America’s Deadly Robots Rewrite the Rules of War
by Paul McGeough
The kohl-eyed Hakimullah Mehsud probably is dead. He was the target for a missile fired last month from an unmanned aircraft hovering over the Afghan-Pakistani border – but launched by an operator in the US.
Mehsud was the ruthless mastermind of multiple suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan. He was part of a suicide mission on December 30 at Khost, just across the border in Afghanistan, which killed seven CIA agents who were working on the covert operation that now appears to have ended Mehsud’s brief and brutal leadership of the Taliban in Pakistan.
In the artistry of war, the insertion of a Jordanian double-agent who detonated his explosive vest inside this super-sensitive CIA bunker was flawless. But, in their payback, the enraged Americans confirmed the breadth of a new horizon in modern warfare – launching 15 clinical drone attacks in which more than 100 people died along the border, as Washington’s electronic eyes and guns sought out Mehsud and his Taliban and al-Qaeda allies.
War does not get more radical than this – technically, politically and, perhaps, ethically.
Consider: for the first time ever, a civilian intelligence agency is manipulating robots from halfway around the world in a program of extrajudicial executions in a country with which Washington is not at war.
Consider, too: the drone wars were initiated under the presidency of George Bush. But it is the Democrat Barack Obama who has given them flight and stumped up sufficient funding to spark serious debate on the end of the ”Top Gun” era of the fighter-pilot.
And there is this: despite decades of American disquiet about assassinations abroad and a shrill Republican critique of him as a security wuss, the professorial Obama is the new killer on the block, authorising more drone attacks in the first year of his term in office than Bush did in his entire presidency.
At the White House these days they hold their breath, praying for a turnaround in the war in Afghanistan to vindicate Obama’s gamble in dispatching 50,000 more young Americans to a conflict some deem unwinnable.
But confidence in the use of state-sanctioned lethal force in the undeclared American war in neighbouring and nuclear-armed Pakistan borders on the giddy. “The only game in town” was how CIA director Leon Panetta described it last year.
As a covert operation, insufficient data is released to judge its efficacy. It took publication by the Pakistani media of Google Earth images of Predator aircraft on the ground at a base in Pakistan to elicit oblique CIA confirmation that the program actually operated there. Last month a CIA spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, only said the agency’s ”counter-terrorism operations – lawful, aggressive, precise and effective – continue without pause”.
Mehsud’s is an impressive scalp of war – for Washington and Islamabad. He had been in the leadership post for just five months after his predecessor of two years, Baitullah Mehsud, suffered a similar fate in August.
The first drone strikes of the new presidency took place on Obama’s third day in office – four Arabs, presumed to be al-Qaeda associates, died in a strike in the border region. But as many as 16 members of the extended family of a respected pro-government tribal elder died when the second drone strike that day went terribly awry.
A study by the New America Foundation last year found that just six of 41 CIA-launched drone attacks in the border region had targeted al-Qaeda members. Eighteen of the targets were Taliban and 16 of them alone were efforts to kill Baitullah Mehsud – which, depending on who did the counting, racked up more than 300 additional civilian deaths.
Body-counting is a fraught business. Called Revenge of the Drones, the NAF study concluded that, since January 2008, the American kill has included ”about 20 leaders of al-Qaeda, the Taliban and allied groups … in addition to hundreds of lower-level militants and civilians. Under President Obama, the strikes have taken out at most [a] half-dozen militant leaders while also killing as many as 530 others – of those, around 250 to 400 are reported to have been lower-level militants, about three-quarters; and about a quarter appear to have been civilians.”
The number of civilian deaths and their implication are hotly debated – because of the extent to which they inflame anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and because the vaporised death of a target denies any opportunity to capture and interrogate him.
Writing in The New York Times, the counter-insurgency experts David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum decried the toll. Citing a civilian figure of 700, they extrapolated a civilian loss of 98 per cent of deaths or 50 civilians for each militant eliminated.
Bill Roggio, the managing editor of the respected American blog The Long War Journal, goes to the other extreme, claiming only 10 per cent of those killed could be described as civilians.
