Using drones: principles, tactics and results (amended title)

[SethB]

I think the idea of "tactical success" but "operational/strategic failure" is not an intellectually or practically defensible position.

I'd be interested to hear you expand on this, if you don't mind.

[davidbfpo]

A non-SWJ member's response to my viewpoint was:

1) Armed UAV (drone) attacks can only be of tactical significance and are unlikely to lead to strategic gain.

2) The downstream effects of Damadola far outweighed any possible gain (and there was none). A few days after the strike, a Pakistani Taliban leader called a meeting and asked for volunteers for suicide missions. Sixty-five young men put their hands up; a bit later a young soldier in the Frontier Corps shot an American officer at a bi-lateral border meeting. His family came from Damadola. He had no option under the code of revenge in Pushtun lore. (Damadola: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damadola_airstrike )

3) In the beginning the use of UAVs in Pakistan was a one-sided (US) attempt to decapitate the al-Qaeda leadership taking no account of the downstream effects mentioned above and breaking a US law of no targeted assassination except in time of war (the author is not a lawyer).

4) That said a Predator over the Yemeni desert targeting a verifiable target with no risk to civilians can be justified. In fact the mission in 2002 that killed an AQ operative also impressed the Yemenis with its precision and careful targeting. So the downstream effect in this case was positive.

5) Finally when in Peshawar in 2008 perfectly sane, educated and reasonable Pakistanis living under Taliban threat spared no air in rejecting the use of combat UAVs on the grounds that they helped a then growing Pakistani Taliban to become more radical and to recruit.

davidbfpo