[Debate] The Rise of the Killer Drones: "a fleet of 19, 000 drones, " killing "more than 800 civilians"

[Riaz K Tayob]

    Could We Stop "Signature" Drone Strikes in Yemen and Pakistan?

Saturday, 28 April 2012 08:44 By Robert Naiman, Truthout 
<http://truth-out.org> | News Analysis

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US Drone(Photo: Miranda Moorer / Flickr 
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/anhonorablegerman/6949852920/>)The US 
government has been increasingly carrying out drone strikes in countries 
with which America is not at war, and killing people with drone strikes 
who have no dispute with the United States. Last week, The Washington 
Post reported 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-seeks-new-authority-to-expand-yemen-drone-campaign/2012/04/18/gIQAsaumRT_story.html>that 
the CIA had asked for authority to expand its drone strike campaign in 
Yemen by launching strikes even when it does not know the identities of 
those who could be killed. Such "signature strikes" allow the CIA to hit 
targets based solely on intelligence indicating patterns of "suspicious 
behavior."

But such "signature strikes" increase the risk of killing innocent 
civilians, as well as the risk of killing people who have no dispute 
with the United States. This week, The New York Times 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/world/middleeast/us-to-step-up-drone-strikes-inside-yemen.html> 
and The Washington Post 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/white-house-approves-broader-yemen-drone-campaign/2012/04/25/gIQA82U6hT_story.html> 
reported that authority to expand the drone war in Yemen had been granted.

According to last week's Washington Post report 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-seeks-new-authority-to-expand-yemen-drone-campaign/2012/04/18/gIQAsaumRT_story.html>, 
some US officials voiced concern that incidents in which civilians and 
local insurgents who are not related to attacks on the US are killed 
could become more frequent if the CIA is given the authority to use 
signature strikes in Yemen. "How discriminating can they be?" asked a 
senior US official. Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen "is joined at the hip" 
with a local insurgency whose main goal is to oust Yemen's government, 
the official said: "I think there is the potential that we would be 
perceived as taking sides in a civil war." Already - even without this 
proposed expansion in CIA authority to carry out signature strikes - the 
Long War Journal estimated 
<http://www.longwarjournal.org/multimedia/Yemen/code/Yemen-strike.php>that 
the US had killed 48 civilians with drone strikes in Yemen since 2009.

The Washington Post noted that "signature" drone strikes have been part 
of the CIA's drone program in Pakistan for several years. But such 
strikes have been very controversial in Pakistan and they are now 
largely stopped there, The Associated Press reported 
<http://news.yahoo.com/us-officials-drone-strikes-pakistan-193345628.html> 
on April 13: "the White House has raised the bar to who the CIA is 
allowed to target, applying new limits and all but curtailing so-called 
'signature strikes' where CIA targeters deemed certain groups and 
behavior as clearly indicative of militant activity."

In defending the drone strikes in Pakistan in remarks in January, 
President Obama claimed that the strikes targeted "people who are on a 
list of active terrorists 
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16804247>." But as The New 
York Times subsequently pointed out 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/asia/us-drone-strikes-are-said-to-target-rescuers.html>, 
"American officials familiar with the rules governing the strikes and 
who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that many missiles had been 
fired at groups of suspected militants who are not on any list. These 
so-called signature strikes are based on assessments that men carrying 
weapons or in a militant compound are legitimate targets."

The fact that President Obama would claim that drone strikes only target 
"people who are on a list" in Pakistan when that hasn't been true in the 
past, the report that the White House has subsequently curtailed such 
signature strikes in Pakistan and the report that senior US officials 
oppose giving the CIA authority to conduct signature strikes in Yemen 
suggest that such strikes are particularly controversial and politically 
vulnerable.

Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani, a Yemeni political analyst and head of a group 
that campaigns for democracy, recently told 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/world/middleeast/militants-and-politics-bedevil-yemens-new-president.html> 
The New York Times that increased US military involvement in Yemen could 
inflame the situation in southern Yemen, and possibly draw in more 
foreign fighters. "I think it is going to be counterproductive," he 
said. "We have new leadership. The Yemeni military should deal with this 
itself."

The administration appears to be involving us in a new war in Yemen 
without Congress having authorized a new war, and without significant 
public debate having taken place.

But we can still do something about this. The fact that signature 
strikes have reportedly been curtailed in Pakistan suggests that 
signature strikes can also be curtailed in Yemen. Until now, there has 
been very little effort to engage the public on the side of American 
diplomats who want drone strikes to be sharply limited to targeting 
people known to be planning attacks on the United States. It's time for 
that to change, and we have to start somewhere. Urge 
<http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/signature-strikes> President Obama 
and your representatives in Congress to reject the use of signature 
drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan.



On 2012/04/29 04:43 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> <http://bit.ly/INskfC>
> The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret
> An inside look at how killing by remote control has changed the way we fight.
> by: Michael Hastings
>
> . . . .
>
> The incident also underscored the increasingly central role that
> drones now play in American foreign policy. During the invasion of
> Iraq in 2003, the military conducted only a handful of drone missions.
> Today, the Pentagon deploys a fleet of 19,000 drones, relying on them
> for classified missions that once belonged exclusively to Special
> Forces units or covert operatives on the ground. American drones have
> been sent to spy on or kill targets in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan,
> Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia and Libya. Drones routinely patrol the
> Mexican border, and they provided aerial surveillance over Osama bin
> Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In his first three years,
> Obama has unleashed 268 covert drone strikes, five times the total
> George W. Bush ordered during his eight years in office. All told,
> drones have been used to kill more than 3,000 people designated as
> terrorists, including at least four U.S. citizens. In the process,
> according to human rights groups, they have also claimed the lives of
> more than 800 civilians. Obama's drone program, in fact, amounts to
> the largest unmanned aerial offensive ever conducted in military
> history; never have so few killed so many by remote control.
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