Changes In The American Drone Policy

Last week Kimberly Dozier, an Associated Press intelligence writer, posted an article at Google.com about recent changes in the American drone policy. The changes alter the process of targeting terrorist leaders for drone attacks that had been in effect since 2009. The changes swap the old military-run review process for a new process which involves consulting the State Department, the Pentagon, and other agencies when compiling a list of drone targets. White House counter-terror chief John Brennan‘s staff oversees the process.

The article reports:

Previously, targets were first discussed in meetings run by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen at the time, with Brennan being just one of the voices in the debate.

The new Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Martin Dempsey, has been more focused on shrinking the U.S. military as the Afghan war winds down and less on the covert wars overseas.

With Dempsey less involved, Brennan believed there was an even greater need to draw together different agencies’ viewpoints, showing the American public that al-Qaida targets are chosen only after painstaking and exhaustive debate, the senior administration official said.

But some of the officials carrying out the policy are equally leery of “how easy it has become to kill someone,” one said. The U.S. is targeting al-Qaida operatives for reasons such as being heard in an intercepted conversation plotting to attack a U.S. ambassador overseas, the official said. Stateside, that conversation could trigger an investigation by the Secret Service or FBI.

Defense Department spokesman George Little said the department was “entirely comfortable with the process by which American counterterrorism operations are managed.

The CIA did not respond to a request for comment.

I am not particularly comfortable with the new arrangement. The State Department has different goals than the military, and in the past they have not hesitated to work against the interests of a President they disagreed with philosophically. I also don’t like the idea of putting an unelected, unaccountable civilian person in charge of a military program. We need to remember that the drone program is a targeted assassination program–it is being used to kill terrorists. It also eliminates the possibility of capturing terrorists and gathering intelligence from them.

 

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