The major criticism of drone strikes–the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s counter-terrorism policy especially in Pakistan and Yemen–is that they cause too many civilian casualties, thereby creating more militants than they eliminate. A new study from the New America Foundation disputes that conclusion.
Authors Peter Bergen and Jennifer Rowland write: “The estimated civilian death rate in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan has declined dramatically since 2008, when it was at its peak of almost 50 percent. Today, for the first time, the estimated civilian death rate is at or close to zero.” Their finding is based on analyzing three years’ worth of data in news sources ranging from Reuters and the New York Times to the Express Tribune and Dawn in Pakistan.
Any compilation based on such open-source materials must necessarily be suspect. But then counting casualties from the drone strikes is necessarily an inexact science–Washington has an interest in minimizing the figures while jihadists have an interest in maximizing them. Perhaps there is a better count out there, but I’m not aware of it. If the New America Foundation’s conclusion is accurate, the reduction in collateral damage is a tribute to better technology (e.g., drones that can linger longer over their targets and use better sensors to identify them), better intelligence gathering, and better controls over these strikes.
This is yet another reason why the strikes cannot be stopped–they are the most effective tool to combat Islamist terrorism in areas such as Pakistan and Yemen where U.S. troops are not deployed en masse. Indeed, far from curtailing them, I believe it is imperative to extend the strikes to towns such as Chaman, located near the border with Afghanistan, which is a major staging point for the Taliban–but has been off bounds so far for the drone strikes because it is located outside the tribal areas of Pakistan. That needs to change if the U.S. is going to sufficiently degrade the insurgency to allow U.S. troop numbers to be reduced by 2014 without a catastrophic collapse in security.
In 2010, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a terrorist and murderer, was assassinated by Israelis using forged passports. Not a single bystander was hurt in any way. The whole world condemned Israel for using faked passports and thus using the names of people who had nothing to do with this assassination. Nobody praised Israel for its successful elimination of a terrorist with no accidental casualties. Israel was more effective and less destructive than the frequently praised drone strikes, which are more effective and less destructive than conventional warfare.
There will be always collateral damage in war.
"Any compilation based on such open-source materials must necessarily be suspect." Well, thank you Mr. Boot. But who cares, anyway, when Obama can –as he has done so often– simply declare anyone in the blast radius a "terrorist" or "combatant"? As for expanding the parameters of Obama's war-by-assassination, why quibble at geography? Why stop with the Taliban? The whole point of drone strikes is to give Obama cover: no detainees, no human-rights violations (What's a little collateral damage between friends?). And it gives him the much-needed macho street cred that will count for so much come November. The restraint of people on the right like Mr. Boot with regard to the Obama school of warfare –lest such criticism come back to haunt a future Republican administration– is handing Obama this issue for free.
One of the few actual benefits of the Obama presidency is that, whatever merit his war policy has or lacks, it won't be uncritically, unanimously, and unashamedly opposed by the majority of the left. n nWe shouldn't simply reflexively criticize him, and we should probably be less inclined to at all when he in a given area does largely right. You don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, especially when you have almost no right (or expectation, rather) to expect good at all. n nWe can cede this area anyway, as a) drone strikes are likely to be employed by a President Romney, b) Obama's foreign policy and "war policy" still have great holes in them (for us to still campaign on), and c) such policies aren't going to be the key issue of the upcoming election.
If you really think the Left –and the sycophants in the press– will not easily find a way to criticize a future Republican president for doing exactly the same thing that Obama does, then you do not understand American politics. A thing is right or wrong, in identifiable American interests or not, justifiable under the War Powers Act or it is not, genuinely effective or not, costs us our souls or not –that is the standard by which an action should be judged. For the Left, it is sufficient that it is done by Obama.
This is analogous to the fact that Romney introduced Romneycare in Massachusetts, which Republicans did not oppose–until it bacame a federal law named Obamacare. nParties try to win. This is logical and natural.