Drone strikes aren’t all bad

Speaking for close to 13 hours solid, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., recently filibustered the nomination of John Brennan as CIA director.

Specifically he was filibustering in opposition to the Obama administration’s drone program.

Drones seem to have a stigma surrounding them. I’m not sure whether it’s the perceived increase in government power, the thought of unknown lifeless machines hovering overhead with cameras and missiles, or a little of both.

Drones themselves are not inherently bad.

They are more accurate than manned aircraft, cutting down on collateral damage and civilian casualties when compared to human pilots.

Drones save lives, both of civilians and soldiers.

But Paul’s occupation of the Senate floor was sparked by Attorney General Eric Holder’s unwillingness to clearly articulate whether the Obama administration had the authority to kill Americans on U.S. soil with a drone.

No administration deserves that kind of power.

The day after the filibuster, Holder sent a letter to Paul explicitly stating the president could not use drones to kill Americans who were “not engaged in combat” on U.S. soil.

Beyond U.S. soil, however, the issue of using drones strikes on certain Americans seems less clear cut.

Many liberals and conservatives alike have criticized the president’s decision to use a drone strike to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen abroad who was a leader within an al Qaeda terrorist cell in Yemen and allegedly conspiring to commit terrorist acts.

There is a stark difference between killing someone on U.S. soil and killing an al Qaeda leader embedded in a terrorist safe haven in Yemen. Without the use of a drone, killing or capturing al-Awlaki would have required an extensive overseas operation involving boots on the ground which might not have even been
successful.

The Obama administration has legal arguments justifying their drone strikes on al-Awlaki, and a Constitutional case can be made for such drone strikes.

However, the president refuses to disclose those documents, which is hypocrisy considering Obama criticized the Bush administration for doing the exact same thing with legal memos justifying torture, and subsequently released those documents upon taking office.

Obama should release his administration’s legal memos for scrutiny, too.

The effectiveness of drone strikes on reducing terrorism is still ambiguous and open to debate.

There is not definitive public information on how many drones have been used or how many or which people have been killed by drones. Lack of transparency and oversight of the program has led to poor knowledge of its operation and effectiveness.

But there is no good alternative to drone strikes.

The program is not perfect, but it’s the best we have right now. The drone strike program should be strengthened and improved, requiring more oversight and openness, but it should not be ended.

­— samblatt@indiana.edu