Obama: Drone Attacks Continue
Last month, before the inauguration, I asked how long it would be until a wedding party or sleeping family were blown up by a remote-controlled aircraft on Obama's watch. We didn't have to wait long. Just three days into his presidency, two drone attacks occurred in Pakistan. The first found its target, "four Arab militants" including a "senior al Qaeda operative." The second missile, apparently intended for a "Taleban commander," instead killed "a pro-government tribal leader...and four members of his family, including a five-year-old child." Obama is now officialy responsible for his first civilian casualties.
I object to sending robot aircraft into the skies of foreign nations, and firing rockets into people's homes at the push of a button thousands of miles away. We wouldn't tolerate this in our own skies, so how can we inflict it on others? Our much-vaunted principles are meaningless unless we apply then to everyone, including those who live beyond our borders. The U.S. Constitution calls for a jury trial and proof of guilt before a death sentence, and while the rules are different in wartime, a man sleeping at home with his family isn't on the battlefield. Our Constitution grants no one the right to be judge, jury and executioner all at once. Obama, a Constitutional scholar, surely understands that.
Where is the outrage that this continues without pause from one administration to the next? Even if you dismiss the moral arguments as too fancy and delicate, and insist that the death of "four Arab militants" justifies cutting corners, there is a practical objection as well. Mistargeted missiles like the one that killed a "pro-government leader" and his family are far too common. Indeed, it seems that innocents are killed more often than not. Even if you believe that there is no time for jury trials on the battlefield, the slaughter of children should make you stop and think. It's indefensible to spray a crowd with machine gun fire to stop a runaway criminal, but that is effectively what is happening here. If it happened to you and your family, you would know it was wrong.
So here's my appeal to President Obama. You're the Commander-in-Chief, and that makes you responsible for what the Armed Forces do on your watch. War is a dirty business, and we know from your campaign that you're planning to go after the terrorists in the caves where they live. But do you really want to be responsible for the death of innocents, which will happen again and again as long as these drone attacks continue? Why not call a halt to them for a few weeks, long enough for your new envoy, Richard Holbrooke, to get to Pakistan and evaluate the situation? Pakistan has a democratically elected government, with its own rule of law. Our actions within their borders must be with their approval. If they want us to fire missiles from robot aircraft, they should say so clearly. Otherwise we should stop. Mr. President, does the change we voted for in November apply to the death of innocents? Call off the drones!
Cross-posted to eatbees blog.
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I'd rather have drones do the dirty work than sending American fighter pilots into Pakistan who would potentially either get shot down or be captured.
The two targets are al Qaeda leaders that were believed to be involved in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
January 24, 2009 5:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
My point is there is no due process, so it's immoral. Even you said "were believed." And it's an invasion of sovereign airspace, so doubly immoral. Obama said we don't need to compromise our principles to be secure, right? And as Jon Stewart said, if we change them at our convenience, they aren't principles, they're hobbies.
We shouldn't be sending ground troops in, either, without permission of the Pakistani government, a fellow democracy. My position is that we need to negotiate with them, find a cooperative approach, and call off the drone attacks until then.
January 24, 2009 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Due process? Somebody bombed our embassies and I think we have the right to go after them and retaliate.
Maybe Islamabad will stop letting al Qaeda and Taliban folks enter their country from Afghanistan and start getting aggressive with them?
January 24, 2009 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
How do you know the people we're retaliating against are in fact guilty of the crime? Where is the proof? That's what due process means, accusation does not equal proof.
Maybe Islamabad will do what you say if we negotiate with them, a democratically elected government like our own.
January 24, 2009 7:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I actually trust our government (whether its Bush or Obama) to negotiate in good faith with Pakistan first. But if that doesn't work then they (in my opinion) can go after somebody if they have good intelligence that the targets attacked the US.
