Drones, Computer Viruses and Blowback
Another day, another senior al-Qaeda leader killed by a drone strike. (I cant be the first to point out that being al-Qaedas No. 2 is like being the drummer for Spinal Tap.)
Mitt Romney recently said that he gives Barack Obama an F grade across the board. Its hard to imagine he really feels that way about Obamas drone strikes. But itd be nice to hear more from both Romney and Obama about Americas new approach to warfare.
Not long ago, the rage in Washingtons foreign policy circles was the doctrine of counterinsurgency. COIN, as its known, was about face-to-face contact with local populations, winning their hearts and minds to enlist their help in battles against insurgent enemies. This template was designed specifically with Iraq and Afghanistan in mind. But there was also a sense that it would dominate military action for years to come. Heres an analysis predicting that the first Pentagon budget under Obama would institutionalize support for counterinsurgency. COIN caught on in part because it seemed a more enlightened and humane approach to warfare than, say, shock and awe. But it has come to disappoint many of its former cheerleaders, owing largely to its apparent failure in Afghanistan, along with the impracticality of its price tag in a budget-cutting era. Now it seems clear that the U.S.s future approach to Afghanistan will mean the opposite of COIN: drone strikes from the sky, requiring few if any boots on the ground, and no contact with the local population unless by contact you mean collateral damage that occasionally kills the neighbors of suspected terrorists. Were less likely to attend meetings with locals than, well, blow them up. You can look at General David Petraeus career trajectory from COIN visionary at the Pentagon to master drone hunter at the CIA as a metaphor for this national shift. And while none of this is new, last weeks New York Times story on President Obamas kill list drove home to many Americans just how central this approach is to Obamas national security strategy.
Using drones rather than soldiers to kill bad guys is appealing for many reasons, including cost, relative precision and reduction of risk to American troops. But its not a no-brainer. Theres plenty of evidence that drones antagonize local populations and, as Bob Wright frets, create more enemies over the long term than we kill in the short term. The failed 2010 Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad has said that about the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan. And the Washington Post has described how drone strikes may be breeding sympathy for al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Read more:
http://swampland.time.com/2012/06/05/drones-computer-viruses-and-blowback/