not hard to see a future where the use of the drones justifies the high value of the targets.