Last week with
the presentation of the War on Terror
group (perilous times project), an interesting debate arose
regarding why Islamic extremist groups hate America. I pondered this and
discussed this topic with various people throughout the week. Mr. Bolos
posed the question whether the reason has to do with our foreign policy and
meddling activity in the Middle East. The origins of anti-american sentiment is
a whole other debate, but I would like to focus on what our policy has done for
the U.S’ fight against terrorism.
Many officials
from the Pentagon have said that our sole reason for engaging policy in the
Middle East, Pakistan, and Afghanistan is to suppress terrorist factions who
pose threats to the U.S national security. Both the Bush and Obama
administrations have used drone strikes as a policy to remove leaders of
terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and the Taliban. Many Americans consider this
policy a success as drone surveillance was used for the Bin Laden assassination.
These technologies were also responsible for the killings of 33 high ranking
Taliban and al Qaeda leaders according to
Jeffery Sluka, Ph.D from Cal-Berkeley. A recent article from CNN challenges
the policy and its “successes”, which can be found here.
It is suggested
that drone policy is ineffective because of the large civilian casualties
sustained, especially in Pakistan where drones are most frequently used. The
article highlights a study from Stanford University which concluded that from
June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone
strikes killed 2,562 - 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474 - 881 were
civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured
an additional 1,228 - 1,362 individuals." Many innocent Pakistanis die
from our policy, where only 2% of those killed are high level targets. Is it
justified that we continue to use these policies internationally, even with
detrimental impacts to civilian life? Also I urge you to think about
whether this is successfully helping the
fight against terror or fueling American hatred. Please comment your
thoughts below. I’m curious to hear what you all think.
I think that drone strikes should be continued because of their success in killing top terrorist leaders. The costs contains some civilian casualties, which are awful. However, there would be many more costs if we actually had on the ground operations instead of drone strikes because more civilians would be killed, our soldiers would be put in danger, and the terrorists would have a better chance of carrying out attacks against us. Drones may cause anger, but a large amount of this anger was created before we had drones. All we can do now is try to pick up the pieces of our past in order to ensure a better national security.
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