In May 2013, President Obama announced major changes to the U.S. drone war. Though previously United States leaders described drone strikes as “surgical” and causing little to no civilian casualties, the president announced a set of criteria that the government must meet before authorizing a strike during counterterrorism operations. Under the new policy, a strike is not made unless the government has:
- Near certainty that the terrorist target is present; and
- Near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed.
The U.S. government has not released data concerning these operations to validate that these criteria are being met. However, other organizations, such as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the New America Foundation, compile open source information to create estimates of strikes and casualties. The data suggest that while there have been improvements over time, operations still fall short of these goals.
The recent revelation of American and Italian hostages being killed in a signature strike by a drone in January 2015 renews concerns that the drone campaign is not living up to President Obama’s promises. Specifically, in that strike the exact identity of the target was unknown and persistent surveillance was unable to detect the presence of the hostages.
The use of force carries risks. But the details of this incident, combined with reporting of similar civilian casualties and missed targets from other recent operations, seem to contradict U.S. government representations of policy and operational outcomes. A deeper look at current policy and practice is warranted.
History is repeating itself. A similar situation arose in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2009. During this period, the U.S. military was causing an unacceptable number of civilian casualties. When an incident occurred, they investigated the incident, made changes to guidance, and promised to keep such an incident from happening again. But these incidents kept happening. So the military repeated this ineffective review process again and again. This “repeat” cycle was only broken when military leaders approved the Joint Civilian Casualty Study, a classified outside review requested by General Petraeus. This effort had two key differences from earlier efforts. First, it was independent, so it was able to overcome false assumptions held by operating forces that contributed to their challenges. And second, the study looked at all potential civilian casualty incidents over a period of years, not just the latest incident. This approach helped identify systemic issues with current tactics and policies as the analysis examined the forest and not just the nearest tree. This study also considered different sets of forces operating within Afghanistan and their relative propensity for causing civilian casualties.
President Obama stated there would be an investigation of the January 2015 incident so that lessons would be learned. But we’ve been on that path before, in Afghanistan, and we know where it leads: more promises followed by a repeat of similar mistakes. The administration should heed past experience and conduct an independent review that looks more holistically at the issues involved, akin to the earlier Joint Civilian Casualty Study. This would help refine policy and tactics, provide a more solid foundation for future operations, inform policy decisions such as whether the military or the CIA should be conducting operations, and help the U.S. government to better live up to its policies and principles.
Dr. Larry Lewis is a principal research scientist at CNA, the project lead and primary author for many of DOD’s Joint Lessons Learned studies, and the lead analyst and coauthor (with Dr. Sarah Sewall at Harvard University) for the Joint Civilian Casualty Study (JCCS). General Petraeus described JCCS as “the first comprehensive assessment of the problem of civilian protection.” The opinions expressed are Dr. Lewis’ alone, not necessarily those of CNA Corporation or its sponsors.
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An American Tradition:
Putting a Tactical Cart Before the Strategic Horse
Perhaps what is needed in respect to American Military Operations (strikes) being carried out on Foreign Soil is first a Situational Review from a political /strategic perspective, followed by a tactical review. The reasoning for such a review path proceeds from the fact that, like it or not, applying large explosive force on targets (even in this day and age) will on occasions produce so called collateral damage. It is simply proceeds from the inherent inaccuracies that will always result due to the need to make value judgments about the placement of those explosives – or value judgments about using ground forces to attack / secure an objective such as persons inside the property of others.
No amount of review is going to preclude collateral damage from occurring. When this country’s Armed Forces responded to attacks on this nation, in the post Pearl Harbor (1941) and post September 11, 2001 era, there was, and should have been, no (or little) concern about collateral damages incurred among the populations providing the attackers, or even among others who found themselves unfortunately in the path of a responding attack against this nation’s enemies. The matter would have been handled with (at best) politically polite statements demonstrating concern about the unfortunate results and suffering of the innocents when necessarily military responding to attacks …. And forgotten immediately thereafter.
However, in this era the U.S. is (de facto) no longer directly responding to attacks on this country (although some will make that claim), but instead is carrying out acts of war against a variety of so-called (deemed) Islamic Terrorist Groups for a variety of political reasons. Many of those campaigns are being carried out, in reality, as “preventative” measures reflecting this country’s fear of allowing another 9/11 attack against its homeland should it so fail to act in preemptive – employing our intelligence and military resources. We appear to have entered into a long term era of preventative warfare, albeit on a reduced scale of involvement.
