Not So Secret: US Drones

By ⋅ January 31, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment
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Micah Zenko (Photo: Council on Foreign Relations)

Micah Zenko (Photo: Council on Foreign Relations)

While taking part in a Google+ “hangout,” or virtual town hall, Monday, President Obama was asked by a man from Brooklyn, NY about the US use of unmanned drones. (Watch the full “hangout” here.)

“As a general proposition, the question that was posed, I want to make sure the people understand, actually drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,” the President said.

He went on to say that “for the most part they have been very precise precision strikes against al-Qaeda and their affiliates. And we are very careful in terms of how it’s been applied.”

Still on the topic of drone strikes, he said that “a lot of these strikes have been in the Fata” – that refers to Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Marco Werman talks with Micah Zenko, Fellow for Conflict Prevention at the Council on Foreign Relations, about how surprising it is that President Obama publicly acknowledged the US use of drones in this way, and what it means for public discourse on this issue.

Zenko is the author of “Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World“.

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Marco Werman: Micah Zenko is a Fellow for Conflict Prevention at the Council at Foreign Relations. He’s an expert on U.S. national security policy and military operations. Micah Zenko, let’s be clear here. Were President Obama’s comments yesterday on the U.S. use of unmanned drones the first time anyone in the Obama administration had publicly acknowledged the first time use of drones?

Micah Zenko: It was the first explicit acknowledgement by a U.S. official that the United States is using these drones in Pakistan. That’s the key aspect. The U.S. has described their use in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, but under U.S. law these are quote “covert actions” and what that means is that the United States government cannot acknowledge that they occur. Never before had any administration official explicitly acknowledge that the United States is using drone strikes in what’s called the Fata area of Pakistan, so this is a completely new development.

Werman: So were you shocked by this and what exactly was this moment for President Obama, this public admission of covert action?

Zenko: I was shocked given the setting which he did, which was essentially an hour long event for Google at answering questions from the public, but I think the reason he made this announcement now is there are a lot of increasing criticisms about the transparency and oversight of drone strikes and particular about the killing of Anwar al-Alawki, who was a U.S. citizen in Yemen, by a drone a few months back and I believe that this statement by the President sets up what is supposed to be a forthcoming speech by Attorney General Holder that explains what is the legal justification for the United States government to kill a U.S. civilian, a citizen living abroad without access to their Fifth Amendment due process rights.

Werman: Well the drone program officially is secret and secrecy has its costs. What has been the cost of official secrecy on drones?

Zenko: Well some of the things that happens is that the United States, because it cannot acknowledge or defend them, is on a back foot within countries like Pakistan about what the effects of them are, so if you read the Pakistani press or in Pakistani television shows some of the worst myths and mus-perceptions about drone strikes are allowed to fester because nobody from the U.S. government can correct them. The other issue is that within the United States itself there is very limited transparency in oversight of these drone strikes, so these are properly reported to the intelligence committees within the House and the Senate, but within other committees dealing with the Senate Foreign Relations committee or the House Foreign Affairs committee, many staff members and officials on them have very little understanding of how these work.

Werman: I mean that raises the point that some critics have argued, that the use of drones has allowed the U.S. to go to war through a back door and that undermines the legal safeguards against going to war. Would you agree with that?

Zenko: I would. I mean there have been something like 285 drones strikes in Pakistan since the summer of 2004 when they first began, 85% of those occurred under President Obama. If there was 285 bombs dropped by manned aircraft in Pakistan, for example, there would have to be some formal declaration of war under the War Powers Resolution and there would have to be some acknowledgement to Congress, broadly, of what’s happened. As it is now, these are reported simply to a number of select senior members of Intelligence Committees in the House and the Senate. There’s no explicit Congressional authorization for these particular strikes and so the Administration has sort of let this go on and on and on and on for seven and a half years without ever acknowledging that these were occurring.

Werman: This is an election year, do you think the President came out publicly and spoke about drones for some political payback, and if so, do unmanned aircraft now become a campaign issue?

