1. Drones are arrogant. They say, America is stronger and better than you and we are going to show it and American lives matter more than yours. They are pretentious.
2. Drones are a rallying cry for the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. People there do not like the Taliban, they like Americans, and drones are changing that dynamic. And not just in the regions where the attacks occur, it is all over both countries, uniting different parts of the populations around the anti American platform.
3. There is no PR campaign to accompany them.
Great section:
Governments typically make several mistakes when attempting to separate violent extremists from populations in which they hide. First, they often overestimate the degree to which a population harboring an armed actor can influence that actor’s behavior. People don’t tolerate extremists in their midst because they like them, but rather because the extremists intimidate them. Breaking the power of extremists means removing their power to intimidate — something that strikes cannot do.
And I like their nod to history:
The drone strategy is similar to French aerial bombardment in rural Algeria in the 1950s, and to the “air control” methods employed by the British in what are now the Pakistani tribal areas in the 1920s. The historical resonance of the British effort encourages people in the tribal areas to see the drone attacks as a continuation of colonial-era policies.
Exum and Kilcullen end with the point that killing these guys, while important, is not as important as winning the hearts and minds of the population, protecting them, and these attacks do just the opposite.
No comments:
Post a Comment