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The United States use of targeted killing in foreign countries is unjust (1).docx

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In a dimly lit room at McConnell air force base in south central Kansas, analysts from a national guard intelligence reconnaissance surveillance group watch live drone surveillance video coming from war zones in the Middle East.

During combat, the analysts become part of a "kill chain" - analyzing live drone video, then communicating what they see - in instant-message chat with jet fighter pilots, operators of armed Predator and Reaper drones, and ground troops.

They carry out drone warfare while sitting thousands of miles from battlefields. They don't fly the drones and don't fire the missiles. They video-stalk enemy combatants, and tell warfighters what they see. The work, they say, helps kill terrorists, including from Isis.

The group does this work in the middle of America, at an air base surrounded by flat cow pastures and soybean fields. The 184th Intelligence Wing of the Kansas air national guard, started this work about 2002. Until last year, most people in Kansas knew nothing about their role in drone warfare.

The work is top secret. They say that they see things in those drone images that no one wants to see. Sometimes, it's terrorists beheading civilians. Sometimes it's civilians dying accidentally in missions that the Kansans help coordinate.

They agonize over those deaths. The most frequently heard phrase in drone combat, one airman says, is: "Don't push the button."

"You see [enemy combatants] kiss their kids goodbye, and kiss their wives goodbye, and then they walk down the street," said a squadron chief master sergeant. "As soon as they get over that hill, the missile is released."

The Americans wait to fire, he says, "because we don't want the family to see it".

'Worst year for civilians'

Drone war critics describe it as depersonalized killing, done with collateral costs unknown. Those critics, including those studying civilian deaths on the ground in the Middle East, say that actual deaths exceed by thousands the total number admitted to by the US and its coalition allies. In a statement on their website, Airwars.org said: "By any measure, 2017 has been the worst year for civilians in the fight against Isis, as battles moved deep into Iraqi and Syrian cities." Despite the coalition's insistence that it was waging "the most precise war in history", Airwars estimates that at least 3,875 non-combatants were killed by coalition actions during 2017 to November.

In Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, nearly 10,000 people are estimated to have died in 4,413 US strikes since about 2002, according to the watchdog Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The bureau estimates that as many as 1,488 were civilians, including up to 331 children.

Reporters for the New York Times Magazine, in a November story called The Uncounted, wrote that they had spent 18 months personally visiting 150 coalition strike sites in Iraq. They concluded that one in five strikes kills civilians - a toll they say is 31 times higher than military estimates.

What the Kansas airmen describe is another story. The way they see it, they save civilians and soldiers. They fight terrorists who want to come here.

Enemy deaths don't bother them. "The terrorists involved, they all made choices," an officer who identifies himself as Maj Jeffrey says. "We protect the guys and gals on the ground."

But civilian deaths weigh on them. "It sounds callous to say that it's collateral damage," says Col David Weishaar, the 184th's commander. "It's human life. We're doing what we can to mitigate it."

Three of Weishaar's airmen, on a recent Friday, file into a bare, concrete air base conference room and gather around a small round table. They state ranks and first names: Chief Master Sgt Don, Maj Jeffrey, Staff Sgt James.

(The airmen don't want their full names published for fear of retribution against their families.)

They spend the next hour describing drone warfare.

"The technology we use is just insane, it's so good," Jeffrey begins. Drone commanders in the Middle East can place an eye in the sky to watch enemy combatants - for months, if necessary, Jeffrey says.

They park drones in the air above surveillance targets and program them to "loiter". Many drones can loiter 14 hours fully armed. The operators replace them with a refueled drone when the previous drone runs low.

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Boys gather near the wreckage of car destroyed by a US drone air strike targeting suspected al-Qaida militants in the south-eastern Yemeni province of Shabwa. Photograph: Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

Back in Kansas, in the SCIF, (Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence Facility), members of Col Brad Hilbert's group watch dozens of screens. One eight-hour shift will watch multiple targets, then hand off surveillance to the next shift. Multiple missions run simultaneously.

While enemy combatants walk around carrying weapons, the group studies their movements. They can watch one person, or one building, or one small neighborhood. The drones loiter high and unseen, giving clear, hi-tech visuals.

"I sometimes say we're fighting with laser beams against people who beat each other to death with sticks," Jeffrey says.

Most of what they watch is tedious. "They will sometimes watch one pile of sand every day for a month," their chaplain says.

But sometimes, they see that an enemy is about to attack US troops. The commanders decide to "neutralize" him. When commanders order attacks, the Kansans become one link in a kill chain, which can include armed Reaper and Predator drone operators, fighter pilots, ground artillery commanders - and commanders with authority to approve or deny strikes.

ISR analysts undergo a year of training before they work. The top priority, Don says: never fire when civilians might be endangered. None of the airmen wanted to describe specifics of combat they have taken part in.

But one of the 184th's past mission commanders, Maj Janell Blaufuss, earned a combat citation that the unit released publicly this year.

The citation gives a vivid description of ISR work:

Between 2009 and 2012, Blaufuss took part in 425 combat missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. She helped kill senior Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, insurgent fighters in Iraq, and others in other countries. She helped neutralize "92 high value individuals, found 398 improvised explosive devices - saving lives."

Don't push the button

During a 2011 Afghanistan mission, Hilbert's analysts stopped a strike that would have killed civilians. That's one story Col Joe Jabara wishes would make the news more.

The 2011 mission began with some anxiety, Hilbert says. US troops and aircraft were getting shot at daily.

"Our [aircraft] had received fire from a triple-A [anti-aircraft artillery] piece, so we were out there looking hard for it," says Lt Col Jeff, another 184th squadron commander. Then, a drone camera showed what commanders overseas felt sure was a concealed killer.

"It was an irrigation pipe, with a tent structure over the pipe," Hilbert says. "The operators of the aircraft thought it was triple-A. It did resemble a triple-A piece.

"But we looked at it. And looked at it.

"And we said - hold on.

"There was a fervor to find a potential threat," Hilbert says. "But our people were emphatic: 'No, it's not.'

Commanders held fire.

"The next day, the ground forces were able to verify that it was a hut, with people living in it," Hilbert says.

"They found a cookstove, and not far from the stove was a little baby laying there."

But sometimes they don't save civilians.

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A Yemeni man looks at graffiti showing a US drone after al-Qaida in Yemen confirmed the death of its leader in US drone strike, in Sana'a, Yemen, 16 June 2015. Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA

'That's not really counter-terrorism'

Airwars.org estimates that drones killed nearly 6,000 civilians during US-led coalition strikes in Iraq and Syria.

A leading analyst of drone warfare is Micah Zenko, an author and former analyst for the Council on Foreign Relations. He numbers dozens of military officers among his sources, and has written about drone successes. He has written that drone warfare has crippled the ability of al-Qaida and other groups to carry out international terrorism.

