One person's "red tape" is another's "reasonable safeguard"

Rep. Rogers (R-Mich.) as quoted here:

Individuals who would have been previously removed from the battlefield by U.S. counterterrorism operations for attacking or plotting to attack against U.S. interests remain free because of self-imposed red tape.

Translation: U.S. citizens who would have been previously assassinated without due process remain (at least temporarily) alive because of the widespread, justified outcry against targeted killings of U.S. citizens abroad.

Noted

From NYRB (Oct. 24): Malise Ruthven reviews (h/t) Akbar Ahmed's The Thistle and the Drone.

A brief excerpt:

Ahmed argues...that the acts of terror or violence directed at the U.S. or its allies are set off as much by revenge based on values of tribal honor as by extremist ideologies.... It seems fair to argue, as Ahmed does, that the values of honor and revenge inherent in the tribal systems contribute to jidahist extremism, and that by ignoring this all-important factor the U.S. has been courting disaster.

But according to Ruthven, Ahmed sees the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) as "countertribal." Anyway, RTWT.

Gilbert on Kennan

In a blog post, Prof. Alan Gilbert of the Univ. of Denver praises Obama's recent speech on counter-terrorism policy, drones, and Guantanamo as a "turning point," while noting (among other things) that it should have come earlier and contending that presidents never do anything decent without mass pressure from below.

Toward the beginning of his remarks Gilbert, referencing his 1999 book Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy?, comments briefly and in passing on George Kennan:

In most foreign policy discussion and international relations as an academic field, realist theories - both official ones used in making/apologizing for American foreign policy and more sophisticated versions employed in the critical study of American errors and crimes, even systematic ones - abstain from the outset from looking at the consequences [of U.S. foreign policy] for democracy at home....

For instance, the leading post-World War II realist, George Kennan in American Diplomacy, pits sober, professional diplomacy against democratic crusades like Woodrow Wilson's in World War I.... But in the 1984 edition, responding to the disastrous American aggression in Vietnam, Kennan noticed the war complex, "our military-industrial addiction." He shifted to a more democratic, common-good oriented view without naming the shift.

Kennan opposed the Vietnam War from the start mainly on pragmatic grounds (he testified against it in congressional hearings in 1966), and Vietnam probably did influence his thinking.  There are tensions in Kennan's views deriving partly from the way in which moral considerations are often kept unacknowledged or beneath the surface, with the biggest exception to this being his increasingly passionate writings, starting in the 1980s, about nuclear weapons. But I think Kennan remained ambivalent, at best, about democracy until the end of his life. These tensions (or contradictions) run through much of his career, complicating the idea of an un-named shift "to a more democratic, common-good oriented view." Still, it is interesting that some of the language in American Diplomacy, originally published in 1951, changed in the 1984 edition.

P.s. A minor point: "One of the leading post-WWII realists" would have been better than "the leading," since Morgenthau, Niebuhr, and Kennan are usually given roughly equal billing as the key figures of post-1945 American Realism, with Arnold Wolfers, John Herz, and some others not far behind. (Generationally speaking, Waltz and Kissinger come after this group.)

Added later: It's possible to put a somewhat more uncomfortable (for lack of a better word) gloss on Kennan's position on Vietnam, which would note that, in addition to his (correct) judgment that Vietnam was not a vital U.S. interest, he just didn't care much about the Third World (as it was then called) and didn't think non-Europeans (or non-descendants of Europeans) had much capacity for self-government. But going into that would require another post.

[To find previous mentions of Kennan on this blog, type "Kennan" into the search box in the upper-left corner.]

Drone strikes continue, but who are the casualties?

I've started to get in my inbox, as of this a.m., Foreign Policy's 'AfPak daily brief' and also the more general 'morning brief' (not sure I'll continue with the latter). Since I haven't been following the international news through other means as closely as I might, these roundups may be useful.

The 'AfPak brief' cites various news reports about a drone strike that killed "top Pakistani militant commander" Maulvi Nazir, who staged attacks on U.S./ISAF forces in Afghanistan. The brief mentions that this same strike also killed nine people in a house in S. Waziristan but says nothing about their identities. Also mentioned is a drone strike in N. Waziristan that "killed four people whose identities could not be verified." This sort of thing highlights how difficult it must be for those journalists and analysts who try to keep track of exactly who the drone strikes are killing, and underlines why there is no definitive count of civilian casualties.

A.M. linkage

Pressman on whether the U.S. and Israel continue to share values.

D.C. Exile on sovereignty and drone strikes.

[added later] More on Israel: The Fall 2012 issue of Dissent, which I just bought in a bkstore, contains an exchange on Israel between James Rule and Michael Walzer, as well as a review-essay "Zionism and Its Discontents." Haven't read either one yet.    

The immorality of the U.S. drone war

I'm going to vote for Obama. I live in a safely blue state but, perhaps a bit irrationally, I don't feel like taking any chances. Romney in the White House would be horrible. There are important issues where the chasm between the two is wide and the Romney approach would be very bad. There is the issue of prospective Supreme Court appointments. And so on.

