Bombing and hoping
by digby
And the hits just keep on coming:
A surge of U.S. drone missile strikes that has killed about 40 suspected militants in Yemen over the last three weeks may appear inconsistent with President Obama’s pledge in May to use drone aircraft to target and kill only individual terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to Americans.
White House officials say the targeting rules haven’t changed for the 10 recent drone strikes. But analysts and former U.S. officials say the current campaign, after the pace of attacks had slowed, shows that the standards are elastic.
They say the wave of attacks highlights Obama’s willingness to accelerate lethal operations in response to terrorist threats, even though intelligence on the latest plot was imprecise about the timing or location of apparent targets.
“The tendency had been ‘less is more’ in terms of these strikes, and I think we’ll go back to that,” said a former U.S. diplomat who served in Yemen, but who asked for anonymity because the drone strikes are classified. “But at the moment, when you have guys on the move and a plot in the works, there is a bias toward taking as many whacks at them as you can and seeing if you can’t knock them on their heels.”
[…]
“This looks a lot like they are bombing and hoping,” said Gregory Johnsen, author of “The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al Qaeda, and America’s War in Arabia.” “It’s not clear they know who they are hitting.”U.S. officials dispute that, but refuse to discuss their targeting decisions. The latest drone strikes bring the total in Yemen so far this year to 22. That compares with 42 last year.
Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said the attacks are consistent with the language and principles that the president outlined in his May speech.
Obama presented “the legal rationale that underpins our operations and the constraints that guide them. Those remain in place,” she said.
“The president did not say that our need for direct action would necessarily be lessened in the future,” she said. “He made clear, however, that under his new policy guidance the use of drones is heavily constrained.”
In recent months, White House officials have promised to bring greater transparency to the use of armed drones outside war zones. So far, that hasn’t happened.
Hey, just keep up the bombing. They’re bound to hit some Mohammed Badguys in a few of them, amirite?
Here’s a must-read article on drones and why we should be questioning their use, by Mark Bowdon. It’s very thought-provoking. At the very least, it’s obvious that we should (and undoubtedly won’t) think through the ramifications of using this new weapon in this way. It’s not as simple as it sounds: new arms technologies aren’t always just a refined, more lethal version of what went before. Sometimes they represent a paradigm shift in the way wars are conducted and the way people think about other people. This could be one of them.
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