editorial

Drone program disturbing

An Oct. 26 New Yorker article, “The Predator War,” by Jane Mayer, begins with a description of the August killing in Pakistan of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud by an American drone. Controlled by C.I.A. contractors across the world in Langley, Va., the unmanned, remotely controlled plane bombed and killed Mehsud and eleven others, including his wife and his parents-in-law.

At about the same time, according to the article, there was widespread anger in this country over a Wall Street Journal story reporting that the Bush administration had considered setting up hit squads to capture or kill Al Qaeda operatives around the world. But there was no controversy when CNN reported that President Obama had authorized the drone strike that killed Mehsud.

“We got so upset about a targeted-killing program that didn’t happen,” a New York human rights lawyer is quoted as saying. “But the drone program exists. These are targeted international killings by the state.”

This administration has two drone programs, one publicly acknowledged and controlled by the military, which operates in war zones in Afghanistan. The other program, the covert C.I.A. one that killed Mehsud, is aimed at terror suspects around the world. That program, begun by the Bush administration, has been continued by the Obama administration, with this change: the Obama administration has increased the number of drone strikes. This year so far there have been at least 41 strikes, a number equivalent to the total ordered in Bush’s final three years in office. Indeed, according to Mayer, C.I.A. drones have this year killed between 326 and 538 people, largely in Pakistan, and critics assert that many have been innocent bystanders, including children.

Supporters of the program say that this is the government’s best shot at hunting down terrorists, according to Mayer, who wrote the critically-acclaimed book The Dark Side, about the Bush administration’s use of torture. The drones have killed more than a dozen significant Al Qaeda operatives, and have left that group unnerved and living in constant fear, even in remote tribal areas of Pakistan, supporters say.

Critics of the C.I.A. program say that with this state-sanctioned remote-control killing program, our country has started down a dangerously slippery moral slope. The reality of war, with its inevitable slaughter of innocent people, has simply become invisible, as drones controlled by video-game-like controls in Virginia blow up both terrorists and innocent people in Pakistan. Like torture, these critics say, the program may start with a few well-defined targets and then, because the program has little accountability, broaden its scope to include others. Indeed, some critics are especially troubled by administrative efforts to win the support of Pakistani leaders for the program by giving them more say in selecting the targets.

“Not only would we have expressed abhorrence of such a policy a few years ago; we did,” said recently-retired U.S. Military Academy law professor Gary Solis, referring to American reaction to an Israeli program of targeted killing only months before 9/11.

In this Election Day week, we are reminded of the high hopes of last year’s election, when a history-making president called for a new era of moral leadership and personal responsibility. It is deeply troubling that the new president has continued, and indeed expanded, these secret killings.

—Diane Chiddister