After a detailed study of media and other reports from the border region, Revenge of the Drones takes a middle course, opting for a civilian toll of about one-third of those killed.
Just like their political and military leaders, Pakistanis give conflicting signals on the drone wars. Last summer a Gallup poll found only 10 per cent support for the attacks, but about half in a study of 550 professional people living in the border region described the strikes as accurate, and a little more than half estimated that the strikes damaged the militants without increasing anti-US sentiment.
The changed ground rules making extrajudicial killing more acceptable are a product of post-September 11 thinking. In 2001 Bush overturned President Gerald Ford’s 1976 prohibition on assassinations by US intelligence agencies – but there’s something else in the works, too.
Despite its loyalty to Israel, the Bush administration condemned Israel’s campaign of targeted assassinations in the Palestinian Occupied Territories in the weeks before the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. But, as critics of the drone wars struggle to get traction in public debate, it is curious that in the absence of any negative reaction to Obama’s expansion of his remote killing program last year, the former Bush administration was under attack for revelations that it had considered dispatching more traditional hit-squads abroad to take out al-Qaeda operatives.
Forty-four countries now use unmanned aircraft for surveillance – only the US and Israel deploy them as killers.
In the first weeks of his presidency Obama reportedly wrestled with the moral and strategic implications of the program. But, as reported in The New York Times, he pointedly declared to one of his earliest Situation Room gatherings: “The CIA gets what it needs.”
The American Civil Liberties Union explained in a Freedom of Information application last month: “It appears … that lethal force is being exercised by individuals who are not in the military chain of command, are not subject to military rules and discipline; and do not operate under any other public system of accountability or oversight.”
A Democrat’s targeted killings, it seems, are not quite the same as those of a Republican.
The first drones flew before the September 11 attacks – searching for Osama bin Laden. Now the US Air Force estimates that about 15 per cent of its $US230 billion ($260 billion) arms-procurement program will be spent on robot equipment within five years.
Predators can fly 700 kilometres, then hover for 30 hours at a stretch, feeding real-time video and other data through 10 simultaneous streams to controllers in 10 locations. Priced at $US4.5 million, Predators carry sensors that intercept electronic signals and listen in on phone conversations – and they carry missiles. The newer Reapers cost $US17 million and can fly nearly 6000 kilometres.
The US Air Force now has more drone operators in training than fighter and bomber pilots.
© Copyright 2010 Fairfax Digital
“Consider, too: the drone wars were initiated under the presidency of George Bush. But it is the Democrat Barack Obama who has given them flight and stumped up sufficient funding to spark serious debate on the end of the ”Top Gun” era of the fighter-pilot.
And there is this: despite decades of American disquiet about assassinations abroad and a shrill Republican critique of him as a security wuss, the professorial Obama is the new killer on the block, authorising more drone attacks in the first year of his term in office than Bush did in his entire presidency.”
When are Progressive Democrats going to wake up to the truth that Obama lied to all of us when he said he would end this war? He not only is not ending this war, but has expanded it and has done more in this first year than Bush did in his entire presidency. President Obama is not the man Progressives thought he was when they voted for him. Yes, Obama is the new killer on the block.
When are Progressive Democrats going to face the truth and stop making excuses for Obama and continue to blame everything on Bush. Obama is the one at the helm these days and not Bush. Democrats are the one in power these days and they are no different than Republicans and lets face it they are worst when it comes to this WAR!!!!!!!!!!!!
The question I have is what are Progressives going to do about this? Are we going to be fooled again into thinking that the Democrats are going to bring the real change that Progressives want? Will Progressives swollow up the crumbs that Democrats offer them? I hope and pray not. We know the Republicans are just another face of the same corporate party. So what do we as Progressives do in the upcoming election this year?
I know that some believe that we can’t achieve anything by joining and supporting the Green Party and working hard to find Progressives who would make good candidates to run for local and state office. I believe that we have time to start building on the foundation of the Green party. We start small and as we continue to win more seats on the local and state level we gain experience we need to move on to the federal level. I just don’t see how voting for the least evil is going to be the solution to the evil corruption that is overtaking our government. By voting for the least of two evils one is still voting for evil.
