Hearts, Minds and Robots
We know a great deal, and think a great deal about the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whatever you might think about the wisdom and efficacy of these large-scale military occupations, the implications and consequences of them are broadly and regularly discussed. But there is a third conflict, one that gets reported regularly, but without details, context or critical analysis - the American war in Pakistan.We have, somehow, created and defined a "robot exception" as a justification for these deadly actions. We seem to believe that there is some kind of rule that says if you use unmanned, remote-controlled aircraft to bomb homes, cars and villages in Pakistan you are exempt from responsibility, or even any requirement to honor the sovereignty of an ally.
Credible reports indicate that in the last year, out of hundreds of Pakistanis killed in unmanned airstrikes, a total of 14 of them were al Quaeda operatives. Indeed, Pakistani intelligence estimates that these remote-controlled attacks have a success rate of six percent. The rest either miss the targets or target the wrong people, typically due to faulty, or worse, purposely misleading intelligence. It seems that our air war on Western Pakistan is most effective in it's support of warlords, drug traffickers andal Quaeda operators themselves who supply fake intelligence in order to goad the United States into attacking their enemies instead of our own.
This, of course, is something you are particularly vulnerable to if you don't have actual troops in the country where you're fighting. You lack much of the ability you might otherwise have to vet and verify the intel you get from the field, and you have human decision-makers in the loop to prevent accidents and manipulation. America's unwillingness to either fight the war or stop the attacks leaves us in an untenable position. Our robotic air attacks are counterproductive on every level - they increase anti-American sentiment among the Tribal populations, they contribute to Taliban and al Quaeda recruitment while they supply our enemies with access to an air force they otherwise wouldn't have. So we have to ask: Why does Obama continue to launch these strikes?
It at least must be considered that he knows something we don't. Perhaps these attacks are truly providing an effective counter to genuine al Quaeda operations, to the extent that the net outcomes are beneficial even in light of the counterproductive fallout from them. Certainly there is no evidence of that, and there are strong reasons to believe that even with good intelligence about an actual operation, drone attacks are more likely to miss or fail than any other method we could use to disrupt that operation. The conclusion I come to is Obama's reasons are simpler, and more craven. There would be some political exposure created if he ended these attacks, especially in light of his statements that Pakistan is the key battle in this fight. The political pressure would not be that great, but as long as there is no political pressure to end the Predator attacks, he keeps his strong, activist national security credibility without significant downside.
This robotic air war in Pakistan is killing hundreds, ruining thousands of lives and turning wide swaths of the Pakistani Tribal population into our enemies. It is wrong, inhuman, nothing but the robotic mass murder of proud, poor rural people who have no defense against it. If you were sickened and saddened by the depths that Bush and Cheney sunk to in order to drive their modern imperial agenda, at least we knew well they were barbarians, and their actions, no matter how brutal and authoritarian fell into a spectrum we expected of them. There is something sadder, and more shameful, that a man like Barack Obama continues those murderous policies for political expediency's sake.
posted by mikey @ 11:22 AM
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