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In the eyes of many around
the world, diplomacy has taken a back seat to military operations in U.S. foreign
policy. The drone program is a prime example.
BY ANN WRIGHT
The MQ-9 Reaper, a combat drone, in flight.
Wikimedia Commons / Ricky Best
The militarization of U.S.
foreign policy certainly didn’t start with President Donald J. Trump; in fact,
it goes back several decades. However, if Trump’s first 100 days in office are
any indication, he has no intention of slowing down the trend.
During a single week in April,
the Trump administration fired 59 Tomahawk missiles into a Syrian airfield, and
dropped the largest bomb in the U.S. arsenal on suspected ISIS tunnels in
Afghanistan. This 21,600-pound incendiary percussion device that had never been
used in combat—the Massive Ordinance Air Blast or MOAB, colloquially known as
the “Mother of All Bombs”—was used in the Achin district of Afghanistan, where
Special Forces Staff Sergeant Mark De Alencar had been killed a week earlier.
(The bomb was tested only twice, at Elgin Air Base, Florida, in 2003.)
To underscore the new
administration’s preference for force over diplomacy, the decision to
experiment with the explosive power of the mega-bomb was taken unilaterally by
General John Nicholson, the commanding general of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
In praising that decision, Pres. Trump declared that he had given “total
authorization” to the U.S. military to conduct whatever missions they wanted,
anywhere in the world—which presumably means without consulting the interagency
national security committee.
It is also telling that Pres.
Trump chose generals for two key national security positions traditionally
filled by civilians: the Secretary of Defense and the National Security
Advisor. Yet three months into his administration, he has left unfilled
hundreds of senior civilian governmental positions at State, Defense and
elsewhere.
An Increasingly Shaky Ban
Members of the New York Air National Guard’s 1174th Fighter Wing Maintenance Group place chalks on a MQ-9 Reaper after it returned from a winter training mission at Wheeler Sack Army Airfield, Fort Drum, N.Y., Feb. 14, 2012.
Wikimedia Commons / Ricky Best
While Pres. Trump has not yet
enunciated a policy on the subject of political assassinations, there has so
far been no indication that he plans to change the practice of relying on drone
killings established by his recent predecessors.
Back in 1976, however, President
Gerald Ford set a very different example when he issued his Executive Order 11095. This proclaimed that
“No employee of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to
engage in, political assassination.”
He instituted this prohibition
after investigations by the Church Committee (the Senate Select Committee to
Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired
by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho) and the Pike Committee (its House counterpart,
chaired by Rep. Otis G. Pike, D-N.Y.) had revealed the extent of the Central
Intelligence Agency’s assassination operations against foreign leaders in the
1960s and 1970s.
With a few exceptions, the next
several presidents upheld the ban. But in 1986, President Ronald Reagan ordered
an attack on Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s home in Tripoli, in retaliation
for the bombing of a nightclub in Berlin that killed a U.S. serviceman and two
German citizens and injured 229. In just 12 minutes, American planes dropped 60
tons of U.S. bombs on the house, though they failed to kill Gaddafi.
Twelve years later, in 1998,
President Bill Clinton ordered the firing of 80 cruise missiles on al-Qaida
facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan, in retaliation for the bombings of U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Clinton administration justified the action
by asserting that the proscription against assassination did not cover
individuals whom the U.S. government had determined were connected to
terrorism.
Days after al-Qaida carried out
its Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, President George W. Bush
signed an intelligence “finding” allowing the Central Intelligence Agency to
engage in “lethal covert operations” to kill Osama bin Laden and destroy his
terrorist network. White House and CIA lawyers argued that this order was
constitutional on two grounds. First, they embraced the Clinton
administration’s position that E.O. 11905 did not preclude the United States’
taking action against terrorists. More sweepingly, they declared that the ban
on political assassination did not apply during wartime.
Send in the Drones
The Bush administration’s
wholesale rejection of the ban on targeted killing or political assassinations
reversed a quarter-century of bipartisan U.S. foreign policy. It also opened
the door to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to conduct targeted killings (a
euphemism for assassinations).
The U.S. Air Force had been
flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), since the 1960s, but only as unmanned
surveillance platforms. Following 9/11, however, the Department of Defense and
the Central Intelligence Agency weaponized “drones” (as they were quickly
dubbed) to kill both leaders and foot soldiers of al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The United States set up bases in
Afghanistan and Pakistan for that purpose, but after a series of drone attacks
that killed civilians, including a large group gathered for a wedding, the
Pakistani government ordered in 2011 that the U.S. drones and U.S. military
personnel be removed from its Shamsi Air Base. However, targeted assassinations
continued to be conducted in Pakistan by drones based outside the country.
In 2009, President Barack Obama
picked up where his predecessor had left off. As public and congressional
concern increased about the use of aircraft controlled by CIA and military
operators located 10,000 miles away from the people they were ordered to kill,
the White House was forced to officially acknowledge the targeted killing
program and to describe how persons became targets of the program.
Instead of scaling the program
back, however, the Obama administration doubled down. It essentially designated
all military-age males in a foreign strike zone as combatants, and therefore
potential targets of what it termed “signature strikes.” Even more disturbing,
it declared that strikes aimed at specific, high-value terrorists, known as
“personality strikes,” could include American citizens.
That theoretical possibility soon
became a grim reality. In April 2010, Pres. Obama authorized the CIA to
“target” Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and a former imam at a Virginia
mosque, for assassination. Less than a decade before, the Office of the
Secretary of the Army had invited the imam to participate in an interfaith
service following 9/11. But al-Awlaki later became an outspoken critic of the
“war on terror,” moved to his father’s homeland of Yemen, and helped al-Qaida
recruit members.