But he has also written about failures. The military severely underreports civilian deaths, he says.

Not only that, but according to him, drone strikes raise other questions: they turn populations against America. Most combatants killed are low level.

Strategically, Zenko said in an interview, US leaders are not asking themselves crucial questions:

"How do you tie in those tactical operations with the broader campaign in the Middle East?

"The military says we're using drones to accomplish either force protection of our troops on the ground, or to conduct counter-terrorism," he said. "But in Afghanistan, most of our drone strikes protect Afghan forces on the ground. In Somalia, we are killing people who are a threat to Somali forces.

"Why is the CIA and JSOC [the USmilitary's Joint Special Operations Command] functioning as the air force of the Somali government?" Zenko asked. "That's not really counter-terrorism."

Zenko says the US should end so-called "signature strikes", (the type of strike often coordinated by the Kansas video analysts). Those strikes target unidentified militants based on their behavior patterns and personal networks. Zenko argues that the military should "limit targeted killings to a limited number of specific terrorists with transnational ambitions".

Besides Zenko, some thinkers around the world say it's not just casualties we need to worry about. As drone warfare technology proliferates, physicist Stephen Hawking and inventor Elon Musk said this month that we're heading into the dangers of robotic warfare, and an artificial intelligence arms race.

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Analysts working in the top-secret SCIF room at McConnell air force base in Wichita. Photograph: Courtesy photos from the Kansas Air National Guard's 184th Intelligence Wing

'It's human life'

The three airmen around the table all say they have worked missions where civilians died.

"It may not be the right answer, the politically correct answer [to say that the airmen have done that]," Jeffrey says. "But the rates at which it's happening now, compared with wars past, is drastically reduced."

They hold their fire much more than they fire, Jeffrey adds. But being right all the time is impossible, Don says. "I'll give you a little story ..."

One day, two years ago, he sat in Wichita, helping supervise a frustrating mission. He won't name which country.

"These two guys [enemy combatants] ... were driving in this little Yugo - getting out, setting up their mortar, shooting it off at [US] marines. And we were in the middle of a big city.

"'Permission to engage?' 'Denied!'

"And again: 'Denied.'

"And then they'd drive another couple of blocks.

"And shoot off more mortars.

"They did this three or four times.

The drone commanders refused to fire.

"The decision was: the marines can handle the incoming," Don says. "We are not going to shoot at this car - that deserved it - in the middle of this city.

"So, we wait.

"And they go off into the middle of nowhere ... and we are watching.

"There's no signs of life - all indications are, there is nothing [there] but these two dudes.

"Nothing!

"They are sitting in the car. Slapping hands - how happy they were to be terrorists. And got away with it.

"[But now] they are hot.

"Missile release!

"And ...

"Eight seconds off the target, a family comes outside the building to meet the guys at the car."

Don saw the flash of the missile explosion.

"Nothing could have stopped that," he says.

Possible post-traumatic stress

They've all watched mass beheadings, including many by Isis terrorists.

"The terrorists sometimes force or invite the neighborhood to come out and watch," Don says. He and James and Jeffrey and the rest of the 184th watch these mass murders, feeling helpless. "It doesn't happen frequently," James says. "But I wouldn't say it's rare."

The 184th's chaplain (who asked that he be called "the chaplain" for this story), is one of the few military chaplains with a top-secret security clearance. He watches the combat videos with the airmen, sitting alongside.

He is worried enough about possible post-traumatic stress among his flock that that he recently acquired the ISR group's therapy dog, and has set up marriage retreat weekends to help keep families from breaking up.

Group members are getting divorced a lot, he says. Some of them sometimes do "bad things outside the gate" - domestic abuse, drunk driving. He thinks some such mistakes might be related to watching video trauma, of beheadings - and combat.

Though they at first claim that killing enemies does not bother them, the three men around the table later say the truth is more complicated.

James says he knows enemy combatants "had a life. They had a family. They were probably a vital part of their small community. And because of choices that they made, they're now gone. I reflect a lot on it."

Don: "The part that bothers me: Mom and Dad may not know what their [son] Little Johnny is doing," Don says. "Little Johnny is the logistics facilitator for a homemade explosives facility. Or maybe he's a money runner. Or he's extorting taxes from a poor farmer to subsidize a terror organization.

"So when I kill Little Johnny - zero remorse. But I feel bad for Mr and Mrs Johnny. They will never see him again. And if we did it right, they have no idea where he went."
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The kill chain: inside the unit that tracks targets for US drone wars

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In a dimly lit room at McConnell air force base in south central Kansas, analysts from a national guard intelligence reconnaissance surveillance group watch live drone surveillance video coming from war zones in the Middle East.

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A new report written by former Obama administration officials and military officers warns that the US reliance on drone strikes for counter-terrorism "risks increasing instability and escalating conflicts".

The report, released on Thursday from the Stimson Center, does not reject drone strikes and is notable primarily for its authors, almost all of whom have served in senior government, military and intelligence posts.

Rather than the typical drone critics, the skepticism over what the Obama administration calls "targeted killing" - usually accomplished through drone strikes - comes from, among others, a former US military commander for the Middle East; a former commander of the Afghanistan war; a former FBI and CIA senior officer; and two senior Pentagon policy officials from Obama's first term, when drone strikes became the signature US counterterrorism weapon.

While most thinktank reports command little attention in Washington, the Stimson Center report, released Thursday, indicates a shift in elite consensus in national security circles around drones. It challenges some of the central premises behind the embrace of drone strikes - typically that they provide an asset for killing suspected terrorists in remote or diplomatically inaccessible terrain, short of a potentially costly raid or even outright invasion.

Yet the Stimson Center report, spearheaded by retired General John Abizaid and former Pentagon official Rosa Brooks, portrays drone strikes as a potential facilitator of perpetual war, rather than the alternative to it that the Obama administration contends.

"The increasing use of lethal UAVs may create a slippery slope leading to continual or wider war," the report warns, lending official recognition to a point made for years by leftwing critics of Obama's drone attacks. UAV is a military acronym for unmanned aerial vehicle, one of the more formal terms for drones.

Echoing a criticism from United Nations drone investigator Ben Emmerson, the report finds that "despite the undoubted good faith of US decision-makers, it would be difficult to conclude that US targeted strikes are consistent with core rule of law norms."

The administration itself has recently acknowledged the concern. In a widely heralded May 2013 speech, Barack Obama imposed new restrictions on drone strikes after acknowledging killing four Americans - three of them, to include a 16-year-old boy, allegedly accidentally. The subsequent months saw a reduction in drone-induced killings in Yemen and especially Pakistan.

