Hostage deaths shouldn't change US drone policy
- By Mitchell Blatt
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E-mail China.org.cn, April 30, 2015
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Warren Weinstein, (left) an American held by al-Qaida since 2011, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian national held by al-Qaida since 2012, were killed in a January operation in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. |
American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto were killed in January in a strike that also killed four al-Qaida militants, the U.S.' President Obama announced last week. The announcement caused some to question whether drones are accurately targeting their victims. One Fox News commentator even said, "The president cannot summarily kill [Americans]. That's a war crime!"
None of the revelations brought about by this strike are new. American drones have been killing civilians for years. Since 2009, at least 256 and as many as 630 civilians have been killed in Pakistan by drone strikes, according to the Britain-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The Long War Journal and New America Foundation have also been tracking such deaths and found lower totals.
But even if we don't know the exact number of civilian deaths, we know that in a war zone, there will be civilian deaths. War is hell, and there have been civilian deaths in every war. It is naive to think that anyone can send weapons into a war zone with 100 percent precision and 100 percent certainty that no mistakes will be made.
It was naive for anyone to have believed that Obama's 2013 announcement that future drone strikes would be carried out with "near certainty" of no civilian deaths meant that there would be no civilian deaths. Obama is a politician, for one thing. "Near certainty" -- even if it could be achieved -- still leaves room for some uncertainty.
Still, there have been fewer drone strikes and fewer civilian deaths since 2013. In 2012, there were 50 drone strikes, and in 2013 and 2014, there were 27 and 25 strikes, respectively. The highest number of civilians killed in a strike, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, was six.
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