Hostage deaths shouldn't change US drone policy
- By Mitchell Blatt
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E-mail China.org.cn, April 30, 2015
The problem is that Americans just don't care very much about dead foreigners killed by their military. A 2013 survey found that while 65 percent of Americans supported airstrikes on suspected foreign terrorists, 52 percent opposed drone strikes on suspected American terrorists abroad.
Even the death of Anwar al-Awlaki, a terrorist propagandist who helped inspire Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring an "underwear bomb" onto Northwest Airlines Flight 253, generated more outrage in the U.S. than the deaths of civilians like Bibi Mamana, a 65-year-old Pakistani midwife who was killed in the sight of her granddaughter.
Presidential candidate Rand Paul even went on a 13-hour filibuster in the Senate to protest the killing of Americans by drones and the theoretical prospect of drones killing Americans on American soil.
He would have been smarter not to open his mouth. The death of the two hostages doesn't vindicate him. They weren't targeted by the government. Obama stated that "based on intelligence … we believed that this was an al-Qaida compound, that no civilians were present."
It seemed to be an al-Qaida compound. An American member of al-Qaida, Ahmed Farouq, was killed, too. In fact, hostages are often killed in raids meant to save them. In 2010, French citizen Michel Germaneau was executed by al-Qaida after a botched raid by French and Mauritanian forces. In 2012, Brit Chris McManus and Italian Franco Lamolinara were executed in Nigeria as UK Special Forces attempted to save him. Does the fact that the weapon that ultimately killed a hostage was a drone and not a firearm change anything?
In fact, drones may be better at avoiding civilian casualties than weapons like manned aircraft or missiles. According to statistics from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, since 2009, between 8 percent and 31 percent of the victims of drone strikes in Pakistan have probably been civilians. The number of civilians killed by other weapons is much higher, William Saletan of Slate points out.
Civilian deaths are always bad, and war is inherently violent. If America is at war, using weapons that will kill the fewest civilians will minimize civilian deaths in the war zone. If Americans are truly concerned about civilian deaths, though, they shouldn't limit their outrage to the deaths of American civilians.
The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/MitchellBlatt.htm
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