Zenko: Well drone strikes are incredibly popular especially in Capitol Hill and among members of the Democratic Party who want to have a smaller military, but I think the real reason that the President did this is, again, after seven and a half years the pressure had simply built to great with enough officials within the Administration and who have recently retired and enough people on Capitol Hill who finally said “You have to explain the scope and range of the targets which with unmanned drones are being used to kill, and in particularly, you have to explain why the U.S. believes that it can target U.S. citizens without Fifth Amendment due process rights.”

Werman: Micah Zenko is a Fellow for Conflict Prevention at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of “Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World.” Micah, thank you very much.

Zenko: Thank you so much.

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Discussion

2 comments for “Not So Secret: US Drones”

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Satish-Chandra/100000030432561 Satish Chandra

    1) Stealth or no-stealth, 5th generation or 4th generation, fighter aircraft are as obsolete for India’s defence as bows and arrows. They can be used against neighbors such as Pakistan and China but the United States is EVERYBODY’S neighbor. It has already invaded and occupied Afghanistan, a part of traditional India and will expand its occupation to the rest of the subcontinent. I am India’s expert in strategic defence, the father of India’s strategic program including the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program and the world’s greatest scientist (my biography is in Marquis’ Who’s Who in the World, 2012 and earlier editions). The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan means the coast-to-coast destruction of the U.S. by India; see my blog titled ‘Nuclear Supremacy for India Over U.S.’, which can be found by a Yahoo search with the title, for what India needs to do. Russia and other white countries are U.S. allies. These are the enemies to destroy. All other enemies will be taken care of automatically. Conventional arms are worthless for destroying the United States. Nuclear arms to destroy the United States with a FIRST STRIKE — this is the key — are cheap and easy to produce with technology India already has. All the money earmarked for fighter aircraft etc., and more, must be pumped into research, development and production of missiles able to deliver India’s nuclear warheads — in the thousands — to the continental United States. India’s missile scientists & engineers should have tested such missiles to their full range decades ago — everything else, including short and intermediate range missiles and missile defence, is secondary and tertiary — but have not done that because of prohibitions by India’s C.I.A.-controlled governments. This must be done on a war footing; the first step is to destroy RAW through which the C.I.A. rules India; see my blog. Producing such weapons in the thousands and very quickly is important. This means that the vast majority of them must be land-based, including road and rail-mobile, missiles rather than submarine-based which take a long time to produce.

    2) In the modern world nuclear weapons are the only weapons that matter. India has done a negligible amount of testing of nuclear warheads. India must resume the testing of nuclear warheads immediately, both of warheads already in the stockpile and of new designs including thermonuclear warheads.  These warheads must have non-digital triggers that cannot be interfered with by microwave signals from satellites, as I have discussed in press releases included in GaddafiCrimeDOTblogspotDOTcom , IndianAirForcePilotsMurderDOTblogspotDOTcom , and JoinIndiaWarOfIndependenceDOTblogspotDOTcom .

    3) The Indian Army and Air Force are worthless for destroying India’s number one enemy — the United States. Everyone in New Delhi is a collaborator with the enemy. But India’s nuclear forces obey Satish Chandra; he does not need India’s conventional forces or the rest of the government and citizenry to defend India which will be done by nuclear means, by the simultaneous nuclear destruction of New Delhi, Washington and New York with a warning that additional U.S. cities will be destroyed, with nuclear warheads already emplaced in them by special forces, if there is any retaliation. Five years later the coast-to-coast destruction of the United States will be carried out.

    Satish Chandra

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/KLIY4CAAPLV2MQVR4IRTBIR3VU Kiven

    1% of the richest Americans profit from 1% who are poorest,they are the one who are send to war. now that these poorest of the poor 1% who are send to war are dead tire of going to war so 1% of the richest Americans use drones. its funny,  its democracy we are fighting for but we don’t want to bring back the draft because that would not be fair for the 1% of the richest Americans that profiting from this war!