Strike Reflects Shift in U.s. Terror Fight Drones
by American officials say remotely piloted drone aircraft are a cheap, safe and precise alternative to traditional warfare.
WASHINGTON – The CIA attack drone that killed al-Awlaki Anwar, the propaganda of American origin of the franchise from the emergence of Al Qaeda in Yemen, was a demonstration of what U.S. authorities describe as a good tool for safe and precise removal of the enemy. It was also a sign that the campaign of a decade of fighting terrorism, the U.S. has reached a turning point.
Disappointed with huge costs and uncertain outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama administration has resolutely taken the buzz, with small-scale attacks like lightning that killed Osama bin Laden in May, as the future of the fight against terrorist networks.
“The doctrine of the great wars is clear,” said Micah Zenko, Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations who has studied the trade-offs. “The cost in blood and treasure is immense, and the result is unpredictable. The public support for house is falling down. And the people you came to liberate come to resent your presence. “
The movement is also the result of declining budgets, which will no longer accept the deployment of large forces overseas in an approximate annual cost of $ 1 million per soldier. And there have been improvements in the technical feasibility of remotely piloted aircraft. One of them followed Mr. Awlaki with live video on the grass tribal Yemen, where it is too dangerous for U.S. troops to leave.
Even military officials, who favor campaign drones recognizes that these technologies are not applicable to any security threat.
Yet, to move the drones and accurate strikes is a significant change in the preferred strategy, which emphasized the importance of leadership changes at the Pentagon and the CIA a few years ago, by contrast has been the rage, like General David H . Petraeus used a strategy to turn around what seemed to be a desperate situation in Iraq. Then he applied those lessons in Afghanistan.
The result – as measured by political stability, rule of law and economic development – remains uncertain in both.
Now, Mr. Petraeus (he chose to resign as director of the civil, rather than general) is responsible for the CIA, which launched the drone in Pakistan. He no longer commands the troops, whose numbers have been at the heart of the insurgency.
And Secretary of Defense is Leon E. Panetta, who oversaw the escalation of attacks by drones in the tribal area of Pakistan, without law, as CIA director. Mr. Panetta, the budget director under President Bill Clinton, must find a way to preserve the security of Pentagon threads get tight.
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