The Bush administration’s wholesale rejection of the ban on
targeted killing opened the door to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to
conduct targeted killings.
On Sept. 30, 2011, a drone strike
killed al-Awlaki and another American, Samir Khan—who was traveling with him in
Yemen. U.S. drones killed al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al- Awlaki,
an American citizen, 10 days later in an attack on a group of young men around
a campfire. The Obama administration never made clear whether the 16-year-old
son was targeted individually because he was al-Awlaki’s son or if he was the
victim of a “signature” strike, fitting the description of a young military age
male. However, during a White House press conference, a reporter asked Obama
spokesman Robert Gibbs how he could defend the killings, and especially the
death of a U.S.-citizen minor who was “targeted without due process, without
trial.”
Gibbs’ response did nothing to
help the U.S. image in the Muslim world: “I would suggest that you should have
had a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the
well-being of their children. I don’t think becoming an al-Qaida jihadist
terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.”
On Jan. 29, 2017, al-Awlaki’s
8-year-old daughter, Nawar al-Awlaki, was killed in a U.S. commando attack in
Yemen ordered by Obama’s successor, Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the media continued to
report incidents of civilians being killed in drone strikes across the region,
which frequently target wedding parties and funerals. Many inhabitants of the
region along the Afghan-Pakistan border could hear the buzz of drones circling
their area around the clock, causing psychological trauma for all those who
live in the area, especially children.
The Obama administration was
strongly criticized for the tactic of “double-tap”—hitting a target home or
vehicle with a Hellfire missile, and then firing a second missile into the
group that came to the aid of those who had been wounded in the first attack. Many
times, those who ran to help rescue persons trapped inside collapsed buildings
or flaming cars were local citizens, not militants.
An Increasingly
Counterproductive Tactic
The rationale traditionally
offered for using drones is that they eliminate the need for “boots on the
ground”—whether members of the armed forces or CIA paramilitary personnel—in
dangerous environments, thereby preventing loss of U.S. lives. U.S. officials
also claim that the intelligence UAVs gather through lengthy surveillance makes
their strikes more precise, reducing the number of civilian casualties. (Left
unsaid, but almost certainly another powerful motivator, is the fact that the
use of drones means that no suspected militants would be taken alive, thus
avoiding the political and other complications of detention.)
Even if these claims are true,
however, they do not address the impact of the tactic on U.S. foreign policy.
Of broadest concern is the fact that drones allow presidents to punt on
questions of war and peace by choosing an option that appears to offer a middle
course, but actually has a variety of long-term consequences for U.S. policy,
as well as for the communities on the receiving end.
By taking the risk of loss of
U.S. personnel out of the picture, Washington policymakers may be tempted to
use force to resolve a security dilemma rather than negotiating with the
parties involved. Moreover, by their very nature, UAVs may be more likely to
provoke retaliation against America than conventional weapons systems. To many
in the Middle East and South Asia, drones represent a weakness of the U.S.
government and its military, not a strength. Shouldn’t brave warriors fight on
the ground, they ask, instead of hiding behind a faceless drone in the sky,
operated by a young person in a chair many thousands of miles away?
Drones allow presidents to punt on questions of war and peace by
choosing an option that appears to offer a middle course, but actually has a
variety of long-term consequences for U.S. policy.
Since 2007, at least 150 NATO
personnel have been the victims of “insider attacks” by members of the Afghan
military and national police forces being trained by the coalition. Many of the
Afghans who commit such “green on blue” killings of American personnel, both
uniformed and civilian, are from the tribal regions on the border of
Afghanistan and Pakistan where U.S. drone strikes have focused. They take
revenge for the deaths of their families and friends by killing their U.S.
military trainers.
Anger against drones has surfaced
in the United States as well. On May 1, 2010, Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad
attempted to set off a car bomb in Times Square. In his guilty plea, Shahzad
justified targeting civilians by telling the judge, “When the drone hits in
Afghanistan and Iraq, they don’t see children, they don’t see anybody. They
kill women, children; they kill everybody. They’re killing all Muslims.”
As of 2012 the U.S. Air Force was
recruiting more drone pilots than pilots for traditional aircraft—between 2012
and 2014, they planned to add 2,500 pilots and support people to the drone
program. That is nearly twice the number of diplomats the State Department
hires in a two-year period.
Congressional and media concern
over the program led to the Obama administration’s acknowledgment of the
regular Tuesday meetings led by the president to identify targets for the
assassination list. In the international media, “Terror Tuesdays” became an
expression of U.S. foreign policy.
Not Too Late
To many around the world, U.S.
foreign policy has been dominated for the past 16 years by military actions in
the Middle East and South Asia, and large land and sea military exercises in
Northeast Asia. On the world stage, American efforts in the areas of economics,
trade, cultural issues and human rights appear to have taken a back seat to the
waging of continuous wars.
Continuing the use of drone
warfare to carry out assassinations will only exacerbate foreign distrust of
American intentions and trustworthiness. It thereby plays into the hands of the
very opponents we are trying to defeat.
During his campaign, Donald Trump
pledged he would always put “America First,” and said he wanted to get out of
the business of regime change. It is not too late for him to keep that promise
by learning from his predecessors’ mistakes and reversing the continued
militarization of U.S. foreign policy.
Ann Wright spent 29 years
in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves, retiring as a colonel. She served 16 years
in the Foreign Service in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan,
Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia, and led the small team that reopened the
U.S. embassy in Kabul in December 2001. She resigned in March 2003 in
opposition to the war on Iraq, and is co-author of the book Dissent: Voices of
Conscience (Koa, 2008). She speaks around the world about the militarization of
U.S. foreign policy and is an active participant in the U.S. anti-war movement.
The views
expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of
the Department of State, the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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