Yet the presentation of targets of opportunity and the pressure to react in a seemingly cost-free way to terrorist attacks have kept the drones aloft. While US secretary of state John Kerry pledged in August to end drone strikes in Pakistan " very soon," and a pause kept the drones from flying over tribal Pakistan for much of the year, several strikes there took place in the wake of the deadly assault on the Karachi airport earlier this month.

Abizaid, Brooks and their fellows on the Stimson Center's drone "task force" call attention to a "lack of strategic analysis" about drone strikes within the Obama administration, despite the administration turning armed Predators and Reapers into its weapon of choice. Earlier this week, a Justice Department memo from 2010 became public, shedding light on internal administration deliberations about taking the fateful step to kill a US citizen with a drone strike and without trial.

"A serious counterterrorism strategy needs to consider carefully, and constantly reassess, the balance between kinetic action and other counterterrorism tools, and the potential unintended consequences of increased reliance on lethal UAVs," the Stimson report contends. "Kinetic action" is a military euphemism for the use of force.

But the report stops far short of rejecting drone strikes.

The Stimson experts reject a flat determination of the illegality of "targeted killing," and does not use the far more controversial term "assassination." It recommends shifting operation of the strikes from the CIA to the US military, rather than ending them, and although the report urges greater transparency around drones, it elides a recognition that a military-run drone campaign is likely to entail fewer congressional notifications than the CIA's. That, along with a recommendation to establish "appropriate international norms," tacitly recognizes the entrenchment of drone strikes within the national security firmware.

The report also has little to say about the still-unknown tally of civilians on multiple continents killed in US drone strikes, beyond rejecting that strikes "cause disproportionate civilian casualties" as a perception "with little basis in fact."

Yet the report spends little time grappling with the issue and evinces little effort at distinguishing the facts from the fictions of drone-related deaths. Nor does it significantly address the administration practice of killing people based solely on a determination that their patterns of behavior fit terrorist profiles.

But the Stimson report acknowledges that even in cases where only "terrorists" are killed, the strikes "can cause great resentment, particularly in contexts in which terrorist recruiting efforts rely on tribal loyalties or on an economically desperate population." In Yemen, activists have testified that a fear of the drones has become part of the culture, as parents use the threat of drone strikes to usher unruly children to bed.

Right as the Stimson Center released its drone report, three Democratic senators on the intelligence committee wrote to the White House requesting greater transparency over drone strikes.

"We believe every American has the right to know when their government believes it is allowed to kill them," wrote Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Martin Heinrich, who highlighted a lack of White House response to a similar November letter.

Caitlin Hayden, the chief spokesperson for the National Security Council, said that the White House "look[s] forward to reviewing" the Stimson report.

"The President has repeatedly emphasized the extraordinary care taken to ensure that our counterterrorism actions are carried out in accordance with all applicable domestic and international law and consistent with U.S. values and policy. He has also specifically highlighted the importance of transparency," Hayden said.
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Increased US drone use 'may create slippery slope to wider war', report says

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A new report written by former Obama administration officials and military officers warns that the US reliance on drone strikes for counter-terrorism "risks increasing instability and escalating conflicts". The report, released on Thursday from the Stimson Center, does not reject drone strikes and is notable primarily for its authors, almost all of whom have served in senior government, military and intelligence posts.

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The villagers had congregated at the tent, as they often did at the end of the workday, to sit and chat.

Among them were men who sold vegetables or wood. Others mined or traded minerals used to make alloys like stainless steel.

They were husbands and fathers, brothers and sons.

But unlike villagers who might gather like this in many other parts of the world, these men had strange company at their customary get-together.

They were living in North Waziristan, one of Pakistan's thinly governed tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and a hotbed of militancy.

Hanging above them in the evening sky were four remotely piloted aircraft. Drones.

Without warning, the aircraft unleashed a volley of missiles that struck the tent, killing eight people.

A few minutes later, after other villagers had approached the wreckage to help the victims, the drones fired again, deepening the carnage.

By the end, 18 people were dead, including at 14-year-old boy, and 22 others were wounded, including an 8-year-old girl.

"Body parts were scattered everywhere. Bodies without heads and bodies without hands or legs," said Ahsan, a miner and local resident who had been praying at the time of the first wave of missiles.

Ahsan's account of the attack in the village of Zowi Sidgi in July 2012, along with those of other witnesses and victims' relatives, form part of a report released Tuesday by Amnesty International titled "'Will I Be Next?' U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan."

The report provides detailed information on nine out of 45 drone strikes it says were carried out by the United States in North Waziristan between January 2012 and September 2013.

In some of the attacks, it says, the victims weren't members of militant groups like al Qaeda or the Taliban, but just ordinary civilians, like the workers in Zowi Sidgi.

It recounts another strike, in October 2012, in which a 68-year-old woman, Mamana Bibi, was blown apart by a drone as she picked vegetables in front of her grandchildren, several of whom were injured in the attack.

"Amnesty International is seriously concerned that these and other strikes have resulted in unlawful killings that may constitute extrajudicial executions or war crimes," the report said.

Mustafa Qadri, Amnesty International's Pakistan researcher, said that while war crimes have possibly been committed, that cannot be confirmed without more information from the U.S. government.

Made public the day before Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is due to meet U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington, the report calls for a series of measures to bring the drone program in line with international law.

Those include conducting impartial investigations into the cases documented, bringing those responsible for human rights violations to justice and offering compensation to civilian victims' families.

On Tuesday, Sharif was at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington.

"Recently our political parties in a national conference declared the use of drones is not only a continued violation of our territorial integrity but also detrimental to our resolve at efforts in eliminating terrorism from our country," Sharif said.

"This issue has become a major irritant in our bilateral relationship as well. I therefore would stress the need for an end to the drone attacks."

Sharif has previously called for an end to the U.S. drone program in Pakistan, where it has stirred deep anger, and will raise the issue with Obama on Wednesday, said Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, a spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.

"The government of Pakistan believes drone strikes are against international law and the sovereignty of Pakistan," Chaudhry told CNN. "Drone strikes are counterproductive to fighting terrorism."

Pakistan wants to persuade the United States to stop using drones, he said.

"International opinion is against drone strikes, not just here in Pakistan, but in the world," Chaudhry said. "This opinion is strengthening."

Adding to the pressure, Human Rights Watch also released a report on U.S. drone attacks Tuesday -- this one focusing on Yemen.

Letta Taylor, a senior counterterrorism researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the group found at least two clear cases of violations of international laws of war, but those did not reach war crimes status.

The group said four of the six attacks it had investigated "may have violated the laws of war."

Based on extensive field research, the reports underlined the difficulties of gathering information on attacks in dangerous areas of Pakistan and Yemen.

"We found that despite assurances from President Obama that (the U.S. government is) doing its utmost to protect civilians from harm, that in fact in many cases it is killing innocent civilians, even dozens of them, if not more," Taylor said.

