{"id":187600,"date":"2015-10-01T11:36:52","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T11:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=187600"},"modified":"2015-10-01T11:36:52","modified_gmt":"2015-10-01T11:36:52","slug":"whether-drones-work-us-policy-still-rotten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/whether-drones-work-us-policy-still-rotten\/","title":{"rendered":"Whether Drones \u2018Work,\u2019 US Policy Is Still Rotten"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The question of the legitimacy of drone strikes has occasionally bubbled up<br \/>\nin media over the years. As with most international news, the media and the<br \/>\npublic have a short attention span for the issue. On September 30, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-34346925\">the<br \/>\nBBC published<\/a> a survey on whether drone strikes \u201cwork.\u201d Answering were a<br \/>\nprofessor \u201cwho advised the government on counter-terrorism policy\u201d, a linguist<br \/>\nnamed Brian Glyn Williams who was with the CIA, a senior fellow at a research<br \/>\ninstitute, and a Pakistani journalist named Ahmed Rashid.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the answers are semi-critical, but not enough so. Williams<br \/>\nwrites that Osama Bin Laden was observed by a drone that was unarmed, which<br \/>\nmakes even a staunch antiwarrior blanch. But it is intended to. No matter that<br \/>\nthat\u2019s a pity Bin Laden was seen, but couldn\u2019t be killed, two wars before Bin<br \/>\nLaden was taken out were unnecessary and immoral. And the fact that Bin Laden<br \/>\ncould have been killed then if only we\u2019d armed American drones earlier does<br \/>\nnot say anything positive about today\u2019s policy.<\/p>\n<p>Rashid correctly notes, \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt that drones, even if they just kill one civilian, are very<br \/>\neasy to use as a propaganda tool to recruit young people, impressionable people.\u201d<br \/>\nAnd he writes that there was never any concerted attempt to change minds in<br \/>\nthe Tribal Region of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Drones were the only option.<br \/>\nAnd they alienate.<\/p>\n<p>Even a fairly sensible responder like Rashid is responding to<br \/>\nwhat can only be described as a dubious question. Do drone strikes \u201cwork\u201d? Well,<br \/>\nis that the point? What is their goal? If it is to occasionally kill bad men,<br \/>\nthen they work. If they are a sustainable policy that America will not regret<br \/>\nlater is another question. Unasked and unanswered by the BBC is the question<br \/>\nof whether America has the right to kill people in its uneasy hybrid of warfare<br \/>\nand covert assassination. Especially given what we know about how it\u2019s been<br \/>\ndone so far.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/lucy\/2015\/09\/30\/whether-drones-work-us-policy-is-still-rotten\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The question of the legitimacy of drone strikes has occasionally bubbled up in media over the years. As with most international news, the media and the public have a short attention span for the issue. On September 30, the BBC published a survey on whether drone strikes \u201cwork.\u201d Answering were a professor \u201cwho advised the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-187600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}