Terrorism: The US Drone Policy

Article One: Dainel Byman, in his article Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s weapon of Choice in an August 2013 article in the Brookings Institute, identifies the positive impact of US drone strikes. Byman contends that US drone strikes are extremely efficient, at little financial cost to the government, and protect the lives of American soldiers. For these reasons, Byman believes that US drone strikes are necessary to the war on terror.

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,

The general argument made by Daniel Byman in his 2013 article “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice” is that the United States should continue the use of drones. More specifically, he argues that drones are a “necessary instrument” for combating terrorism due to their effectiveness (Byman 32). He writes that drones do their jobs “remarkably well” by offering a “low-risk way” to target threats of national security (Byman 32). In addition, he writes that, in most cases, drones are the “most sensible” option, because they reduce the chances of civilians being “caught in the kill zone” (Byman 34, 35).  In this article, Byman is suggesting that the “critics” of drones need to realize that alternatives to drone strikes are

GPS, drones, spying, and nuclear war are all capabilities of the everyday items around us. These “normal” devices such as an iPhone or computer are all part of an enormous web infrastructure called the internet of things (IOT). The internet of things is a link between the online world and the physical world through connected devices which can achieve physical accomplishments such as taking a pulse. The Internet of things was said to have been discovered in 1999 during a presentation at Procter and Gamble. When Business moguls were trying to find a way to make the internet profitable, they manufactured the term internet of things. Ironically, IOT tracked its usage of term online through “Google Trends”. According to Google, since 2004 IOT was

Robert Greenwald’s documentary Unmanned: America's Drone War focuses on the effects of America’s drone operations on the citizens of Middle Eastern countries, such as Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan, while also offering insight into the public opinion of people in those Middle Eastern countries on America’s drone policy. The film seeks to convey that the operations carried out by the U.S.A in Middle Eastern countries are callous and irresponsible. The film features interviews from many citizens and leaders from Middle Eastern focusing on the impact that drone operations have had on families and communities, making the assertion that the majorly of those killed by American drone strikes have been nonmilitants showing, and calling for a more humanized approach to drone operations by American leaders.

The U.S government started using unarmed drones in 2000 to monitor Afghanistan when the country was at war. The drone program was expanded when the September 11 attacks happened as a way to counteract the terrorists. Drones were used a surveillance but this time most drones are armed with missiles to weaken and destroy terrorist groups power. The death toll from the expansion of the program, according to the human rights group Reprieve, found that in 2014 that US killed 1,147 people in Pakistan and Yemen in the course of targeting only 41 men. This has caused a debate on whether to continue to use drones or to destroy the programs. A large amount of

Shortly after September 11, 2001, former president George W. Bush declared an international “war on terror.” He then sent troops to threatening countries such as Afghanistan; these troops personally conducted operations in order to honorably defend our country. Fast forward eight years and insert current president Barack Obama who continues the campaign against terrorism with a different approach. Instead of using real soldiers on the ground to fight terrorism he is essentially using robots. Obama’s counter-terrorism approach consists of targeted drone strikes where UAV’s are used to assassinate suspected leaders of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda. Meanwhile these strikes don’t always work, and they can hurt innocent

The world has always been filled with fighting and always will be. There are a lot of factors that determine who comes out on top. Technology is always the deciding factor. With that technology, there are many conflicts. The U.S. Military using drones has been one of the most highly debated topics. Even through the doubt, Military drones have proven time and time again to work. Drones are being constantly updated and fixing any flaws that they have at the moment. In the future, drone warfare is unavoidable. When drones were first invented, of course, they did not work amazing. Throughout the years that drones have been around, they shown that they are becoming a more advanced and needed machine. The world is becoming increasingly

My highest match in the quiz was Hillary Clinton. The three biggest issues that meant the most to me were same sex marriage, equal pay for both sexes and drone strikes. I think the reason these issues mean a lot to me is because they are all issues of the 21st century. For same sex marriage I voted yes and for equal wages I also put yes. The question that struck me the most was “do you support drone strikes for suspected terrorists?” to this I answered not to kill suspected terrorist, but to gather intelligence. I did some research on the topics and what I found was interesting. In 2013 female fulltime workers in almost every field of work made seventy-eight cents for every dollar that their male counter parts which is a gap of twenty percent.

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.

People look to the future; people want to see a better way of life with new technology and other advancements. War is always going to be part of the future. The U.S. Military has come up with a new weapon that would help save lives of soldiers and civilians, it is known as drones. A drone is an unmanned aircraft that can be controlled from a safe environment. Drones were first used to provide high quality surveillance on areas suspected of terrorism. The drones could do this because they are able to fly and hover over their targets for hours while transmitting information to the people on the ground. Drones accompany soldiers in war zones to provide them with important information they need to do a better job. The

Drones have been used in a way that is affecting innocent civilians at home and abroad. The negative use of drones under the Obama administration and the lack of accountability is evident as Professor David Cole states: “You can't get any of the political accountability, the legal accountability, the world accountability, until there is transparency.” (US catholic 1). What this says is that there is a big lack of transparency from people very high up in the military sector. The Government has been very unclear about what happens with a drone strike and instead just tells us that drone strikes are happening. The lack of detail and lack of acknowledgement for middle east civilians is a huge problem. Without the government and military being clear with us the news of several civilian deaths from drone strikes will continue to be a major issue. The problem lies with the fact that the government also does not fully acknowledge its own drone program

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

According to Sean D. Murphy, U.S. anti-terrorist operations in Pakistan so far have taken the forms of drone strikes, “hot pursuits” into Pakistani territory in immediate response to raids from within Pakistan, and secret missions by special operations forces, such as the CIA, against militant targets located deeper in Pakistan . The numbers of incidents involving “hot pursuits” of the militant hideouts inside the Pakistani territory have been very few, so they have not attracted as much attention as other operations. There has only been one real recognized covert mission in Pakistan, which took place on September 3, 2008 in South Waziristan , an area under the control of the Taliban. This was the US’ first ground-based battle against the Taliban within Pakistani borders. This caused the death of many civilians and no “high-value” terrorist target. The Pakistani government strongly criticized this act and passed a resolution demanding American cooperation on covert operations, so the US did refrain from repeating such a mission; however, the American strikes using Unmanned Areal Vehicles, known as drones, have been going on since 2004 and have only increased since then under the Obama Administration.

Today, people create many kinds of aircrafts for new weapons. Using drones to kill enemies is safer than using aircrafts because drone pilots can control drones with a remote control, but aircraft pilots must go to the enemy’s place to assassinate them. Tom Mockaitis explained “critics insist that they make it too easy to kill from a distance...” The famous counter terrorism incident with drones happened when an unmanned aircraft killed Pakistan's Taliban leader Hakimura Meshud on November 1, 2013 (“Pakistani Taliban”). Many people were pleased by it, but some of them did not agree with the use of drones to annihilate terrorists. Drones are accurate when killing the enemies, but aircrafts are dangerous to other people because they are inaccurate (Mockaitis). Therefore, people can use drones to counter-terrorism. On the other hand, opponents argue that by using drones it is too easy to kill from a distance. Unmanned aircrafts cause far more civilian casualties than the government admits (Mockaitis). The government is not mentioning how many civilians died, so they are angry. People’s anger may become the fuel for terrorism. Drones are expected to be a technology of the future, but the abuse by the government comes alongside the killing of terrorists. Therefore, there are two different opinions for using drones, especially, prevention of terrorism with drones.