And both reports noted the U.S. government's unwillingness to talk about the cases.

The lack of information from U.S. authorities, Amnesty said, makes it impossible "to reach firm conclusions about the context in which the U.S. drone attacks on Mamana Bibi and on the 18 laborers took place, and therefore their status under international law."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney rejected the idea that the United States has violated any laws.

"To the extent these reports claim that the U.S. has acted contrary to international law we would strongly disagree," he said at a press briefing Tuesday. "The administration has repeatedly emphasized the extraordinary care that we take to make sure that counterterrorism actions are in accordance with all applicable law."

The U.S. government has said strikes by the unmanned aircraft are a necessary part of the fight against militant groups. In May, Obama defended the drone program and disclosed the guidelines determining its use.

He said drones would be deployed only when there is an imminent threat, no hope of capturing the targeted terrorist, "near certainty" that civilians wouldn't be harmed and "no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat."
Civilian victims in Yemen
But Human Rights Watch said the evidence it had gathered "strongly suggests" that the strikes in Yemen it documented "did not adhere" to the policies set out by Obama.

The group said the attacks its report covers took place between 2009 and 2013, killing 82 people, at least 57 of them civilians.

The strikes ostensibly targeted suspected members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), but victims included women, children, truck drivers and other civilians, the report said.

"At least four of the strikes were carried out by drones, a fifth strike by either drones or warplanes, and a sixth one by cruise missiles releasing cluster munitions, indiscriminate weapons that pose unacceptable dangers to civilians," it said.

The report also questioned the military validity of several of the suspected al Qaeda operatives targeted.

Both reports describe the climate of fear created by the drones in Pakistan and Yemen, and the polarizing effect the attacks are having on local populations.

"The ultimate tragedy is that the drone aircraft the USA deploys over Pakistan now instill the same kind of fear in the people of the Tribal Areas that was once associated only with al Qaeda and the Taliban," said the Amnesty report.

"Like other forces operating in the Tribal Areas, the USA appears to be exploiting the lawless and remote nature of the region to evade accountability for its violations," it said.

Human Rights Watch described a similar situation in Yemen.

"We Yemenis are the ones who pay the price of the 'war on terror,'" Faisal bin Ali Jaber, a relative of a cleric and a police officer who were both killed in a drone attack in August 2012, was quoted as saying in the report. "We are caught between a drone on one side and al Qaeda on the other."

The report warned that "should the United States continue targeted killings in Yemen without addressing the consequences of killing civilians and taking responsibility for unlawful deaths, it risks further angering many Yemenis and handing another recruiting card to AQAP."

The reports set out a list of recommendations, primarily for the U.S. government, but also for authorities in Pakistan and Yemen.

More broadly, Amnesty warned that the American government may be setting a troubling standard in its use of drones that other countries could follow.

"U.S. policy and practice on targeted killings and drones are not only of concern in their own right: they also set a dangerous precedent that other states may seek to exploit to avoid responsibility for their own unlawful killings," the report said.

In Yemen, images of the charred, shattered remains of the cleric and policemen killed in August 2012 have circulated in the village where the attack took place, the Human Rights Watch report says.

"Now when villagers see these images," Jaber, the relative, was quoted as saying, "they think of America."

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rights groups challenge u.s. on drone strikes in pakistan

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Rights groups challenge U.S. on drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen

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The villagers had congregated at the tent, as they often did at the end of the workday, to sit and chat. Among them were men who sold vegetables or wood. Others mined or traded minerals used to make alloys like stainless steel. They were husbands and fathers, brothers and sons.

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Targeted Killing of Terrorist Suspects Overseas

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The drones came for Ayman Zawahiri on 13 January 2006, hovering over a village in Pakistan called Damadola. Ten months later, they came again for the man who would become al-Qaida's leader, this time in Bajaur.

Drones graphic

Eight years later, Zawahiri is still alive. Seventy-six children and 29 adults, according to reports after the two strikes, are not.

However many Americans know who Zawahiri is, far fewer are familiar with Qari Hussain. Hussain was a deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group aligned with al-Qaida that trained the would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, before his unsuccessful 2010 attack. The drones first came for Hussain years before, on 29 January 2008. Then they came on 23 June 2009, 15 January 2010, 2 October 2010 and 7 October 2010.

Finally, on 15 October 2010, Hellfire missiles fired from a Predator or Reaper drone killed Hussain, the Pakistani Taliban later confirmed. For the death of a man whom practically no American can name, the US killed 128 people, 13 of them children, none of whom it meant to harm.

A new analysis of the data available to the public about drone strikes, conducted by the human-rights group Reprieve, indicates that even when operators target specific individuals - the most focused effort of what Barack Obama calls "targeted killing" - they kill vastly more people than their targets, often needing to strike multiple times. Attempts to kill 41 men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people, as of 24 November.

Reprieve, sifting through reports compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, examined cases in which specific people were targeted by drones multiple times. Their data, shared with the Guardian, raises questions about the accuracy of US intelligence guiding strikes that US officials describe using words like "clinical" and "precise."

The analysis is a partial estimate of the damage wrought by Obama's favored weapon of war, a tool he and his administration describe as far more precise than more familiar instruments of land or air power.

"Drone strikes have been sold to the American public on the claim that they're 'precise'. But they are only as precise as the intelligence that feeds them. There is nothing precise about intelligence that results in the deaths of 28 unknown people, including women and children, for every 'bad guy' the US goes after," said Reprieve's Jennifer Gibson, who spearheaded the group's study.

Some 24 men specifically targeted in Pakistan resulted in the death of 874 people. All were reported in the press as "killed" on multiple occasions, meaning that numerous strikes were aimed at each of them. The vast majority of those strikes were unsuccessful. An estimated 142 children were killed in the course of pursuing those 24 men, only six of whom died in the course of drone strikes that killed their intended targets.

In Yemen, 17 named men were targeted multiple times. Strikes on them killed 273 people, at least seven of them children. At least four of the targets are still alive.

Available data for the 41 men targeted for drone strikes across both countries indicate that each of them was reported killed multiple times. Seven of them are believed to still be alive. The status of another, Haji Omar, is unknown. Abu Ubaidah al-Masri, whom drones targeted three times, later died from natural causes, believed to be hepatitis.

The data cohort is only a fraction of those killed by US drones overall. Reprieve did not focus on named targets struck only once. Neither Reprieve nor the Guardian examined the subset of drone strikes that do not target specific people: the so-called "signature strikes" that attack people based on a pattern of behavior considered suspicious, rather than intelligence tying their targets to terrorist activity. An analytically conservative Council on Foreign Relations tally assesses that 500 drone strikes outside of Iraq and Afghanistan have killed 3,674 people.

