As Obama announces delayed withdrawal from Afghanistan, major expose on drone program published

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I’m going to be spending the better part of tonight reading through The Drone Papers, an eight-part series of investigations published by The Intercept today outlining the Obama administration’s secretive policies relating to the assassination targeted killing of American and foreign citizens in the War on Terror. As they describe the report:

The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret slides that provides a window into the inner workings of the U.S. military’s kill/capture operations at a key time in the evolution of the drone wars — between 2011 and 2013. The documents, which also outline the internal views of special operations forces on the shortcomings and flaws of the drone program, were provided by a source within the intelligence community who worked on the types of operations and programs described in the slides.

A few thoughts going in:

A MQ-9 Reaper, via Wikimedia Commons

1. In the abstract, drones are a technological advance, like the machine gun. In the context of a war — provided that war is just — one is not only allowed but obligated to use the tools at your disposal to protect the people fighting in that war. Lowering you military capability to that of your opponents is not, in and of itself, a moral position. I’m just barely old enough to remember a time when liberals were on board with using drones in Afghanistan for precisely this reason: They saved American lives.

2. In practice, however, the United States has been unable and, as The Drone Papers seem to suggest, unwilling to codify and adhere to rules regarding when and how using drones is justified. Not only does this lack of oversight and accountability present a massive moral problem, it presents a military problem as well. When we bomb civilians without explanation — when we aren’t sure how many people we’ve killed — we exacerbate the threat we’re supposedly “neutralizing.”

3. President Obama is going to announce in a few minutes that we’re delaying our exit in Afghanistan. Perhaps indefinitely, but at least through much of the rest of his term. The roughly ten thousand troops that will remain in the country will be supported and, in many cases, replaced by drones.

Check out The Drone Papers here.

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