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On Drone Strikes (Updated)
Gah!!!
Chris: I do not care how many civilians drone strikes actually kill. And I do not care how many civilians Americans think drone strikes in Pakistan kill.
I care only about how many civilians Pakistanis think drone strikes kill. As one of the world's experts on Pakistani public opinion, you should be able to provide that number to me, right? Because all you can tell me right now is the Pakistani press is dutifully reporting whatever the Taliban tells them ... and I already know that. I don't care in the slightest about what Pakistani generals or the CIA is telling you behind closed doors. It does not matter. I care about what those Pakistani generals are telling their public. I care, in other words, less about reality as defined by verifiable facts and figures and more about reality as it is interpreted in Pakistan and within Pakistani diaspora communities.
Honestly, I have been making this point over and over again for a year now. But the only thing the CIA and other agencies and departments have done since then is to have stepped up their information operations campaign aimed at U.S. public opinion -- i.e. to have convinced Americans that drones are a good idea. But who cares, honestly, whether or not the Americans who read www.foreignpolicy.com know how many civilians die in drone attacks or think drones are a good idea? I certainly don't. I care more about the people who stand to be most easily radicalized by the strikes.
C'mon, dude, get out there, do some polling, crunch some numbers, and then come tell me I'm wrong. Until then, stop telling me what I and everyone else in America already knows.
Update: Some good commentary on drones from Mosharraf Zaidi here and here. (h/t Abu A.)
Update II: And this is exactly why drone strikes should be carried out by the military. This is actually a good news story. Mistakes were made, mistakes were acknowledged and investigated, and people were held accountable.
Update III: Hey, here's some damn good advice from a journal article co-authored by one C. Christine Fair:
Third, there is an urgent need for focused analyses of the impacts of policy interventions on both the supply of and demand for violence. U.S., Pakistani, and international agencies are not configured to rigorously evaluate the impacts of their programming. Given the state of knowledge in this area, policy implementers should be building impact evaluation into their programming, and they ought to establish a more robust process for disseminating the lessons learned.
What about the hypersonic
What about the hypersonic scramjet they fired up at Edwards? We got the Chinese now, baby. Drones are so minor league. Get with the program, AM, it's all about the ultra to hypersonic.
What's your alternative?
What's your alternative?
Your assessment of this
Your assessment of this critique is spot on. The American public's view of US/NATO activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan is largely irrelevant to the progress of the COIN operations there.
The important thing, and all the classical and contemporary COIN theorists say this, is gaining the support of the local population. Surely this is logical, given the fact that is these people we will eventually be leaving alone, to interact with each other, and then later with the outside world.
@JD, "The American public's
@JD,
"The American public's view of US/NATO activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan is largely irrelevant to the progress of the COIN operations there."
I have to wonder if this is high snark. But in case it isn't, the American public is 1) at risk themselves, 2) pay the Bills, 3) are the public the military and government exist to protect, 4) Are rapidly losing faith that said government is aware or cares about the first 3 things. So maybe making an IO effort with our people - you remember them, they pay for junkets and junk pop theories masquerading as strategy or policy - is in order.
Radicalization happens because people are radicalizing other people. It's the same everywhere. I doubt Allied bombing of Germany in WW2 made the Germans pro Allies. However at a certain point it did break their will. See Dresden.
We don't have many options for dealing with the Pak based Talib/AQ. Perhaps the Paks will tire of looking up for a buzzing sound and stop succoring them. Until then - repeat, repeat, repeat.
Unless AM wants to post the alternative. One that involves killing the bastards, please.
As a very casual observer
As a very casual observer with no military background, I wonder if the reason for the focus on US rather than Pakistani public opinion has something to do with Colin S Gray's 12 Reasons Why the US Can't Win Guerrilla Wars - Reason #10.
Is it true that Naval
Is it true that Naval Academy girls are Hornier than West Point girls?
American public opinion will
American public opinion will take center stage after a couple of attacks like the Times Square bombing succeed. One thing Pakistan public opinion may not appreciate is that more attacks like 9-11 in the US, then US public opinion will change. That change will lead to a change in political leadership and military philosophy and tactics by the US. COIN tactics will change to total war tactics.
I am glad that COIN succeeded in Iraq. I would like to see it succeed in Afghanistan. But Afghanistan is a much more expensive place from which to fight. As an American voter and taxpayer I want cost effective approaches to stop Islamic extremists from making terrorist attacks. The Ideology and funding for these attacks come from the Islamic world. The Islamic world needs to be given the message that they are responsible for stopping these attacks. The alternative is an existential war that is going to end badly for them.
Thank you, in identifying
Thank you, in identifying the perception held by the broad Pakistani community of the number of civilians killed by drone strikes you have identified a key metric; something that ought to be obvious but has been ignored or overlooked by too many.
Dearest Drone Foes Learn
Dearest Drone Foes
Learn lots of Urdu and Punjabi (as well as Hindi and some Dari), travel to Pakistan (as well as Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh and even Iran and other places in the near and far region) as often as I do, do the polling that I do...and then tell me what you know that is more informed. I am certainly amenable to learning new information rather than armchair pontification. And do read some of the more informed and nuanced Pakistani views such as that of Farhat Taj, a Pashtun who has been working to dispel these myths and other drivel about drones. You've cited--but apparently haven't digested--the intelligent and thoughtful commentary of my friend Mosharraf Zaidi.