As well, the data is agnostic on the validity of the named targets struck on multiple occasions being marked for death in the first place.

Like all weapons, drones will inevitably miss their targets given enough chances. But the secrecy surrounding them obscures how often misses occur and the reasons for them. Even for the 33 named targets whom the drones eventually killed - successes, by the logic of the drone strikes - another 947 people died in the process.

There are myriad problems with analyzing data from US drone strikes. Those strikes occur under a blanket of official secrecy, which means analysts must rely on local media reporting about their aftermath, with all the attendant problems besetting journalism in dangerous or denied places. Anonymous leaks to media organizations, typically citing an unnamed American, Yemeni or Pakistani official, are the only acknowledgements that the strikes actually occur, or target a particular individual.

Without the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command declassifying more information on the strikes, unofficial and imprecise information is all that is available, complicating efforts to independently verify or refute administration assurances about the impact of the drones.

What little US officials say about the strikes typically boils down to assurances that they apply " targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us," as John Brennan, now the CIA director, said in a 2011 speech.

"The only people that we fire a drone at [sic] are confirmed terrorist targets at the highest level after a great deal of vetting that takes a long period of time. We don't just fire a drone at somebody and think they're a terrorist," the secretary of state, John Kerry, said at a BBC forum in 2013.

A Reprieve team investigating on the ground in Pakistan turned up what it believes to be a confirmed case of mistaken identity. Someone with the same name as a terror suspect on the Obama administration's "kill list" was killed on the third attempt by US drones. His brother was captured, interrogated and encouraged to "tell the Americans what they want to hear": that they had in fact killed the right person. Reprieve has withheld identifying details of the family in question, making the story impossible to independently verify.

"President Obama needs to be straight with the American people about the human cost of this programme. If even his government doesn't know who is filling the body bags every time a strike goes wrong, his claims that this is a precise programme look like nonsense, and the risk that it is in fact making us less safe looks all too real," Gibson said.
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41 men targeted but 1,147 people killed: US drone strikes - the facts on the ground

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The drones came for Ayman Zawahiri on 13 January 2006, hovering over a village in Pakistan called Damadola. Ten months later, they came again for the man who would become al-Qaida's leader, this time in Bajaur. Eight years later, Zawahiri is still alive. Seventy-six children and 29 adults, according to reports after the two strikes, are not.

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Introduction

The United States adopted targeted killing as an essential tactic to pursue those responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have employed the controversial practice with more frequency in recent years, both as part of combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and in counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Since assuming office in 2009, President Barack Obama's administration has escalated targeted killings, primarily through an increase in unmanned drone strikes on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but also through an expansion of U.S. special operations kill/capture missions. The successful killing of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. Navy SEAL raid in May 2011 and the September 2011 drone strike on Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni cleric and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula propagandist, are prime examples of this trend.

In recent years, the White House has made notable efforts to clarify its legal justification for targeted killings amid calls from lawmakers, rights activists, and legal scholars for greater transparency and oversight of the lethal drone program. In May 2013, President Obama delivered a major policy speech discussing the need for a " comprehensive counterterrorism strategy" and acknowledged issuing new policy guidance related to U.S. targeted killings.

What are targeted killings?

According to a UN special report on the subject, targeted killings are premeditated acts of lethal force employed by states in times of peace or during armed conflict to eliminate specific individuals outside their custody. "Targeted killing" is not a term distinctly defined under international law, but gained currency in 2000 after Israel made public a policy of targeting alleged terrorists in the Palestinian territories. The particular act of lethal force, usually undertaken by a nation's intelligence or armed services, can vary widely-from cruise missiles to drone strikes to special operations raids. The primary focus of U.S. targeted killings, particularly through drone strikes, has been on the al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership networks in Afghanistan and the remote tribal regions of Pakistan. However, U.S. operations have expanded in recent years to include countries such as Somalia and Yemen.

What are the legal considerations?

The George W. Bush and Obama administrations have sought to justify targeted killings under both domestic and international law. The domestic legal underpinning for U.S. counterterrorism operations and the targeted killing of members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and its affiliates across the globe is the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which the U.S. Congress passed just days after 9/11. The statute empowers the president "to use all necessary and appropriate force" in pursuit of those responsible for the terrorist attacks. Peacetime assassinations, which are sometimes conflated with targeted killings, have been officially banned by the United States since 1976.

The Obama administration asserts the United States remains in a state of armed conflict with al-Qaeda and associated forces, and has laid out its justification for targeted killings over several major policy speeches. These include those given by Harold Koh, legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State, in 2010; White House chief counterterrorism adviser John Brennan in 2011; Defense Department general counsel Jeh Johnson in 2012; Attorney General Eric Holder in 2012, and Brennan, once more, in 2012.

The White House maintains that the U.S. right to self-defense, as laid out in Article 51 of the UN charter, may include the targeted killing of persons such as high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks, both in and out of declared theaters of war. The administration's posture includes the prerogative to unilaterally pursue targets in states without prior consent if that country is unwilling or unable to deal effectively with the threat-exemplified by the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Speaking at Northwestern University in March 2012, Holder elaborated on the targeting of U.S. citizens abroad (e.g., Anwar al-Awlaki), stating that such individuals may be killed by U.S. forces, but are still protected under the Fifth Amendment's due process clause-albeit a consideration that "takes into account the realities of combat." Holder said specifically that it would be lawful to target a U.S. citizen if the individual poses an imminent threat, capture is not feasible, and the operation were executed in observance of the applicable laws of war.

In yet another major policy speech one month later, Brennan specifically addressed the standards by which the administration authorizes lethal strikes on al-Qaeda outside Afghanistan. Steps in the process include: deciding if the target is a significant threat to U.S. interests, being cognizant of state sovereignty issues, having high confidence in the target's identity and that innocent civilians will not be harmed, and, finally, engaging in an additional review process if the individual is a U.S. citizen.

A white paper leaked by the Department of Justice in February 2013 provided a detailed account of the legal framework for the targeted killing of U.S. citizens-although these strikes were not publicly acknoweldged until months later.

In May 2013, President Obama delivered a major address on U.S. counterterrorism policy at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., in which he announced new policy guidance for U.S. targeted killings off the conventional battlefield. Notably, he said that the same "high threshold" the administration has set for targeting U.S. citizens will be extended to noncitizens-a policy that "respects the inherent dignity of every human life." While the president's speech largely defended U.S. drone policy, he also called for the refinement and eventual repeal of the AUMF-"to determine how we can continue to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual war-time footing."

If other states were to claim the broad-based authority that the United States does . . . the result would be chaos.

Philip Alston,

CFR's Matthew C. Waxman says the ongoing challenge for the Obama administration has been to balance several opposing imperatives: asserting broad war powers, while assuring critics that they are limited; justifying actions that remain covert; and promoting government transparency, while protecting sensitive intelligence programs.