I'm not sure exactly what "proof" you expect the US government to share publicly. Obama or someone in the cabinet will have a press conference which says that the US has intelligence reports which connect the targets to the embassy bombings. You're not going to get much more than that. And that's enough "proof" for me to justify going after them
January 25, 2009 8:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am all about holding to our principals too, but war is a very strange beast. You cannot effectively be successful in a war and not take out innocents along the way. Period. That is what war is. It is why war is hell. It is also why we should not go into war lightly and why I disagree with being in Iraq... Pakistan is a different bird. We have Taliban and Al-Qaeda members crossing the border at will between Pakistan and Afghanistan and we can never vanquish the Taliban until either we destroy targets in Pakistan, or Pakistan's government steps up and does the job themselves. I will gladly support removing the drones if Pakistan stepped up its part.
January 24, 2009 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly. That's what I'm saying. So why can't Obama put a moratorium on the drones for a few weeks, long enough to see if progress is being made?
What gives us the right to attack targets within Pakistan unless Congress first declares war on Pakistan? If Pakistan refuses to help us, maybe such a resolution would be in order ... until then, isn't this a violation of international law?
January 24, 2009 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's safe to say the Mumbai attacks prove that Pakistan is not yet in a position to assert they are effectively dealing with the terrorist organizations within their borders. The only thing worse than suspending drone attacks would be telling Al Qaeda and the Taliban they had a couple of weeks to move around and get repositioned in safety.
Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (Pub.L. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224, enacted September 18, 2001) - authorizing the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001. The authorization granted the President the authority to use all "necessary and appropriate force" against those whom he determined "planned, authorized, committed or aided" the September 11th attacks, or who harbored said persons or groupsThe Taliban was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks and harbor Al Qaeda to this day. Both have found a safe haven in Pakistan from which they continue to launch attacks on our troops and innocent civilians abroad. End of story. This is the war we should have been fighting all along.
If the Pakistani government doesn't feel the need to declare war on us over it, it seems drones costs way less in human life than your suggestion that we line up against Pakistan's armies - with the ultimate desire to eliminate a threat that both sides would prefer to see gone. Do you really think a full on war would entail less civilian casualties? It would for certain cost thousands of military lives on both sides. IMO, death is death. It's no victory if a changed approach causes the death of far more people than the one we currently employ.
Pakistan won't just surrender to us and let our troops have free reign of their lands - nor should they be expected to. The drones are a way we can eliminate threats without Pakistanis having to endure the insult of American troops operating within their borders. It's not perfect, but it's the best option.
January 24, 2009 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
When you have a military target (Taliban officer, bomb maker, etc.) in a known location in Pakistan, we don't know how long they will be there, as these guys move around a lot. If we wait and ask permission to go after these guys, by the time we get it, they could be gone. Or they might specifically tell us no, and that leaves us with a dilemma of letting a target get away or directly going against Pakistan. If we just tell the Pakistani officials to take care of the problem themselves, it will not get done.
I don't think we should stop drones and let targets get away, but as I said earlier, if Pakistan wants to step up, that would be great, but the change would have to be gradual to ensure it is working. I don't think throwing our hands in the air and trusting a country that has so far not put much effort into monitoring positions of afghan fighters within their borders would be the best way to take them out effectively. It would just give those we are fighting time to recruit larger forces.
January 24, 2009 11:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Due process? These are "suspected drone attacks".
I don't know why the US cannot make a statement on them. "Transparency" demands it, and a meaningful statement would not necessarily give away crucial secrets.
Due process? How do we know the second explosion, missile or not, hit the wrong house? But assuming it did, was it targeting error, lousy missile guidance, what?
Were these attacks cleared with the White House? If not, at what level are they cleared? Are they left-overs from old policies, or part of ongoing programs reflecting relatively unchanged policies?
Obama said he'd cross borders, but my impression was that it was only for high value targets.
Cross border or not, that doesn't excuse killing non-combatants.