Consider as an example what is occurring between the U.S. and ISIS. The latter is a religious / political entity (that we would have once referred to as a guerrilla warfare group) which acts with brutality against those in their area of control whom they believe oppose them, or whom act or believe in a manner contrary to some set of standards ISIS is enforcing in their areas of control – 5,000 +/- miles from the closest American Shore. And in the process of so acting, ISIS operatives have executed foreigners in their land – including Americans and Europeans. Those acts of brutality are simply no different in aim and scope than those carried out by the protagonists during the 1800’s on American soil when primarily European Colonialist Settlers fought to obtain control of a land then occupied by the descendants of much earlier arriving Asian peoples. A struggle on American soil that occurred and was driven / motivated by underlying political, economic, cultural, and religious differences and objectives that resulted often in acts of extreme brutality.
The fact that some individual Americans chose to live and participate in some manner with members of societies in an inherently dangerous part of the world where violent conflict have been the norm for some time, and therein those Americans suffered physical harm, should not be the cause, in of itself, for acts of war on this nation’s part. The actions of those Americans, altruistic or not, were their independent acts. If an American chooses to climb Mount Everest, adventurous and brave souls are they. However, their fate is not and should not be the concern of the U.S. government or American people. This nation should not be drawn into a military conflict by the independent altruistic, or economically motivated, acts of its individual citizens.
Further, responding militarily to exaggerated claims by You Tube vocal members of ISIS (for example) that they are going to restore the Caliphate, are coming to Europe, will march into the White House and the Capitol, impose Islamic rule on the world is ridiculous – both the statements by ISIS members and the reactions by American War Mongers.
Because this nation has chosen to engage in military activities against ISIS, the Taliban, and others without their having attacked this nation – we find ourselves overly concerned about inflicting collateral damage on members of the civilian population in their areas of control or domination. In short, we find ourselves having to carry out military operations in the manner of a police operation – one where inflicting casualties on innocent bystanders is a viewed as a rather serious problem. The U.S. has chosen to carry out military attacks against those who have not directly attacked this country, and the U.S. government has chosen to criticize its own actions by imposing on them operational standards that simply cannot be met. It is about as absurd a self generated operational cycle as one can imagine.
If this nation deems itself to have a political / strategic (perhaps economic) interest in restraining the influence or scope of ISIS activities (or those of other groups), it should approach those efforts with a common sense strategy. There are numerous State, tribal, and other Non-State acting groups in the Middle East contending for power throughout that region – and those struggles have been going on since the end of World War I. This country, presuming it has an interest in that area, would far better off if it implemented a strategy of military support for selected of those groups (that could afford to purchase our weapons systems) that kept the military contest going and led to the destruction of those we deem to be adversaries through attrition – without employing any U.S. invasion and occupation ground forces. The most that we should provide is some minimal level of air support to stabilize a given front area (so to speak) and members of the Special Forces to conduct training or provide advice. Leave the fighting to the local tribes and groups. Help keep them busy in a mutually destructive war of attrition, end the drone strikes, and most certainly end our strategically disastrous and costly failures associated with a self imposed need to invade and occupy a foreign land, and there to be sucked into a failed protracted war, etc.
We need to cease this American preoccupation with the need to “impose” on other peoples on distant shores a society and culture based on American style democracy and societal / cultural fairness. Foreigners view these American actions as imperialistic in nature and view American drone strikes as attacks on their land. We need to focus on our true strategic objective – preventing any other group or nation from significantly damaging our economic interests around the world and prevent them from carrying out (significantly meaningful) attacks on our Homeland. We, as a nation, would be far better off should we effectively employ native forces to fight against our perceived opponents, that they incur the costs, and that we save our money for more important projects at home. The key military components of any such strategy would be the U.S. Army Special Forces and (employed on a limited and as needed basis) American Air Power. What we would not employ as a matter of standard operation would be invasion and occupation forces, drone strikes, Missile Strikes, Special Operations Forces, etc. except in very rare occasions and for a rather limited tactical purpose.
One might read a paper published some time ago by U.S. Army Major Lujan titled “Light Footprint, The Future of American Military Interventions,” available on the Web, to obtain a view of how this strategy would be employed and function.
America’s National Security Leaders need to think strategically, not tactically at this moment in time. We must stop placing the tactical cart before the strategic horse.