Philip Alston, the former UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, condemns the U.S. claims of self-defense as overly expansive, stating that "if other states were to claim the broad-based authority that the United States does, to kill people anywhere, anytime, the result would be chaos." Waxman says that while the strike on bin Laden would normally be a violation of state sovereignty, the U.S. government "is well within its rights" to use force on foreign soil without consent if there is an overriding necessity of self-defense.

CFR national security expert John B. Bellinger says the law is in need of a significant update. "The 2001 AUMF is more than ten years old now and getting a little long in the tooth-still tied to the use of force against the people who planned, committed, and or aided those involved in 9/11," he says. "The farther we get from [targeting] al-Qaeda [e.g., al-Shabaab in Somalia], the harder it is to squeeze [those operations] into the AUMF."

What methods does the United States employ?

Drone strikes. Targeted attacks launched from unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have ballooned under the Obama administration. A study undertaken by the New America Foundation reports that in his first two years of office, President Obama authorized nearly four times the number of strikes in Pakistan as President Bush did in his eight years. The report, which relies solely on media accounts of attacks, claims that some 291 strikes have been launched since 2009, killing somewhere between 1,299 and 2,264 militants, as of January 2013. Alternate reports also document the escalation in drone strikes in recent years, but the accounting of militant and civilian deaths can vary widely depending on the source.

Traditionally the CIA has managed the bulk of U.S. drone operations outside recognized war zones, such as in Pakistan, while the Department of Defense (DOD) has commanded operations in established theaters of conflict, such as in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. But in some instances, the drone operations of both the CIA and DOD are integrated, as in the covert drone campaign in Yemen.

In early 2013, the Obama administration shifted some of the CIA's authority over lethal drone operations to the Defense Department in an effort to streamline counterterrorism operations and increase transparency, analysts say.

Kill/Capture missions. Since President Obama assumed office, the Pentagon has also increased the use of special operations raids (i.e., kill/capture missions) from 675 in 2009 to roughly 2,200 in 2011. According to the Pentagon, approximately 90 percent of these night raids end without a shot fired. As conventional U.S. forces begin to draw down, "the role of counterterrorism operations, and in particular these kinds of special missions, will become prominent," says International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commander General John Allen.

The covert raids are directed by an elite element within the U.S. military known as Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The clandestine command draws top personnel from groups like the Navy SEALs and Army Delta Force, and maintains a direct relationship with the executive branch. JSOC has tripled in size since 9/11 and currently operates in a dozen countries. Jeremy Scahill of the Nation writes, "The primacy of JSOC within the Obama administration's foreign policy-from Yemen and Somalia to Afghanistan and Pakistan-indicates that he has doubled down on the Bush-era policy of targeted assassination as a staple of U.S. foreign policy."

Civilians and local governments have condemned night raids as culturally offensive, given that U.S. soldiers often enter homes in the dead of night, with women present, and utilize dogs (which are viewed as impure in Islamic culture) in their search. In April 2012, the United States reached a seminal agreement with Afghanistan to give Kabul greater oversight over special operations raids and put Afghan forces in the lead of those activities.

What are the political implications?

A prominent criticism of U.S. targeted killings, and of drone strikes in particular, is over the issue of collateral civilian deaths. Some official Pakistani sources claim that seven hundred innocents were killed in 2009 alone, while U.S. government sources claim that fewer than thirty civilians were killed from May 2008 to May 2010. Writing in Foreign Affairs in late 2011, Peter Bergen andKatherine Tiedemann said the more salient question is: "What impact has the drone program had on the insurgency in Pakistan and, by extension, that in Afghanistan?" Violence in Pakistan has risen sharply since the drone campaign began, according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. However, Bergen and Tiedemann caution, "a number of factors could have contributed to these increases."

Some observers argue targeted killings are a bane to U.S.-Pakistan relations. CFR's Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow Pir Zubair Shah writes that anti-Americanism in Pakistan is fueled by the domestic media's portrayal of the U.S. drone campaign as a "scourge targeting innocent civilians." This is a narrative that will persist, he says, "until the United States and Pakistan come clean about the program."

In November 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported the CIA had made several " secret concessions" in its drone program after U.S. diplomats suggested strikes targeting large groups of militants were harming relations with Islamabad. Changes in U.S. drone policy included giving the State Department greater influence in targeting decisions, providing Pakistani leaders forewarning about certain strikes, and suspending drone operations when Pakistani officials visit the United States. In addition, some experts suggest the CIA imposed a moratorium on drone operations in Pakistan from November 2011 to January 2012-the longest pause since the program was ramped up in July 2008-against a backdrop of deteriorating bilateral relations. In April 2012, the Pakistani parliament voted unanimously to demand an end to U.S drone strikes on its territory.

In May 2013, President Obama acknowledged incidents of civilian casualties, but said that "there is a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties, and nongovernmental reports." In further defense, he said that "the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes."Proponents of targeted killings say the civilian death toll is exaggerated for political purposes, while claiming drone strikes and night raids remain the most effective and discreet methods of pursuing militant leaders and their networks, especially as the United States begins to seek a smaller military footprint in the region.

Drone strikes and special operations raids put fewer Americans in harm's way.

Daniel L. Byman of the Brookings Institution says that targeting major terrorists like bin Laden removes charismatic and pragmatic leaders who are difficult to replace. In addition, by targeting an organization's lieutenants, "it is possible to exhaust the terrorist group's bench." CFR's Micah Zenko says that while drone strikes are an effective military tactic, "military victory is not tantamount to political success." He says that while a policy of leadership decapitation can reduce "a group's capacity, it neither ruptures group cohesion nor ideological commitment."

What is the future of targeted killings?

Blowback from civil liberties and human rights groups is likely to grow in direct proportion to any increase in targeted killings. Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch have raised pointed questions regarding the program's perceived lack of accountability and transparency. However, in early 2013, the Obama administration made strides to address some of these transparency issues and expressed a willingness to increase oversight. In a May speech, the president said that Congress "is briefed on every strike that America takes," and that the White House will review proposals on how to extend oversight through the institution of special courts, independent boards, or other means.

Some critics question whether the United States is setting a negative precedent that will be invoked by other nations that acquire similar lethal technology, such as China and Russia. As an indication of things to come, security analysts project worldwide spending on drone aircraft to roughly double over the next decade to $11.4 billion.

Analysts point to several factors that indicate U.S. targeted killings are likely to expand in the near term. Drone strikes and special operations raids put fewer Americans in harm's way and provide a low-cost alternative to expensive and cumbersome conventional forces, especially given likely cuts in the defense budget and a waning public appetite for long wars.

