US Drone Strikes and Civilian Casualties in Pakistan: "It's Not Moral"

Three recent official and sort-of-official comments on this issue (well, two comments and one non-comment):

A remarkable interview in the Financial Times with David Kilcullen, the Australian former adviser on counter-insurgency to General David Petraeus. Kilcullen's comments on the civilian casualties caused by US drone strikes in western Pakistan:

"They [the strikes] have an undeniable benefit, because we have disrupted AQ [Al Qaeda] operations and damaged AQ cells in Pakistan. But they have a negative strategic effect in that they incite Punjabi militancy, which is the biggest problem in Pakistani right now." Mr Kilcullen said the hit rate on drone attacks was "unacceptably low". He said the US had killed 14 mid-level or lower level al-Qaeda leaders since 2006 but the strikes had killed 700 civilians. "That's a hit rate of two per cent on 98 per cent collateral. It's not moral."

In a fascinating but uncritical "60 minutes" report on USAF drone operations, the officer in charge of such operations at a USAF base in Nevada was asked if there were ever mistakes (in targeting the strikes): "What if you get it wrong?"

"We don't [get it wrong]" was his response.

There are no journalists in Waziristan or the other areas of western Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. There are therefore little or no first-hand or otherwise authoritative reports from the ground on the effects of these strikes from remotely-piloted vehicles (UAVs). At a recent New York Times-convened discussion which I attended, Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, with characteristic bluntness, refused to comment at all on the question of civilian casualties from these strikes.

Comments

[Paul]

It turns out that killing innocent civilians radicalizes the population against you.

There is no military solution in Afghanistan.

Doesn't anyone see this?

[OneTop]

It's more than obvious by now that brown people don't count and the US could care less if 98 out of every 100 people they kill are poor defenceless civilians who yearn for nothing other than to safely get through their daily life.

After all, they aren't Americans.

[MosheDayanHero]

Don't drag this silly brown people" argument into this.

[TJCole]

If we are not prepared to fight a war of annihilation against that entire region we will then not defeat them...

It's to late there and for Pakistan to be sure, for soft power too late...

We'll see some terrible things in the next few years because American abandoned Afghanistan, and went off to conquer Iraq...

Iraq may have been our doom and doomed many in that region due to the lies Bush and Cheney and Rice and Rumsfeld told America...­and our Media promoted..­..

[Sinick]

Why don't we just let the Afghans and Pakistani military watch the video feeds and have them pull the trigger? Do you think that it would change world perception of the drones?

How about if we "lend" them the drone technology (with safeguards of course) and sell them the missiles? Why not? It's the classic American "give them the razors and then sell them the blades" analogy.

[Semaj51]

Okay, if you don't like the drone attacks, lets go back to the good old days of carpet bombing.