January 24, 2009 9:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that non-combatants should always be protected. However, these people we are attacking currently carry out bombings which primarily target non-combatants directly. It could be argued that if one of these two strikes killed someone who would have caused a market to be bombed, the other going astray caused far less bloodshed than failing to launch any attacks would have.
Of course this is all bullshit speculation - but it is important to keep a balance to the calculus.
If we were indiscriminately shelling villages with white phosphorus, I'd agree we needed to demand some answers. This is a targeted covert operation. I don't think it is reasonable(or desirable) to expect a real-time full public disclosure of every nuance of any military operation that may pique curiosity. There is a time for debrief, but it's after the information can't help your enemies.
January 24, 2009 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
"There is a time for debrief, but it's after the information can't help your enemies."
If the wrong house was hit, and the "right" house is known, as the article implies, then the time is now, if not yesterday.
I haven't checked news feeds recently... but I expect Obama Admin to demonstrate this kind of "transparency".
January 24, 2009 10:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
January 25, 2009 12:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, only the first paragraph here should be quoted.
January 25, 2009 12:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, standards do obviously vary. That's probably how Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld justified torture to themselves.
January 25, 2009 1:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Pakistan has a democratically elected government, with its own rule of law.
Not exactly, not in the Northwest areas we are talking about. So much so that they have long been routinely described as "lawless" areas. Your argument doesn't seem to be fully informed about that.
That is the problem and always has been. Recent reports appear to support that nothing has changed in that regard with the new president there. As a matter of fact, it appears to have gotten worse over the last year.
from
Radio Spreads Taliban’s Terror in Pakistani Region
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH,
New York Times, January 25
Things are not so simple as you present them. The Pakistani government also ends up killing civilians when they try to control the area. Except they do it with less precision.
In the past, it has basically been revealed after the fact that U.S./NATO forces have acted in concert with Pakistani government permission when crossing the border. It's just that politically, the situation inside Pakistan is so sensitive, the government so divided, the military so factionated, that they can't admit to it publicly. I.E., if the U.S./NATO admits that it has Pakistan's permission, it hurts our allies in the Pakistani government, it often cannot be admitted for that reason.
Again, the problem is that there is really no rule of law in the areas involved, the federal government does not control them. And furthermore, many believe there is still tenuous rule of law by the Pakistani government overall in the country as there are many factions in the civil and military services that do not have allegiance to the ruling government, but other agendas.
January 25, 2009 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
To clarify my last points:
The situation has long been that the Pakistani government cannot ask for our help or permit our intervention in the area publicly, they can only ask for or permit it privately.
How many times have you seen official Pakistani government public statements that they are outraged over something we did there? There is a reason this doesn't happen often. The statements of outrage usually come from those political actors that are sympathetic to Islamic militants, and that is no where near anything like the majority of the country, but it is a significant minority with supporters in civil and military service.
January 25, 2009 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
There seems to conflicting reports regarding the 2nd attack. From Dawn
Taliban removing 3 bodies, assumed to be foreigners before the authorities arrived sounds very suspicious to me.
January 25, 2009 12:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting that Dawn seems to be the only service giving the name Malik Faraz (per Yahoo News search), and it has it in both articles. If Dawn is accurate about bodies of "foreigners" being snuck away then the second strike was arguably mis-reported as being an accidental hit, by other news sources.
In possibly related news:
I wonder if the missile strikes on the 23rd are directly related to this raid on the 22nd.
January 25, 2009 3:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Update: President Obama's administration over the past week is pretty clearly either trying to get on the good side of the Islamabad government (or even secretly working with Islamabad) regarding drone missile strikes by targeting their main enemy in the provinces with some of the same.
Since this post, I have also read more that makes it very clear to me that Islamabad's incompetent actions trying to do something about what's going on in FATA have caused a lot lot more civilian "collateral damage" than any US actions. I have linked to some of that reading on the same thread as the above link if you are interested.
February 21, 2009 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink