Excellent review of the new book The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth by Mark Mazzetti.
Formulated more abstractly, the way we fight has a marked impact on when and why we fight. This is true despite what experts in the laws of war tell us about a theoretically watertight separation between jus in bello and jus ad bellum. Fighting in a way that limits the risk to one’s own troops makes it possible to fight limited-aims wars that don’t spiral into all-out wars for national survival. This, I think, is Obama’s best case for drone warfare. Land wars are ‘dumb’ because they almost inevitably involve mission creep as well as postwar responsibilities that US forces are poorly equipped to assume. Drone warfare is smart because, while helping dismantle terrorist organisations and disrupt terrorist plots, it involves less commitment on the American side, and is therefore much less likely to escalate out of control.
It is a good case, but not good enough. And it will certainly do nothing to satisfy drone warfare’s most far-seeing critics. To understand why not, we need to re-examine the sources of disquiet with drone warfare that such defences, however reasonable they sound, utterly fail to address. Doubts about Obama’s programme of targeted killing are not rooted in some dim notion that drone technology is especially creepy. Nor do its critics allege that killing the enemy without risking one’s own life is somehow cowardly. They do not deny the obvious fact that Obama has radically reduced the US military’s footprint in foreign countries. And they acknowledge that armed drones have been essential for dismantling the al-Qaida network in northwest Pakistan. As Mazzetti’s on the record interviews reveal, Obama’s harshest critics even agree that ‘the drone programme is the most effective covert-action programme in CIA history’ but nevertheless argue vehemently against the way drones are being deployed.
When we try to evaluate Obama’s decision to ‘embrace targeted-killing operations as the future of American warfare’, we need to make out what kind of future he has in mind. This is the crux of the problem. We stand at the beginning of the Drone Age and the genie is not going to climb back into the bottle. The chances that this way of war will, over time, reduce the amount of random violence in the world are essentially nil. Obama’s drone policy has set an ominous precedent, and not only for future residents of the White House. It promises, over the long term, to engender more violence than it prevents because it excites no public backlash. That, for the permanent national security apparatus that has deftly moulded the worldview of a novice president, is its irresistible allure. It doesn’t provoke significant protest even on the part of people who condemn hit-jobs done with sticky bombs, radioactive isotopes or a bullet between the eyes – in the style of Mossad or Putin’s FSB. That America appears to be laidback about drones has made it possible for the CIA to resume the assassination programme it was compelled to shut down in the 1970s without, this time, awakening any politically significant outrage. It has also allowed the Pentagon to wage a war against which antiwar forces are apparently unable to rally even modest public support.
Obama rightly boasts that he has extracted the country from land wars. But he is simultaneously sleepwalking it into new conflict zones around the world. He would presumably not be doing this had drone warfare not been an available option. In his 23 May speech, speaking about the war America launched in the wake of 9/11, he said: ‘this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.’ What he apparently meant to say was that he has found a way for this war to continue without penetrating the consciousness of US citizens. That is apparently what American democracy demands. The instrument that has allowed him to narrow the fight guarantees that the fight will go on. Obama came into office promising to restrict and reconfigure the country’s counterterrorism efforts, to bring them back within the rule of law. Instead, he too is fighting fire with fire. He continues to play according to bin Laden’s archaic playbook, perpetuating an endless post-9/11 revenge cycle, tit for tat. The Khost tragedy, where revenge against drone strikes justified further revenge strikes by drone, is a case in point.
Formulated more abstractly, the way we fight has a marked impact on when and why we fight. This is true despite what experts in the laws of war tell us about a theoretically watertight separation between jus in bello and jus ad bellum. Fighting in a way that limits the risk to one’s own troops makes it possible to fight limited-aims wars that don’t spiral into all-out wars for national survival. This, I think, is Obama’s best case for drone warfare. Land wars are ‘dumb’ because they almost inevitably involve mission creep as well as postwar responsibilities that US forces are poorly equipped to assume. Drone warfare is smart because, while helping dismantle terrorist organisations and disrupt terrorist plots, it involves less commitment on the American side, and is therefore much less likely to escalate out of control.
It is a good case, but not good enough. And it will certainly do nothing to satisfy drone warfare’s most far-seeing critics. To understand why not, we need to re-examine the sources of disquiet with drone warfare that such defences, however reasonable they sound, utterly fail to address. Doubts about Obama’s programme of targeted killing are not rooted in some dim notion that drone technology is especially creepy. Nor do its critics allege that killing the enemy without risking one’s own life is somehow cowardly. They do not deny the obvious fact that Obama has radically reduced the US military’s footprint in foreign countries. And they acknowledge that armed drones have been essential for dismantling the al-Qaida network in northwest Pakistan. As Mazzetti’s on the record interviews reveal, Obama’s harshest critics even agree that ‘the drone programme is the most effective covert-action programme in CIA history’ but nevertheless argue vehemently against the way drones are being deployed.
When we try to evaluate Obama’s decision to ‘embrace targeted-killing operations as the future of American warfare’, we need to make out what kind of future he has in mind. This is the crux of the problem. We stand at the beginning of the Drone Age and the genie is not going to climb back into the bottle. The chances that this way of war will, over time, reduce the amount of random violence in the world are essentially nil. Obama’s drone policy has set an ominous precedent, and not only for future residents of the White House. It promises, over the long term, to engender more violence than it prevents because it excites no public backlash. That, for the permanent national security apparatus that has deftly moulded the worldview of a novice president, is its irresistible allure. It doesn’t provoke significant protest even on the part of people who condemn hit-jobs done with sticky bombs, radioactive isotopes or a bullet between the eyes – in the style of Mossad or Putin’s FSB. That America appears to be laidback about drones has made it possible for the CIA to resume the assassination programme it was compelled to shut down in the 1970s without, this time, awakening any politically significant outrage. It has also allowed the Pentagon to wage a war against which antiwar forces are apparently unable to rally even modest public support.
Obama rightly boasts that he has extracted the country from land wars. But he is simultaneously sleepwalking it into new conflict zones around the world. He would presumably not be doing this had drone warfare not been an available option. In his 23 May speech, speaking about the war America launched in the wake of 9/11, he said: ‘this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.’ What he apparently meant to say was that he has found a way for this war to continue without penetrating the consciousness of US citizens. That is apparently what American democracy demands. The instrument that has allowed him to narrow the fight guarantees that the fight will go on. Obama came into office promising to restrict and reconfigure the country’s counterterrorism efforts, to bring them back within the rule of law. Instead, he too is fighting fire with fire. He continues to play according to bin Laden’s archaic playbook, perpetuating an endless post-9/11 revenge cycle, tit for tat. The Khost tragedy, where revenge against drone strikes justified further revenge strikes by drone, is a case in point.
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