The rise of so-called "nonstate actors" operating in loose transnational networks as the principal threat to U.S. national security also lends itself to an expansion of U.S. targeted killings, some experts say. In January 2012, the Pentagon released a strategy review that outlines defense priorities "in light of the changing geopolitical environment and our changing fiscal circumstances." The new guidance stresses the persistent threat of al-Qaeda and its affiliates in South Asia and the Middle East, and commits the military to actively pursuing these threats by "directly striking the most dangerous groups and individuals when necessary."

Other experts say technological advances, including precision-guided munitions and enhanced surveillance, have given the United States a greater ability to target these particular individuals while reducing collateral damage. In July 2011, Brennan, provided a portent of things to come: "Going forward, we will be mindful that if our nation is threatened, our best offense won't always be deploying large armies abroad but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us."

President Obama's January 2013 selection of Brennan to take over the CIA has reinforced the notion among some analysts that targeted killings will continue to be a central component of U.S. counterterrorism policy. Brennan played a significant role in the administration's expansion of targeted killings, including overseeing the process by which suspected militants and terrorists are selected for strikes.

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The United States adopted targeted killing as an essential tactic to pursue those responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have employed the controversial practice with more frequency in recent years, both as part of combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and in counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

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Targeted Killing Debate - Ideas for AFF and NEG

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For more about Lincoln Douglas Debate including topic analyses, strategies, and links to evidence *click here* Prelude Just in case yo...

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The U.S. targeted killing program operates without meaningful oversight outside the executive branch, and essential details about the program still remain secret, including what criteria the government uses to put people on CIA and military kill lists as well as how much evidence is required before it does so. The U.S.

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The United States use of targeted killing in foreign countries is unjust_Topic Overview.docx

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The Obama administration has escalated the campaign of targeted killings against suspected terrorists worldwide, increasing the use of unmanned drone strikes (ForeignPolicy) and so-called kill/capture missions (PBS) on al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership both on and off the traditional battlefield. While some analysts tout successes, like the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan, others say the strategy lacks proper legal boundaries, as in the targeting of an American jihadist, Anwar al-Awlaki (WSJ), in Yemen.

Should targeted killings continue? CFR's Matthew Waxman cautions against overreliance on them as a counterterrorism tool but says so far U.S. policy is within legal bounds. Constitutional lawyer Pardiss Kebriaei questions the legal basis that U.S. administrations have used to justify killing suspected terrorists off the battlefield, suggesting a violation of constitutional rights of due process. Decapitating terrorist networks is an effective strategy, says Georgetown's Daniel Byman, capable of robbing a group of charismatic leadership critical to its success. But Afghanistan expert Kate Clark argues that targeted killings often produce an organizational chaos that unleashes a more radical generation of subordinates.
Matthew C. Waxman
U.S. strikes against senior al-Qaeda or affiliated terrorists in places like Pakistan or Yemen--most recently, the reported (but unverified) killing of al-Qaeda-linked Pakistani militant Ilyas Kashmiri (Reuters)--often give rise to accusations that the United States is engaged in unlawful "extrajudicial killing," "assassination," or violations of sovereignty. In part because of the secrecy surrounding these policies, such legal claims often don't get thoroughly and specifically answered. However, lethal force directed against particular individuals outside a combat zone like Afghanistan is legally and strategically appropriate in limited circumstances.

The 2010 public remarks by State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh defending drone strikes (along with a 2006 speech (PDF) by his predecessor, John Bellinger, explaining the legal basis for the use of military force against al-Qaeda) are important documents because they outline some of the legal principles that govern U.S. targeting of al-Qaeda figures. They argue that traditional international legal paradigms of armed conflict and self-defense may apply to some non-state terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and groups allied with it, but they also acknowledge that these legal paradigms--built primarily to deal with inter-state conflict--don't always fit well the challenges and dilemmas involved in combating non-state threats.

Lethal force directed against particular individuals outside a combat zone like Afghanistan is legally and strategically appropriate in limited circumstances.

Legal constraints on U.S. actions include respect for state sovereignty (limiting where and under what conditions the United States could target) and law-of-war principles such as proportionality and distinction (limiting when and how the United States could target). Applying these frameworks to the recent raid on Osama bin Laden, as Koh did publicly recently, the United States has a strong argument that he could be targeted as an enemy commander in the ongoing armed conflict with al-Qaeda. U.S. actions in Pakistan's territory were also defensible because the Pakistani government was not capable or willing to deal with this threat. So far as I can tell from available information, the operation was planned and carried out in strict accordance with the laws of war, including due care to protect innocent civilians and rules regarding surrender.

As to strategy, lethal targeting is but one important tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Policymakers must be careful that the allure of lethal targeting operations, especially with high-tech weaponry like aerial drones, does not obscure the collateral damage that sometimes comes with such strikes--not only the human toll but the repercussions on other important elements of counterterrorism strategy.
Pardiss Kebriaei
The aspect of the United States' targeted killing policy that is of greatest concern is that which permits deliberate, preemptive strikes outside zones in which the United States is engaged in active combat such as in Afghanistan. In such zones, the intensity of fighting between organized armed groups creates a certain exigency that permits killing outside the usual confines of the law, which would otherwise require due process or excuse the use of lethal force only in narrow circumstances of self-defense. It is that exigency--of war--that triggers the application of a different set of rules--the laws of war--and permits uses of force that would otherwise be unlawful and unacceptable.

The Obama administration's position, however, like that of its predecessor, is that those exigent circumstances exist globally--that an attack on the United States nearly a decade ago triggered a conflict against al-Qaeda and the Taliban that is being waged not only in Afghanistan but extends potentially everywhere, or, as the administration ambiguously puts it, "elsewhere." But it takes more than declaring a global war for U.S. drone strikes to be lawful in countries as disconnected from the conflict in Afghanistan as Yemen. Whether a situation rises to the level of armed conflict and justifies more permissive rules for the use of force depends on how the facts on the ground, measured against objective criteria defined under international law, add up.

It takes more than declaring a global war for U.S. drone strikes in countries as disconnected from the conflict in Afghanistan as Yemen to be lawful.

Where conditions of armed conflict do not exist, the law that governs the actions of the United States is the Constitution and international human rights law, under which the government can only carry out a killing after due process or as a last resort to address an imminent threat of deadly harm. Those are the standards, for example, that should govern the United States' actions vis-à-vis U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.

Wherever one comes down in the debate, however, it is impossible to discuss the issues other than in the abstract without greater specificity from the Obama administration about its targeting policy. What, if any, geographical boundaries exist in this conflict, and how are they determined? What are the criteria for determining whether to target an individual? What are the criteria for determining whether a group is sufficiently "associated" with al-Qaeda? What are the conditions in which the administration believes it may act in self-defense? If imminence is part of the calculus, how is that term defined?