All that said, am I going to vote for Obama enthusiastically? No, I don't think I can say that. Conor Friedersdorf's description of the drone war (via CT) captures the major part of the reason:

The drone war [Obama] is waging in North Waziristan isn't "precise" or "surgical" as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels. People are always afraid. Women cower in their homes. Children are kept out of school. The stress they endure gives them psychiatric disorders. Men are driven crazy by an inability to sleep as drones buzz overhead 24 hours a day, a deadly strike possible at any moment. At worst, this policy creates more terrorists than it kills; at best, America is ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people and killing hundreds of innocents for a small increase in safety from terrorists. It is a cowardly, immoral, and illegal policy, deliberately cloaked in opportunistic secrecy. And Democrats who believe that it is the most moral of all responsible policy alternatives are as misinformed and blinded by partisanship as any conservative ideologue.

I'm hard pressed to do anything except agree with this. I don't share Friedersdorf's conclusion (he's voting for the libertarian candidate), but on this issue I think he's pretty much right. That is, he's right that it's an immoral policy. (He's not right in the conclusion that it requires a vote for someone other than Obama. Sometimes one has to vote for a candidate who is pursuing an immoral policy, if the other candidate with a chance to win would pursue more immoral policies.) 

Also, see a new study of the drone campaign described here (h/t).

P.s. (added later): As things I've written here before suggest, I recognize that the issue is not an easy one, given Pakistan's refusal to deal with the Haqqani network and other groups which have been carrying out cross-border attacks into Afghanistan from the border region. Still, the 'collateral' cost of drones, in terms of civilian casualties and hardship, makes the campaign in its current form hard to justify.  

Two views on Obama's use of drones

Cliff Bob (here) and Charles Krauthammer (here). Both take off from the NYT piece on the picking of drone targets. Krauthammer's column is revoltingly hypocritical and regretful that suspects are no longer being tortured in CIA 'black sites'.

An omission

CORRECTION (added 6/5/12): Awlaki and his son were killed in two different strikes, not the same one. See here. That no one corrected my mistake is an indication, if any were needed, of how few people read this blog.

Reports (WaPo, NewsHour) about the latest story involving AQAP (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) mention the U.S. drone strike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki last fall but don't mention that [a later strike, I should have said] killed Awlaki's 16-year-old son.

CIA seeks expanded drone authority in Yemen

A detailed, well-reported WaPo piece on this here. Not a good idea, ISTM.
Update (4/26): The CIA's request has been approved.

Bacevich on "new American way of war"

Here (h/t S. Walt).

In case you missed this...

Anwar al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, a U.S. citizen, was killed in a recent drone strike in Yemen that also killed the media chief of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). (H/t V. Yadav) This will raise further questions about drones and whether their increasing use accords with accepted principles of the law of armed conflict.

Related (added 10/27): Drone strikes in the Pakistan border regions earlier this month killed several al-Qaeda figures and a "top deputy" in the Haqqani network, according to this piece.

Pakistan update: blustering about the border regions

Lead graph of Karin Brulliard's piece today in WaPo:

Karachi, Pakistan — Pakistan’s defense minister has said that the country might withdraw thousands of troops from its volatile border areas in response to a suspension of U.S. military aid, a move that would undermine Washington’s interests in a region that is home to al-Qaeda and a stew of other Islamist militant groups.

A bit of editorializing here, no? Whether the threatened move would "undermine Washington's interests" depends on exactly what the thousands of Pakistani soldiers are currently doing there. Recently it was reported that there have been cross-border clashes involving unspecified Afghan insurgents attacking into Pakistan and the Pakistan army responding with artillery fire that has allegedly killed Afghan civilians. A reduction of the Pakistani military presence in the border regions might not necessarily be an entirely bad thing if it leads to some reduction in Pakistan-Afghanistan tension. OTOH there might be a downside if the Pakistani military is actually carrying out effective counterinsurgency operations in the border regions. They are not in any case in N. Waziristan, where several militant groups continue to be based.

The WaPo article goes on to note that drone strikes in the border regions have been continuing, another source of some U.S.-Pakistan tension. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, writing in the current Foreign Affairs, contend that control of the drone program in these areas should be switched from the CIA to the U.S. military, a proposal which may have something to recommend it. However, the very non-transparency of the drone program which Bergen and Tiedemann criticize may be one reason the Pakistan government has tacitly supported it. On balance, though, they are probably right that more transparency would mean more support for the drones among the civilian population in these areas and a corresponding reduction of anti-U.S. sentiment.

Scale back the drones

The death of OBL offers an opportunity to change some U.S. approaches in Pakistan and Afghanistan, starting with a reduction in drone strikes.

From the Democratic Individuality blog:

According to neocon foundations, the drones kill 5 civilians for every “Taliban." The Pakistan government says the number is 600 innocents for every “Taliban.” But even the neocon figure is bad enough....
Perhaps it is no wonder that starving crowds in Pakistan chant “death to Obama” or that Obama’s ratings in the Arab world, according to the Pew foundation (cited by Andrew Sullivan last week), are near the same dismal level as George Bush’s. The need for a redirection of policy could not be more glaring.

Will drones save the day in Libya?

Hard not to have at least a couple of qualms about this, given their track record in the Pakistani border areas. Admittedly the environment is different.

Have the drones met their Waterloo?

The botched drone strike on the North Waziristan-Afghanistan border which killed 40 people, apparently mostly tribal elders and police, may be the last straw. The Pakistan army chief of staff called it "intolerable," which is about as strong as this kind of official reaction gets. The strike came not that long after another Pakistani general made a somewhat bizarre statement praising the drones. Chances are the subtext of that statement was "we don't have to take military action in N. Waziristan because the drones are doing it all." Well, they're doing it all right; there's just one little problem: they don't always kill the "right" people.

Critique of drone strikes: W. Post

Here.