We have the youth on our side and if they were to channel their anger and frustration into helping the Green party winning seats on the local and state level we might just start seeing results. Instead of just staying home and giving up on the political process, I hope they will see that the Green Party can be the Progressive party for the people.
Sometimes I wonder if their is a will in the American people to fight? Have we lost the will to fight for what is morally right, our freedom, and for truth and justice? Sometimes I think because we don’t have a free press but a corporate media that Americans are not educated or informed enough to realize that America is standing at the edge of a cliff and that we might just go off that cliff. Our Constitution is being shredded and yet Americans just accept the lie that the American Patriot Act is for their own good and keeps them safe from terriorist attacks.
Here is a comment from Common Dreams which I wanted to post here because I wanted to comment on it.
“One day, I fear, this country will itself be occupied by foreign troops, who will use killer drones to hunt down those Americans who resist … or a future US dictatorship will use them on its own citizenry to terrorize them into compliance.
What goes around comes around, y’know; think Hosea 8:7.” Paul from GA maid that comment.
I fear the one day your fear will come true. As the American people start to wake up to the truth and some Americans will start fighting the evil corruption to end their control over our government; I fear that our own government will start using those weapons on those Americans who refuse to submit and accept the new America. Most Americans will just submit and accept and won’t fight as long as they can deceive themselves into thinking that we still have the America that was founded by our fore fathers. On the outside it will still look like the same America but inside it is not.
In some ways it is like a science fiction movie that allians take over the body of humans. On the outside it still looks like the human being but inside is an allian who has taken over that body. I look at America like that. Our government is corrupted and doesn’t do what is best for the American people anymore, but they put on a show to make the American people think they are doing what is best for them. Yet the reality is that they serve their corporate masters who tell them what to do.
People from the far right and far left know that something isn’t right. They understand that our Constitution is be shreeded up through a paper shredder. We Progressives say it is corporate control of our government and the Far Right White Nationalists say it is Jewish control. Progressives, Conservatives, White Nationalists all say they love America and are fighting to save her. People from all political views know this war is wrong and what we are doing is wrong and that someday we are going to have to face the music for our actions.
At one time I asked myself would it be possible for all of us Americans who can see the truth about our government being corrupted work together to fight the evil corruption that has overtaken our government? I didn’t think we would all sit around the camp fire smoking the peace pipe and holding hands singing about love; but I wondered if in our own little spere that we could all work toward the same goal and help each other when the other side needed help. Like in the American Revolution the North and South had to put aside their differences and work together to win victory; I think it is going to take all of us as Americans to work together to save this country that was founded by our ancestors.
I know I want us to fight. I love this country so much that I am willing to die to save her from going off that cliff. I am willing to pick up the sword that those who walked before me used when they fought. How many people are willing to fight and risk their lives fighting against this evil corruption that is destroying the America that was founded by our Founding Fathers? How many true American Patriots do we have left who know the truth and are willing to fight? I hear a lot of excuses why one can’t join the fight. Some of those excuses might be valid and others are lame; but if one is not willing to stand up and fight and wants to do nothing than that is the same as surrendering. I think that is what breaks my heart is that to many Americans make excuses on why they can’t join the fight to save this country from going off the cliff.
For every action there is a Cause and Effect. Our nation will be judged one day for all that we are doing over there. We won’t like what could be coming down the pike for us. Yes, I fear that one day those weapons will be used on those of us who refuse to submit and obey those in our government who already do these terrible things to other people. We went from the most loved to the most hated nation. We went from a light of hope in the world to the nation most feared because of our actions in this war. I don’t know if there is time to save this nation or if we need to accpet the fact that the America that was founded by the Fore fathers is dead.
Robots are impressive tools of war. But robots will never be a substitute for human.
At the end of the day, the number of boots on the ground will decide the winner and the loser.
The US robots will never be able to match China’s numbers, nor decide the outcome of a war in the future.
Neel, thank you for your comment.