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U.S. Drone Program Proves Counterproductive on Own Terms
If there's any debate right now in the major U.S. media regarding blowing people up with missiles from drones, it's about “transparency” (official reporting on who's killed) or death counts of those people somehow identified as civilians. But unless drones are just a means of vicariously venting rage, or of profiting drone manufacturers, they are — like the wider wars they are part of — supposed to serve some purpose.
Although terrorism keeps increasing during the Overseas Contingency Operations Formerly Known as the Global War on Terrorism, in theory the war making is supposed to (1) not be terrorism itself, and (2) reduce terrorism or end it. While I think a strong case can be made that neither of those conditions has been or ever could be met, and that even as mass therapy or economic catalyst the whole thing is doomed to failure, the drones are the piece of it that have begun to be recognized as counterproductive.
In a master's thesis from a student at Georgetown University, summarized in a recent article, Emily Manna took data on terrorism in Pakistan between 2006 and 2012 from the Global Terrorism Database and data on drone strikes where it was corroborated by both the New America Foundation and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Manna found that after the United States begins attacking a province with drones, terrorism increases there.
Read more by David Swanson at http://www.davidswanson.org” target=”_blank”www.davidswanson.org
Source: http://www.davidswanson.org/node/5218
