More on the Drone Wars

Two recent pieces of interest on the question of drone strikes.

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that the National Security Council debated a slowdown in Predator strikes last Thursday, June 2.  Unfortunately, the story has disappeared behind the WSJ's firewall, but a key advocate of the slowdown was U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter supported by "top military officers and other State Department officials."  In addition to the diplomatic concerns prompted by the recent increases in U.S.-Pakistani tensions, the article quotes Lieutenant General Asif Yasin Malik, commander of Pakistani forces in the tribal areas, as saying that drone strikes are making it harder to win allies among tribal leaders: "It's a negative thing in my area of responsibility.  It causes instability and impinges on my relationship with the local people." 

Conversely, CIA Director (and soon-to-be Secretary of Defense) Leon Panetta "made the case for maintaining the current program . . . arguing that it remains the U.S.'s best weapon against al Qaeda and its allies." 

On Tuesday, Foreign Policy.com posted an essay by Charli Carpenter and Lina Shaikhouni correcting four common misperceptions about drones:

1. Drones are not "killer robots";
2. Drones do not make war easy and game-like, and therefore likelier;
3. It is unclear whether drone strikes kill too many civilians; and
4. Drones themselves do not violate the International Law of Armed Conflict.

Although Carpenter and Shaihknouni do not directly address either the Defense Science Board's concerns about over reliance on drones for intelligence or the "Coindinistas" objection (articulated by counterinsurgency experts David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum in May 2009), it is a useful primer on some key questions regarding the use of drones.