President Obama this morning offered a heartfelt apology for the collateral damage, noting that U.S. intelligence agencies did not know that the two hostages were in close proximity to the two targets.
No need to apologize,
Mr. President. We are at war with al-Qaida and ISIS, and Predator Drones present a
high-tech opportunity to decimate the leadership of both terrorist groups.
Certainly, the deaths
of innocent hostages represent a tragedy. Whether they eventually would have survived under the
crude imprisonment of Osama bin Laden’s disciples in a war zone is questionable.
But the drone program
has provided us with a powerful weapon to take out our enemies while causing the
deaths of relatively few innocents. Those who criticize the president, with few exceptions, have barely made a peep as U.S. drones have killed hundreds of innocent civilians – mostly Muslims – over the past decade.
Warren Weinstein, an
American held by al-Qaida since 2011, and Italian national Giovanni Lo
Porto, a hostage since 2012, were killed in the latest attacks. That attack
also killed Ahmed Farouq, an American who was an al-Qaida leader, the
White House said in a statement released minutes before Obama spoke.
"The operation
targeted an al-Qaida-associated compound, where we had no reason to believe
either hostage was present, located in the border region of Afghanistan and
Pakistan," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement.
The president was
more realistic in his White House remarks as he expressed deep regret for the
deaths of the hostages. While Obama’s post-Arab Spring policy certainly
deserves scrutiny, his support for the drone program represents realpolitik.
“It is a cruel and
bitter truth that in the fog of war generally, and our fight against terrorists
specifically, mistakes -- sometimes deadly mistakes -- can occur,” Obama said
at the press conference.“As president and commander in chief I take full responsibility for all counterterrorism operations, including the one that inadvertently took the lives of Warren and Giovani.”
Weinstein’s family
issued a harshly worded statement expressing bitterness about the loss of their
loved one and about the protocol of the drone program altogether. But they also
conceded that it was very possible that the intelligence community did not know
that Weinstein was in the vicinity when the drone missile strikes were
launched.
While most
congressional Democrats remain squeamish overall about the drone program, in
the Republican Party the unmanned aerial vehicles have created a significant
split between the naïve libertarians and the overly aggressive neocons.
Critics should be
reminded that indiscriminate bombing that killed millions of people was the way of the world in World War II,
Korea and Vietnam. Anyone who is shocked by the brand of warfare prosecuted by
drones should familiarize themselves with the U.S. scorched-earth bombing of
Dresden, Germany, as we battled the Nazis.Laser-guided bombs made a big difference in the Gulf War of 1991, and in the Bosnia conflict and the war on Kosovo, where collateral damage was reduced dramatically. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have created more of a mixed outcome.
But it was the dawn
of the drones that presented a much more humane form of warfare. Unmanned drones
first played a counterterrorism role for the U.S. military in the years after
9/11, presenting an opportunity to kill the enemy without putting American pilots
in danger.
The Obama administration
stepped up drone attacks by multiples, arguing logically that unmanned
high-tech attacks were the most deadly – though with unintended consequences –
but still represented the most effective weapon in military history to eliminate
key figures among the enemy.
On another plain, the newest attacks
killed two Americans in al-Qaida’s ranks, but can anyone feasibly argue that enemies
of the U.S. such as these should be given special status in their war on
America?
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