Should the U.S. and the rest of the world continue to use drone strikes?
This is a complicated one. I hope I've helped show that drone strikes are left wanting in accuracy and purpose, frequently hitting targets they don't wish to hit and removing the valuable asset of information from captured terrorists, as capturing someone after a drone strike is far less beneficial. However...
Looking from the States' perspective, sending troops is bad for business. No one wants fallen soldiers and it's hard to deny a process that removes the risk. They are still effective at hitting their targets, just not so great at hitting only their targets. For that reason I'd say they should probably keep using them, but perhaps a little less recklessly and a little less often. The problem is they've put themselves in a tough position, lending itself to a drone-strike heavy option. Obama has been big on the idea of keeping soldiers out of the war zones, which, in a roundabout way, indirectly states they'll be up in the sky rather than on the ground. However, with fewer forces on the ground, accuracy for drone strikes decreases due to a lack of information coming in (coming back to the lack of prisoners, thus a lack of interrogation). It seems drone strikes are things to be used in tandem with regular forces. A weapon to be used to hit specific targets that cannot be safely (well, at least relatively) reached otherwise. Let's not ignore the fact that drones are high powered death machines that above all else get the job done.
Going all-out on drone strikes seems like it won't really solve the problem, and if anything, it'll perpetuate it. Taking out groups of people that may or may not be enemy combatants is going to inevitably rile up an already strong anti-American (anti-western world, really) sentiment. You may kill a terrorist, but you make him a martyr and two pop up in his place. Taking out soldiers who are shooting back is one thing, but a flying death machine wiping out a building is another. It'll breed hatred, and it's a nasty cycle. However, they can't really back out now so it looks like it'll just continue for a while.
Yeah, it's a downer.
Final answer? Yes. Use drone strikes. But stop using them all the freaking time.
So what really is the civilian count on the death toll?
This seems to vary widely. Like, ridiculously widely. We're talking some sources saying 2% of the kills are terrorists, while others say 2% of the kills are civilians. This is due to a number of factors, and the answer probably lies in a middle, shady grey, as most things in life tend towards. First off, it's incredibly hard to actually count up who is being killed. Typically a drone strike is done because they don't have any forces near it, meaning they can't just waltz in afterwards and count out who's dead. That means it comes through other sources, often local ones, and numbers can be fudged to push an agenda - positive or negative, depending on where you sit. So, that's problem number one - the info is loose, at best.
Problem number two is deciphering who is a terrorist. In my first blog in this series I spoke on the The Economist. It's a year old now, but it details (with cool graphics!) the drone deaths in Pakistan from when they started to now (if now was a year ago). In case you can't read the picture on the right, the numbers at the end are as follows: 190 children, 534 civilian, 52 high profile, and - here's the big one - 2565 other. What the heck is other? Other could mean so many things.
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| The prettiest way to demonstrate a massive death toll. |
From what I can tell, it's the vague "enemy killed in action" designation with maybe a few unclear hits mixed in. All of these numbers are fairly unreliable so they have to be taken with a grain of salt, but it does paint a fairly clear picture - they don't really know who they're killing, but they're probably bad. The question is, are they right to believe so?
Once more, it's a shade of grey. I'm going with a hardline stance on this one, and saying "yeah, probably".
Let's go through an example. They hit a terrorist training ground, hoping to kill one well known, verified terrorist. They blow it up, killing, say, fifty people. They're all males, between 18-35 years of age, and thus get tossed in to the "enemy killed in action" category, explaining why that's huge in comparison to the rest. If they're there, with a known terrorist, and they're all males of a certain age, there's a pretty good chance they're not exactly good-guys. Of course, this isn't always true - and they definitely make mistakes. Plenty of them. Once more, it's hard to form an opinion without all the information on the table - but I guess that's part of the problem, isn't it?
But they need to be verified or else it's an assassination. Right?
A big complaint is drone strikes shirk international law as the enemy is frequently not in a designated war zone and they're not brought to a full trial, deeming it an assassination and thus against whatever codes are in place for that. The response to this from the United States is a bit of a shrug, a bully on a schoolyard saying "well, what are you going to do about it?".
Anyways, I don't really buy this argument. There is always going to be collateral damage, always going to be unwanted, unjustified deaths and there will always be mistakes. It's the sad, terrible truth of war. The goal is to minimize these risks while still being able to achieve the goals the military is putting forth, but minimizing them is not a perfect science. (If I sound callous, remember I'm in favour of reducing drone strikes, just not eliminating them entirely.) Giving every enemy combatant a fair trial would be the ideal, but an impossible one considering the circumstances. As for hitting them outside of designated war zones... well, I hope they vet their targets well. Sadly that's not always true. But, that's not an inherent problem with drone strikes - that's a problem with using them too recklessly.
*I published this, thought on it harder, and immediately came back. To really make an educated statement on this, I feel you have to know so many outside factors. How do they designate war zones? What are the international laws in place? How are they enforced? Is the U.S. breaking them, and if they are do they do it brazenly? Battles are complicated, and nothing is ever as obvious as it seems. However, at the core, if they know a know there's a terrorist that's planning something and they have an opportunity to act on it... well... that's a tough one.*
Hey, we talked about surveillance, too. What's up with that? Is it bad? Will Edward Snowden soon be canonized?
You know, I'm going to take an unpopular opinion here and say that much of the surveillance technology is overall positive, although not necessarily used particularly well. Yeah, I know, I'm a government shill.
I'm not in the slightest worried about anyone reading, storing, or hacking my emails, texts, or what-have-you. Mass data collection means that inevitably no one will actually read it, save for if they're searching for someone or something more specifically. The more information there is, the less likely someone is going to see me text whatever mundane garbage I'm sending that day to my friends or the emails I keep getting from that shoe store I got something from that one time. I know it could have deeper consequences later, but the fact of the matter is it's not there yet. It's not that much of an issue for the average person right now, and honestly, I don't believe it will be. Yes, slippery slope and what not, but we can cross that bridge if we get there. If it legitimately helps to keep the peace I'm all for it.
However, it does have to be kept in check. Warrants should be needed, laws should be made for it, blah blah blah. Anything new will come with difficulties. As for the eight year old who was the suspected terrorist? Well, people just need to use some common sense and we'll all be fine.
Closing it out, a summary:
Drones are effective military technology, used far too often.
Bombing the middle east isn't really going to solve anything, but we're pretty much all in on it now so there's no way out now.
The surveillance state issue is an unnerving one but ultimately it just doesn't effect me enough to care.
The United States is probably evil, but not as evil as we're making them out to be most of the time.
Admittedly, I'm probably wrong on all of this, but I'm blessed with the knowledge that no one really cares what I think on it anyways. Nice.
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