Drone Strikes: Short Term Good, Long Term Harm?
Robert Wright highlights dilemma between the need to take lethal action against today's terrorists with the longer-term possibility that you'll create more:
'One feature of many of these wars is that we're not attacking the state itself. We're attacking groups within the state. For example, in a drone strike in Somalia three days ago (didn't read about that one, did you?), we killed someone in al Qaeda. At other times we kill Somalians who are in al-Shabab.These are groups that, on the one hand, don't have the capacity, as a state government might, to retaliate in an immediate and specific way. But that doesn't mean retaliation won't be forthcoming. Indeed, groups such as al-Shabab, whose political goals are essentially local, may now become more inclined to consider America the enemy and begin planning anti-American terrorist attacks, or trying to recruit home-grown terrorists in America.
The blowback could assume vaguer form, as well. When we kill Muslims abroad, it often winds up being fuel for al Qaeda recruiting--especially when, as will inevitably happen from time to time, bystanders or family members get killed in the process....
This time lapse changes a president's decision-making paradigm. When the downside of attack is delayed, attacking becomes more attractive. The president can launch strikes to impede terrorism in the short run and let the blowback show up on the next president's watch. (I'm not saying the calculation is always this consciously cynical, but the result can be the same even when it's not.)
'
One thing that might help shape this or a future administration's decision-making is some empirical evidence that drone strikes are causing more long-term damage than they doing short-term good. It won't be precise, of course, but something akin to the work Robert Pape has done documenting the impact of military occupation and suicide terrorism would be useful in this new era of drone warfare.
It could be that the downside risks of some kind of blowback attack are much smaller than the risks of letting certain individuals out of our cross-hairs. Or it could be just the opposite.