I don't mean to be rude but your dogmatic attachment to bogus data is hurting US interests and Pakistani security. There is a reason why they are letting us conduct the drone strikes: we can do what they can't. It's simple.
You are just resistant to the facts that civilians are NOT (except in exceedingly small numbers) being killed by drone strikes in FATA. Who are you trying to appease?
And I think you can question whether or not Baitullah Masood's mother, who died with him in a drone strike while giving her murderous son a massage on the roof of their house, was innocent. She aided and abetted a mass murderer of Pakistanis (not Americans), which is a criminal offense in Pakistan and in most countries. I can see that conversation now "Are Beta, after a day of plotting the demise of innocents, you must be exhausted. Let me give you a massage. Would you prefer nariyal ka tel ya sarson ka tel?" (I can translate if you would like.)
Warmest
Christine Fair
Dearest Drone Foes Learn
Dearest Drone Foes
Learn lots of Urdu and Punjabi (as well as Hindi and some Dari), travel to Pakistan (as well as Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh and even Iran and other places in the near and far region) as often as I do, do the polling that I do...and then tell me what you know that is more informed. I am certainly amenable to learning new information rather than armchair pontification. And do read some of the more informed and nuanced Pakistani views such as that of Farhat Taj, a Pashtun who has been working to dispel these myths and other drivel about drones. You've cited--but apparently haven't digested--the intelligent and thoughtful commentary of my friend Mosharraf Zaidi.
I don't mean to be rude but your dogmatic attachment to bogus data is hurting US interests and Pakistani security. There is a reason why they are letting us conduct the drone strikes: we can do what they can't. It's simple.
You are just resistant to the facts that civilians are NOT (except in exceedingly small numbers) being killed by drone strikes in FATA. Who are you trying to appease?
And I think you can question whether or not Baitullah Masood's mother, who died with him in a drone strike while giving her murderous son a massage on the roof of their house, was innocent. She aided and abetted a mass murderer of Pakistanis (not Americans), which is a criminal offense in Pakistan and in most countries. I can see that conversation now "Are Beta, after a day of plotting the demise of innocents, you must be exhausted. Let me give you a massage. Would you prefer nariyal ka tel ya sarson ka tel?" (I can translate if you would like.)
Warmest
Christine Fair
"Do some polling, crunch
"Do some polling, crunch some numbers...."
Well didn't she?
And.She.Has.Called.You.Back.Out.
BTW the link you pointed at for the above excerpt didn't exactly support your argument on it's face, more like vitiate your philosophy.
Still waiting for that alternative plan?
Face it Dude - you are tragically PC. Which doesn't make it bad, just mistaken.
And you'd better start looking at the Buck Smith polling, above. One more good hard knock and it will be total war.
The attachment to bogus data
The attachment to bogus data is part of what I like to call (I use this all the time, probably too much), "progressive orientalism." Sorry, Abu M, I like you guys, but....
Pakistani society can't possibly be so nuanced or complicated as to have nuanced or complicated views, can it?
Oh, and by the way, how come
Oh, and by the way, how come this drone logic doesn't apply to aid monies? Don't that rile up public opinion, too, and yet increasing aid money dramatically is supposed to improve governance capacities?
Okay. If you say so.
from your link within Update
from your link within Update III (abstract):
"Taken together, these results suggest that commonly prescribed solutions to Islamist militancy—economic development, democratization, and the like—may be irrelevant at best and might even be counterproductive."
So, once more: how come the drone logic doesn't apply to aid?
I also don't understand the back and forth between the two of you. Isn't the correct answer - based on the polling data, such as it is - that we don't REALLY know how the drone campaign is affecting militancy in key constituencies? Or rather, if the positives outweigh the negatives?
As ever, I remain confused....
Let me try to bring together
Let me try to bring together the two positions...once again, a Pakistani is going to make the peace.
Andrew's original argument on drones, that they're bad policy because they are deeply unpopular is right on the money on both counts. They are bad public policy and they are, regardless of peripheral arguments, deeply unpopular.
Chris's argument, backed up not so much by her evidence, but her record on Pakistan, could also be right on the money. It could be that drones can be presented to Pakistanis as a non-secret, non-evil instrument of war that make Pakistan safer. The real argument Chris is making, and the one I am paying attention to, is that the USG needs to stop working the JSOC/CIA charade, denying what everybody knows, and start owning and selling what its doing. That's a perfectly legit position, notwithstanding the real data, which nobody can possibly know.
So in summary, Chris is kind of endorsing Andrew's original position, but for a different reason. The bottom line is that no matter how many innocent Pakistanis the drones kill or don't, the unpopularity of the programme makes them a bad choice.
It might be worth remembering that even one innocent civilian is too many. Drones and Pak military ops undermine McCOIN at its very core. That said, they may in fact represent the best among a menu of poisons. But until the US owns them, we may never know.
Mosharraf Zaidi,
Islamabad
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.a
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51706
CIA Drone Operators Oppose Strikes as Helping al Qaeda
By Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON, Jun 3, 2010 (IPS) - Some CIA officers involved in the agency's drone strikes programme in Pakistan and elsewhere are privately expressing their opposition to the programme within the agency, because it is helping al Qaeda and its allies recruit, according to a retired military officer in contact with them.
cont....
Bruce Hoffman makes some
Bruce Hoffman makes some good points about the Drone War in The National Interest: http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=23200
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