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Anchor Marco Werman speaks with The World’s Jeb Sharp about an important component of President Obama’s counterterrorism strategy: the controversial drone war over Pakistan. Download MP3

• American drones in Pakistan (Jun 18, 2009)
• The debate over drones (May 27, 2009)

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MARCO WERMAN: The Word’s Jeb Sharp is with me to talk about that drone program.  Jeb, remind us how the United States uses drones and in it’s wars and counter-terrorism programs.

JEB SHARP: Well first of all you have to know a drone is an unmanned aircraft, or something that is remotely piloted.  We have drones flying over Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, but they can be controlled from back here in the United States.  There is a distinction to be made; we use drones, they were used for surveillance from back in the mid ’90′s forward.  But after September 11th they were used to actually fire missiles and drop bombs against enemy targets, against terrorist targets.  There is a U.S. Air Force program to use drones in Iraq and Afghanistan in our official wars.  But there’s also a more controversial program to use them in Pakistan which is mostly operated by the CIA and much more secret and that’s what people are mostly referring to when they talk about counter-terrorism.

MARCO WERMAN:  Right, and this heightened use of drones, and specifically the use of drones in Pakistan is not without controversy.

JEB SHARP: That’s right.  It’s controversial for a host of reasons.  Number one, it’s a sovereign country where the U.S. is not officially at war, so you can imagine the sensitivities there.  Pakistani government tacitly allows it to go on, but it’s a really difficult issue on all sides.  But beyond the sovereignty issue, these drone attacks inevitably cause civilian casualties.  So there are ethical and legal considerations.  There are also strategic considerations.  There are military analysts that say even while you’re being successful at actually killing terrorists you want to kill, you’re killing civilians which inflames anti-U.S. sentiment and may be a potent recruiting tool for terrorists.  So a sort of “one step forward, two steps back” and because it’s so secret it’s controversial.  People want to know more.  They want to know who is running it, what the debates are like, what the moral decisions being made are like.

MARCO WERMAN: And strikingly, President Obama, I don’t know if you would call him a champion of the technology and drone wars, but he certainly continued President George W. Bush’s intensive use of them.

JEB SHARP: Yes, and I think in the context of the State of the Union and going forward, and what policies President Obama is going to pursue, this is really, really interesting because it has been so striking.  Not only did he embrace President Bush’s policy of using drone attacks, which President Bush had stepped up at the end of his term, he then even went further.  The pace and frequency of these attacks has increased in 2009 over 2008 and now since the attack on the CIA post in Afghanistan at the end of December that killed seven Americans, the drone attacks have really stepped up.  Something like 11 counted so far just this month alone.  So if you extrapolate that for the year, we’re going to be way up, possibly into the hundreds.

MARCO WERMAN: What do you think it says about Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism strategy that he has upped the use of drones?

JEB SHARP: Well I think it just points to how tough the options are.  CIA Chief Leon Panetta said last year it’s the only game in town.  There’s some sense that, and I don’t think he meant the only game in town, but there’s a sense that you got to do this as well as try to figure out how to prosecute the war in Afghanistan and how to fight terrorism in a more global way.  We’re not going to give this up unless we have better alternatives.

MARCO WERMAN: Where do you think this story is headed; this drone story is headed Jeb?

JEB SHARP: I think there’s so many things to watch.  One thing that’s been interesting, I’m really interested in talking to the pilots and operators of these drones just to find out how its different from flying planes and how its different being in a war zone versus being back here at home at the U.S. Air Force base in Nevada or even a CIA Operator in Langley, Virginia.  Just kind of emotionally and in terms of where warfare and counter-terrorism is headed.  What some of those psychological issues are like and tellingly I was trying to organize a visit out to Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, which has been quite welcoming to media for quite some time and there is actually a freeze on media visits to the Air Force Base right now, precisely because of “sensitivities about the program” which to me, just spoke volumes about debates behind the scenes, not only over policy but probably over how this is all presented to the public.

MARCO WERMAN: Undoubtedly, these are nuances that won’t be part of the President’s State of the Union speech tonight.  The World’s Jeb Sharp, very good to speak with you, thanks.

JEB SHARP: Thanks a lot Marco.

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