Summary OfThe Thistle And The Drone Summary

Foreign and domestic policies are not linear, rather the policies are connected in a circle, with each policy reinforcing the values of another. Domestic American terrorism in the prison and detention systems and governmental reforms are influenced by the mobilization and ethnocentrism abroad. The militarization internationally is justified by the domestic handling of the same cultural issues within the United State borders. The United States has strangely used a near Catch-22 to handle dilemmas. The United States has allowed perspective to become reality, whether with oneself or regarding issues abroad, specifically in the Middle East. Terrorism is the use or threat of fear for political or economical gain. An internal characteristic of terrorism is how dependent it is of perspective, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. To understand “terrorism,” a focus must be applied to the history, what drove an organization to commit such acts. Respectively, the Middle East has been a hotbed for the key word “terrorism,” especially because of 9/11. Subsequently, Muslims have been stigmatized by the United States as terrorists. The consequences spawned because of 9/11 require a look to the past to understand the present.

On September 11, 2001, a series of terrorist attacks were directed for the United States by means of four hijacked planes. Two of which hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center, one hit the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Department of Defense, and the fourth crashed in a field near Pittsburg after it was meant to hit the White House. The terror spread in the United States and brought concern and fear to the citizens. The impact of these terrorist attacks caused serious and detrimental damages within the country, and their result on the people were enormous; insecurity, helplessness, and susceptibility spread. Especially after the release of a videotape in which Osama Bin Laden, head of Al-Qaeda, admitted that he was responsible for the terrorist attacks. Hence, President George W, Bush declared the “war on terror” against all terrorists in the Arab world, specifically Afghanistan and Iraq. In the following paper, we will be discussing how the war on terror was waged, its effects on the target countries, and how it was perceived by political thinkers, where some saw it as a conspiracy theory against the Arab countries, and others believed the USA was the victim.

For our purposes, we will use the Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d), to define terrorism. It defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents” (Central Intelligence Agency, 2013). Examples of terrorism persist on a near daily basis around the world. Unstable countries, such as Afghanistan and Syria, deal with terrorist attacks on a constant basis. The common thread of these attacks is deliberate targeting of civilian populations in order to achieve political objectives. The best known and largest example are

Byman’s tone in this article can be described as defensive. In his argument, Byman attempts to refute the arguments of many Americans that maintain that drones should be eliminated. This is demonstrated in Byman’s response to public criticism that using drones creates more terrorists. He states, “critics...

The United States began air strikes there in 2010 to deal with terrorist groups. Now this may seem like a good thing, and good things can come of it, but with the loose policy of what a target may be is horrible. To the people of the attacks, the drones have taken hundreds of innocent lives. They now fear the skies for the next attack. Farea Al-Muslimi was a boy from Yemen whose entire village was destroyed by a drone strike. He says “The friendships and values I experienced and described to the villagers helped them understand the America that I know, and I love. Now however, when they think of America, they think of the terror they feel from the drones that hover over their heads, ready to fire missiles at any time.” Things that seems of good nature can be horrific to the other people. We eliminate terrorist threats because they are a danger to our

Much controversy surrounds the use of drone strikes to mitigate terrorism. Many believe it is effective in eradicating terrorists, however the aftermath of the situation is quite contradictory. Drone strikes “kill women, children, they kill everybody. It’s a war,

In Khaled Hosseini’s book The Kite Runner, one of the most surprising motifs is of ethnic division and violence in Afghanistan. The groups that commit such acts , though brutally primitive, have deep set reasons and justifications for their actions. In totality, ethnic violence is an enduring problem for humanity that is due to differences that exist between people of various cultures and ancestry as well as foreign intervention from world powers.

Drones already carry a negative, political connotation. The breaches in sovereignty are a major political issue for involved countries. Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are examples of the United States’ willingness to conduct military strikes without the consent of the governing body within the country. Furthermore, targeted killings are essentially a means for assassinations, which were prohibited under the Reagan administration. However, this fact is abated, as the killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki (US Citizen) demonstrated. Given all this information, would the usage of US drones in Iraq only perpetuate more violence, or bring stability to the region? This report will seek to answer this question. Utilizing an interview with an Associate Professor of Homeland Security at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), Professor Bonner, as a primary source of research, along with secondary sources from accredited cites, this report will explore the dynamics of the drone program as it pertains to the current situation in Iraq.

Years preceding the terrorist attack on the 11th of September 2001, the CIA and the United States Air Force had already developed the facility to use aerial vehicles, piloted remotely, as weapons. Yet, it was the occurrence of 9/11 that sparked the use of armed remote-piloted aerial vehicles (better known as drones) in the global ‘War of Terror’ led by the United States. The purpose of this position paper is to examine the legality of the covert armed drone program, specifically in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan. It will consider the extent of accuracy of the legal frameworks relative to the drone program and targeted killings. To do so, exploring the context in which the United States justifies its actions and military strategies regarding the Global War on Terror is important. This paper will be providing a review of, amongst other references, two pieces of academic literature that discuss the presence of drone warfare in Pakistan: Mark Mazzetti’s The Way of the Knife: The CIA, A Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth and David Sanger’s Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power. They will be used as evidence to support the questionability of the legal frameworks relative to the armed drone conflict.

