The Predator unmanned drone is an incredible weapon. Some consider it by far the most effective weapon we have against Al Qaeda. You don’t hear much about the Predator successes, because they usually occur in remote regions of Pakistan where reporters can’t go. But Predators are constantly on the prowl, and constantly taking out Bad Guys.
The New Yorker has the best long-form reporting you’ll find anywhere, and Jane Mayer, who mostly writes on military affairs, has become my favorite New Yorker writer. Last October she wrote a lengthy feature (is there any other kind in the New Yorker?) looking at how we use the Predator. It was fascinating.
There are two Predator programs. The military version operates in Afghanistan and Iraq as an extension of ground forces, with 200+ drones. The CIA’s program is aimed at terror suspects wherever they can be found, but mostly in Pakistan; the program isn’t officially acknowledged, and the number of Predators is unknown.
The CIA strikes require the president’s approval. President Obama has dramatically increased the number of Predator strikes, beginning with two strikes in Pakistan on his third day in office.
During his first nine months in office, Obama authorized more CIA aerial attacks in Pakistan than George Bush did in his final three years in office–over 40 strikes, or around one bombing a week. Those strikes had killed up to 538 people (Predators leave a lot of collateral damage, but you’ve got to have mixed feelings about folks who hang out around terrorists). Multiple drones constantly fly over Pakistan, looking for targets.
She writes about four Europeans who tried to join Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and who “described a life of constant fear and distrust among the militants, whose obsession with drone strikes had led them to communicate only with elaborate secrecy and to leave their squalid hideouts only at night.” Wouldn’t you be uptight if you knew a silent, invisible Predator circling above might fire a missile into you at any moment?
One Taliban leader the Pakistanis wanted killed was targeted by 16 missile strikes before we finally got him. Those first 15 strikes killed 207-321 people, depending on your information source. So that’s an issue our military leaders wrestle with.
How many innocent people is it okay to kill? John Radsan, a former CIA lawyer, put it like this: “If it’s Osama bin Laden in a house with a four-year-old, most people will say go ahead. But if it’s three or four children? Some say that’s too many. And if he’s in a school? Many say don’t do it.”
That gives insight into the difficult decisions military leaders in a values-laded country must make regarding terrorists who cowardly hide among innocent people.