The abuse and arbitrariness that resulted from the Bush administration's insistence on secrecy, and the Obama administration's own purported embrace of greater transparency, should compel the administration to provide a fuller explanation of its targeting policy. Its failure to do so in more than broad strokes only adds fuel to existing questions and concerns.
Daniel L. Byman
Killing terrorist leaders and key lieutenants not only brings justice to our enemies, but can devastate the group in question. Killing a leader like bin Laden removes a charismatic yet pragmatic leader--one who succeeded in transforming a small group into a household name and proved time and again he could attract recruits and funding. His replacement, be it Ayman al-Zawahiri or another senior al-Qaeda figure, may prove less charismatic and less able to unify this fissiparous movement. Some existing affiliates and cells may split off, and the core might be eclipsed by rivals.

Less dramatic, but no less important, is a campaign against lieutenants and bomb-makers, passport-forgers, travel-facilitators, and others whose skills cannot easily be replaced--essentially what the United States has been doing since the end of the Bush administration in Pakistan through drone strikes. When these individuals are hit, and hit again, it is possible to exhaust the terrorist group's bench. During the Second Intifada, Israel found that initial strikes against Palestinian cell leaders and bomb-makers had only a limited impact on the terrorist groups it faced, as eager replacements quickly took over. Eventually, however, there was a bottom to the barrel and less skilled, less motivated people took over.

An often-neglected impact of killing terrorist leaders is on what they and their group do not do. When a campaign against lieutenants is in full-gear, they must spend much of their time in hiding or moving from place to place.

An often-neglected impact of killing terrorist leaders is on what they and their group do not do. When a campaign against lieutenants is in full-gear, they must spend much of their time in hiding or moving from place to place. Communicating by phone becomes risky, and the circle of trust shrinks, making meetings or large-scale training harder to pull off. The hunt for spies within can become all-consuming. In the end, leaders are less able to lead, and the group's cohesion and strategic direction suffer.

A targeted killing campaign, of course, is not a strategy by itself. At home and in most countries in the world, the United States can simply ask its allies to monitor suspected terrorists and arrest them--and, in so doing, gain intelligence--should they prove dangerous. And efforts to delegitimize terrorists and strengthen weak governments must also continue and become stronger. However, killing terrorists can complement other instruments of U.S. national policy.
Kate Clark
In the summer of 2009, the friend of a veteran Afghan researcher on the Taliban was accused of spying. He was a known figure in his district, Zurmat, in Paktia province and was not too frightened when he was summoned to the "court," which was made up of elders that included a couple of Taliban representatives. It found him innocent. A year later, in the summer of 2010, a spate of suspected spies were murdered in Zurmat, their throats slit "like sheep" by unknown killers. The judicial system, however rudimentary, had broken down.

The researcher linked the violent shift to a general weakening of local Taliban command and control, and blamed the U.S. policy of targeted killing and detention of field commanders ("kill or capture") in Afghanistan. The local and indeed regional Afghan leadership no longer had the clout to discipline Pakistani Waziris and other foreign jihadists--what the researcher called "criminal Taliban"--whohad streamed across the border from Pakistan.

The foreign jihadists, in particular, have few scruples in dealing with locals--no kindred ties and no fear of retribution. People went to Waziristan to the regional Taliban leadership council to complain about abuses, said the researcher, but they "just shrug their shoulders."

The risk is that the insurgency is not halted, but just becomes more fragmented and brutal, as younger and more radical commanders, with no memories of a country at peace, step into the shoes of their dead (or detained) comrades.

This is only one case, but detailed, in-depth research by AAN's Giustozzi and Reuter (PDF) in the north and Strick van Linschoten and Kuehn (PDF) in Kandahar present similar patterns. Targeted killings are intended to weaken the Taliban and thereby protect the population. However, the risk is that the insurgency is not halted, but becomes more fragmented and brutal as younger and more radical commanders, with no memories of a country at peace, step into the shoes of their dead (or detained) comrades.

Where the Afghan government can take control of areas and governs well, the policy of targeted killings may benefit the local population. But where provincial government is corrupt and abusive, and where areas remain contested between the Taliban and the international militia, weaker Taliban command and control may not look much like progress.

As for the other aim of the strategy--persuading the Taliban that fighting is futile and they should negotiate--the United States may find it is killing some of the very people who will be needed to make peace.
Kate Clark
In the summer of 2009, the friend of a veteran Afghan researcher on the Taliban was accused of spying. He was a known figure in his district, Zurmat, in Paktia province and was not too frightened when he was summoned to the "court," which was made up of elders that included a couple of Taliban representatives. It found him innocent. A year later, in the summer of 2010, a spate of suspected spies were murdered in Zurmat, their throats slit "like sheep" by unknown killers. The judicial system, however rudimentary, had broken down.

The researcher linked the violent shift to a general weakening of local Taliban command and control, and blamed the U.S. policy of targeted killing and detention of field commanders ("kill or capture") in Afghanistan. The local and indeed regional Afghan leadership no longer had the clout to discipline Pakistani Waziris and other foreign jihadists--what the researcher called "criminal Taliban"--whohad streamed across the border from Pakistan.

The foreign jihadists, in particular, have few scruples in dealing with locals--no kindred ties and no fear of retribution. People went to Waziristan to the regional Taliban leadership council to complain about abuses, said the researcher, but they "just shrug their shoulders."

The risk is that the insurgency is not halted, but just becomes more fragmented and brutal, as younger and more radical commanders, with no memories of a country at peace, step into the shoes of their dead (or detained) comrades.

This is only one case, but detailed, in-depth research by AAN's Giustozzi and Reuter (PDF) in the north and Strick van Linschoten and Kuehn (PDF) in Kandahar present similar patterns. Targeted killings are intended to weaken the Taliban and thereby protect the population. However, the risk is that the insurgency is not halted, but becomes more fragmented and brutal as younger and more radical commanders, with no memories of a country at peace, step into the shoes of their dead (or detained) comrades.

Where the Afghan government can take control of areas and governs well, the policy of targeted killings may benefit the local population. But where provincial government is corrupt and abusive, and where areas remain contested between the Taliban and the international militia, weaker Taliban command and control may not look much like progress.

As for the other aim of the strategy--persuading the Taliban that fighting is futile and they should negotiate--the United States may find it is killing some of the very people who will be needed to make peace.

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The Obama administration has escalated the campaign of targeted killings against suspected terrorists worldwide, increasing the use of unmanned drone strikes (ForeignPolicy) and so-called kill/capture missions (PBS) on al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership both on and off the traditional battlefield. While some analysts tout successes, like the U.S.

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Most people agree that in order to capture the audience you must have an attention getter. This is one of those times. When you are debating, more than likely the topic is going to have a lot of jargon that your average joe blow just doesn't understand.