The drone war is unfolding like the Afghan war.
When it comes to U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan that, according to one Obama official, is the question:
'U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter, backed by top military officers and other State Department officials, wants the strikes to be more judicious, and argues that Pakistan's views need to be given greater weight if the fight against militancy is to succeed, said current and former U.S. officials.Defenders of the current drone program take umbrage at the suggestion that the program isn't judicious. "In this context, the phrase 'more judicious' is really code for 'let's appease Pakistani sensitivities,' " said a U.S. official. The CIA has already given Pakistani concerns greater weight in targeting decisions in recent months, the official added. Advocates of sustained strikes also argue that the current rift with the Pakistanis isn't going to be fixed by scaling back the program.
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Given the secrecy of the program, it's difficult to tell what kind of targets the CIA is hitting. I take the term "judicious" to mean that drone killings are reserved for "high level" al-Qaeda operatives (like Illyas Kashmiri). Individuals who are typically foreign fighters or clearly linked to acts of terrorism directed against the United States. Given the number and tempo of drone strikes conducted over the past two years, it's clear the CIA is targeting a much wider array of individuals than that. Indeed, it may be more appropriate to view the drone program not so much as a tool to assassinate terrorists in hard-to-reach places but as an extension of the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan: CIA drones can hit militant targets related to the Afghan war that NATO, for political and diplomatic reasons, cannot.
If that is indeed the case, then the drone program is quite analogous to the war in Afghanistan. What started as a limited campaign to target those who would kill Americans has been transformed into a wider and murkier conflict against second-order enemies who are primarily being killed because they are attacking the U.S. presence in the region.
(AP Photo)