Drones Save American Lives

COMMENTARY Defense

Drones Save American Lives

Sep 25, 2011 2 min read
COMMENTARY BY
James Jay Carafano

Senior Counselor to the President and E.W. Richardson Fellow

James Jay Carafano is a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges.

No war can be won by defense alone. There is a reason White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan recently felt confident enough to declare that al-Qaida was “on the ropes.” Progress came from taking the offensive. A decade of strenuous effort to disrupt terrorist sanctuaries, take out leaders, pre-empt planning and operations, disaggregate networks, thwart terrorist travel and communications, and disrupt fundraising and recruiting is paying off.

And, without question, the drone missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas have helped put al-Qaida on the defensive. Similar operations conducted against an al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen have paid dividends as well.

The results speak for themselves. Successful terrorist attacks on U.S. targets — both at home and overseas — have been on a continual rate of decline since 2005.

The efficacy of drone strikes is unquestionable. As an act of war, such strikes also meet the test of proportionality. That is: (1) they employ a level of force consonant with the goal of the operation; (2) the attacks are not indiscriminate; and (3) the operations take reasonable precautions to safeguard the lives of innocents.

That said, drone strikes alone can’t and won’t win this war. And a war plan built principally around playing whack-a-mole with terrorist leaders will likely create more problems than it solves.

That’s worrisome, because under President Obama’s counterterrorism strategy, that appears to be the path he intends to follow in fighting the Long War.

Obama has embraced a “small footprint” strategy for overseas operations, relying primarily on Special Forces operations, covert action, and strikes with unmanned aerial vehicles.

Without persistent presence and engagement in and around the terrorist’s home ground, the United States will lack the real-time actionable intelligence necessary to target terrorists effectively and to suppress insurgencies successfully.

Without that presence and engagement, drone strikes increasingly will become shots in the dark — missing their targets, killing the wrong people, and inflaming local animosity.

What’s worse, peoples who only see the American presence as a sudden fireball in their neighborhoods will have little incentive or motivation to take sides against terror. Worst of all, Obama’s “new and improved” strategy ignores the real problem.

Global insurgency

Al-Qaida is not simply another terrorist group. Osama bin Laden’s gang trained thousands of mujahidin during the 1990s and spread them throughout the Muslim world. It has been building a global insurgency. Drone strikes can be a successful tactic for hunting down the leaders of terrorist groups, but attrition alone is counterproductive when combating an insurgency.

If America wants to safeguard them and protect the homeland from enemies who roam far from our shores, it must commit all the resources necessary. Drone strikes are a reasonable and efficacious part of what must be done. But they are only a small part.

James Jay Carafano is director of the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

First moved on McClatchy News Wire service