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The never-ending ‘War on Terror’

By Ken Macnab - posted Thursday, 14 March 2013


Perhaps the most questionable aspect of the current phase of the ‘War on Terror’ is the expanding use of targeted killings using drone-fired missiles. This is justified by President Obama and other government officials as both a surgically precise and effective method of eliminating ‘known’ terrorists and causing less civilian death than conventional air strikes or ground forces.

The Pentagon now has about 7,000 aerial drones, compared with less than 50 ten years ago, and asked Congress for nearly $5 billion for drones in the 2012 budget. Secret ‘kill lists’ are used to select targets. Carried out mainly by the Central Intelligence Agency rather than the military, since Pakistan and other places such as Yemen are not zones of armed conflict, more than 300 drone strikes have killed some 2,500 people since Mr. Obama first took office.

In July 2009, the Brookings Institution released a report stating that ten civilians died for every militant killed by U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan. A more recent report, in September 2012, titled ‘Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from U.S. Drone Practices in Pakistan’, stated that civilians in north-west Pakistan were being ‘terrorised’ 24 hours a day by CIA drone attacks which targeted mainly low-level militants.

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While the numbers for civilian casualties were large, being possibly 1,000 or more, and numerous specific incidents were recorded, circumstances in Pakistan made accuracy impossible. There was ‘significant evidence’ of the practice of ‘double-tap’ strikes, in which rescuers at the scene were targeted in follow-up attacks.

The investigation, carried out by human rights researchers at Stanford and New York University law schools, was based on previous reportage and wide-ranging interviews with those affected (where this was permitted by the Pakistani Army). Their report emphasised the broader consequences of the practice – destruction of normal life, community fear, psychological trauma, disrupted school education and so on. The report stated bluntly that evidence for the effectiveness of the policy was ‘ambiguous at best’, and that:

In the U.S, the dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the U.S. safer by enabling 'targeted killings' of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts. This narrative is false.

Top former Obama officials, such as Security Adviser Michael Boyle and General Stanley McChrystal, provide chapter and verse refuting the many false claims about the accuracy and effectiveness of drones. In January 2013 an article by Boyle stated that the use of drones was counter-productive, less effective than the White House claimed, having serious ‘adverse strategic effects’ and was ‘encouraging a new arms race that will empower current and future rivals and lay the foundations for an international system that is increasingly violent’.

General McChrystal, who pioneered the use of drones in Afghanistan and applauded their usefulness, now warns about the consequences. Apart from being universally hated by all Afghanis, they create world-wide resentment against America. McChrystal said the use of drones exacerbated a ‘perception of American arrogance that says, “Well we can fly where we want, we can shoot where we want, because we can.”’ In short, ‘Might makes Right’. And ‘Critics are Traitors’.

What doesn’t get emphasised, because it is blatantly obvious, is that these policies are both illegal and immoral. But they are used by many other states, such as Israel in the Gaza Strip, and drones may well be supplied to ‘allies’ like Afghanistan and South Korea. In February 2013, it was reported that at drones were used by at least 50 countries, several of which, including Iran, Israel and China, made their own. Several commentators have warned of a drones-led arms race between China and Japan.

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According to the American Civil Liberties Union, drones are also increasingly used by domestic law enforcement agencies for surveillance in America itself. Congress has ordered the federal Aviation Agency to change airspace rules to facilitate this. Of course, the ‘rules’ do not as yet include any privacy protections, guidelines for usage, limits on data retention, methods of abuse prevention and accountability or stipulation of useable weaponry. Big Brother really will be watching.

Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration spent much of 2012 codifying and streamlining the processes that sustain it, to provide future administrations with the tools for operations expected to continue for the next decade and beyond. In November Greg Miller wrote in the Washington Post that this 'new blueprint for pursuing terrorists' involved 'a single, continually evolving database' incorporating both information about the targeted people and 'strategies for taking targets down, including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols'.

This involves the development by the National Counterterrorism Centre of composite 'kill lists' using Pentagon and CIA sources, decisions made without any due process or oversight on the 'disposition' of the targets, and the establishment of a secret targeting centre for the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command near Washington, rather than the normal targeting units near the theatre of operations. In short, a top-secret organisation makes death-dealing decisions executed by remote control from another secret command centre.

The ‘War on Terror’ has become automated. In late 2011 The U.S. Air Force said it was training more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined. An Air Force recruiting advertisement featuring drone technology proclaimed: ‘It's Not Science Fiction. It's What We Do Every Day.’ The claim that ‘human’ participation in the choice and execution of the target makes all this acceptable is arrant nonsense.

Obama's refusal to arrest or detain terrorist suspects, because of frustration with Guantanamo Bay and judicial complications, has resulted in a commitment simply to killing them. Miller quoted 'a former U.S. counterterrorism official involved in developing the matrix' as explaining the impetus behind the new system this way: 'We had a disposition problem.' What is being called, in truly Orwellian style, the 'disposition matrix', is becoming a major, long-term weapon in the 'war on terror'.

Moreover, the National Counterterrorism Centre already conducts a gigantic data-mining and surveillance ‘counter-terrorist’ operation aimed at American citizens, under newly revised guidelines, which increase its powers and weaken its accountability. The ACLU has long warned about this creation of a ‘surveillance state’, the cloak of secrecy, the abuse of power and destruction of civil liberties. The 'War on Terror' is further damaging the very values supposedly being defended by those pursuing it.

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About the Author

Dr Ken Macnab is an historian and President of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS) at the University of Sydney.

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