This quote by Pat Robertson works as a great illustration for how our nation reacted to the suicide attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda on United States soil. The initial reaction by political pundits and politicians alike was that the only cause of these attacks was due to a radical Islamic view on the world. However, in Robert A. Pape and James K. Feldman’s book Cutting the Fuse they try to analyze data on suicide bombing and try to determine what is the root cause of these violent acts. Their conclusions are the exact opposite of the rhetoric that was presented to the American public. Instead of blaming Islamic extremists, they instead come to the conclusion, “that military occupation is the main factor driving suicide terrorism” (Pape & Feldman 10). Furthermore, they also put forth the argument that our current military strategies involving military occupation are counter-productive because rather than deterring violence, it actually increases suicide-bombings committed against American forces. In this paper I will examine the conclusions Robert Pape and James Feldman have come to and will also analyze these conclusions in Cutting the Fuse with a belief that this text works to refute much of what the American public has been told.

Strikes conducted by remotely piloted aircraft may undermine counterterrorism efforts or enhance them depending on the nature of the violence, the precision with which it is applied, or the intentionality attributed to it. (Kalyvas, 2006; Downes, 2007; Kocher et al., 2011) . Existing research has studied the effects of coercive airpower, (Pape, 1996; Horowitz and Reiter, 2001) , targeted killings (Jaeger, 2009; Jordan, 2009; Johnston, 2012; Price, 2012) and civilian victimization (Kalyvas, 2006; Lyall, 2009; Condra and Shapiro, 2012), but social scientists have conducted little empirical analysis of the effects of drone strikes.

“[When we got hit], my father’s body was scattered in pieces and he died immediately, but I was unconscious for three to four days… [Since then], I am disabled” (Jha). This testimony comes from Sadaullah Wazir, a teenager who was severely injured in a drone strike in North Waziristan in 2009, in a complaint, he delivered before the United Nations Human Rights Council about the tragic attack (Jha). He continued on to describe the traumatic aftermath, he and his family have faced saying “[The presence of drones] intimidates them. If the drones had not become routine and my father had not died and I hadn’t lost my leg, today I would have completed my MA in Political Science...

“Muslims, Bin Laden argues, must reverse a series of humiliations that they’ve endured since the Ottoman Empire, the last Muslim great power, was dismantled after World War I. Al-Qaeda’s 1998 declaration of a jihad, or holy war, against ‘Jews and Crusaders’ urges Muslims to attack ‘the Americans and their allies, civilian and military,’ supposedly as a response to U.S. policies that al-Qaeda feels oppress Muslims: the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia; the backing of U.N. sanctions against Iraq; support for repressive Arab regimes; support for Israel; alleged complicity in Russian attacks on Muslims in Chechnya; and interventions in Bosnia, Somalia, and other Muslim regions that bin Laden sees as attempts to spread America’s empire. These Western policies, according to al-Qaeda, add up to a ‘clear

Opponents argue that by removing one of the key restraints to warfare – the risk to one’s own forces – unmanned systems make undertaking armed attacks too easy and will make war more likely. Evidence is beginning to emerge that it is the persistent presence of UAVs sitting over remote villages and towns simply looking for ‘targets of opportunity’ that may be leading to civilian casualties. The CIA oversees drone strikes as part of counterterrorism operations, but US officials refuse to discuss the program publicly. According to a tally by the nonpartisan New America Foundation, since 2004 there have been more than 260 US drone strikes in Pakistan, which the foundation estimates killed between 1,600 and 2,500 people. Not everyone feels comfortable with all this. Critics say that the legal and

Since first used by Shakespeare in his play Macbeth, the term assassination has developed a negative connotation. Although it is prohibited in international law, assassinations still occur throughout the world in attempt to subdue excessive violence and corruption. I favor Daniel Statman’s argument that targeted killing is morally preferable to conventional war because fewer civilians are killed. While assassination, or targeting killing, may not be the desired solution to a problem, it is the most reasonable and effective in many cases. Take the wars against terror for example, Statman declares that with they “must adopt methods that are less common, or altogether uncommon” (Statman 511). The horrific attack on September 11, 2001 made it clear that we needed to develop alternative means of defense. Statman points out that the gravity of Al Qaeda’s threat is heavy and it is impractical to think we can cope with it just by conventional law-enforcing institutions and methods (513). Targeting killing proves to be a better tactic in fighting terrorism than invading the communities that shelter and support them for moral reasons as well. Targeting killing risks the lives of the actual terrorists rather than the innocent people in the community around them that would have been invaded. Less people die, and the ones that do can be justified with claims of self-defense, as terrorists do pose an apparent threat to our safety. People who do not support the war strategy of targeting