Pakistan's deadly robots in the sky
theglobeandmail.com
theglobeandmail.com
I've been working with Americans for last 6 years and I've found them very honest, friendly, smart & hard-working. But when I look at American foreign policy towards the region I live in I find it most disturbing. Something is seriously wrong with the current drones-policy and American's(people in charge) have no idea how wrong it is ;( But our own leaders are probably responsible for it too. Stories of current government's corruption are very common now. I mean we have a 90+ member cabinet & most of them don't know an iota about running a country. I mean I can go on and on ;(
I'm currently pursuing graduate studies and most of people I meet everyday they want peace as much as you all want. We just don't know when will this terror end ;(
And this is a far better way to wage war - to understand the enemy is not Al Qaeda or the Taliban. The enemy is ignorance, fear, superstition and religion. A dozen schools costs less to build than a drone. A hospital costs much less to operate than a military base. The friendship and understanding you earn by doing these things is much more valuable to finding terrorists than the best airborne imaging sensor. When nobody listens to them, you can also save a Hellfire or two.
So it's more like "America's deadly robots operated under shadow of Pakistani government against it's own people".
PS: The dust around a non explosive building demolition is also reasonably toxic.
The only way to win the hearts and minds of the people in that region is to meet them face to face where they live. Talk to them, argue with them, protect them and if required kill them. They need to see you as real, your objectives as firm statements - even if they disagree - and your resolve complete. They respect the strong and the committed, they deride the weak and conflicted.
This is a human war, and the only thing accomplished by flying drones around is a further separation from the people subject to their actions from the values of the people flying them.
All everyone ever really wants is to have a better life for themselves and their family. Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggests that if you can address or improve the base of the pyramid, you can restructure the entire pyramid. You can see easily how perverse religion warps the perception by manipulating these base needs; pretending that they aren't required, or even rejecting them outright as evil.
What we should be doing in Pakistan is essentially ignoring the fundamentalist nature of the region and showering them with things to address the bottom two levels of the pyramid. Yes this is a massive short term investment and yes this will cost lives.
Be sure though that it is the only way for the west to win this war over the long term. Every drone bringing faceless death from the sky only prolongs it.
What if the US just nukes every country with terrorists in it? There would hypothetically be no terrorists left, and everyone would work very hard not to be grouped in with those countires, otherwise they're going to get nuked too.
It sounds crazy (and I certainly don't condone that strategy), but realize that is one of the other options. For the vast majority of history winning wars didn't rely on winning the hearts and minds of anyone, it relied on the complete destruction and subjugation of the other faction.
You could say "this war is different", but it really is not. It is different than the West on West wars of the last 3 centuries, but it is no different than a lot of guerilla wars in the past. The Native Americans tried really hard to stop Americans from expanding into their land - and the US won that guerilla war by just excersizing extreme cruelty.
Trying to win hearts and minds is a losing strategy against an opponent who doesn't care about that at all. The terrorists are not trying to win our hearts and minds, they are trying to kill as many Americans as possible. That makes their goals a lot easier to achieve.
Can we really invade every single country that holds some people that want us dead and "meet them face to face". Hell no, that would require conquering the whole world, which is impossible even for the US. The other option is making an example of a country and dissuading every other country from allowing terrorists to exist inside their borders, lest they end up like country X or Y that was conquered by the US.
Unfortunately by bungling in Iraq and forgetting about Afghanistan, the US ends up just looking weak. The reality is that the biggest obstacle to total victory is the lack of support for the level of violence required to win a war like this. The American people just won't stomach anywhere near the level of damage inflicted on the opponent in World War 1 or 2.
Thus with "total domination" off of the play book, we have "ignore borders and start dropping hellfire missiles on people no matter where they are" as a the current method for dealing with people. Overall, I'd consider it far more humanitarian than the other options.
Well, you'll get the war you're looking for that's for sure. Unfortunately, you might actually be fighting a war that looks more like the downfall of the Roman empire than the liberation you seem to think you'll achieve. This isn't really a winnable strategy, even if you win the actual conflict.
For the vast majority of history winning wars didn't rely on winning the hearts and minds of anyone, it relied on the complete destruction and subjugation of the other faction.
History shows that wars without a clear decisive outcome tend to drag on for generations. "Most wars" did exactly that. The fact that WWII did have such an clear outcome does not make it the norm, even with the idea of "total domination".
Wars of ideas(opposed to those over resources and/or land) don't end until one of the ideas goes out of fashion. The cold war is a perfect example of this. That stalemate ended because the communists didn't think their ideas would work. It had little to do with how many nukes the west could muster.
In the same light, radical Islam - I could argue Islam/religion itself - can only be "defeated" when the Islamics themselves decide that the particular path that they are on isn't worth the struggle. People turn to religion - any religion - when their needs are not being met. This is true even in the West - the Catholic church was the supreme authority during the dark ages, when Europe was suffering, and the Muslim world was enjoying a much less religious but more established existence a few miles away.
Fulfill the needs of the person to a basic level and religion offers nothing. You cannot win a war of ideas until you kill the idea, not the person.
I think we do. Extreme violence just isn't an option in our situation. If we did to Afghanistan what you suggest and nuke it, we'd probably find ourselves at war with France, Britain and the rest of the free world. Such a move wold probably be just as bad for America's interests as (to choose a silly example) having Osama bin Laden elected as the next president.
Besides, Americans want to be the good guys. Everyone, even those war-mongering conservative (especially the war-mongering conservatives) imagines that we are heroes bringing peace to these oppressed people, or at least not hurting them. As it is, every move available to America, will make her the villain.
If we kill enough people to defeat terrorism militarily, we will be guilty of violence out of proportion to the actual threat terrorism represents. (We already are, but whatever.)
If we simply leave, we will be guilty of terrorizing thousands of people, helping no one in the process, leaving the countries worse off than they were before, and abandoning many people who had come to really on us.
If we proceed with this robotic war, we simply alienate the people we (partly) want to help and provoke them further into becoming our enemies.
If however, we can actually help them, and win their friendship, perhaps creating genuine allies in a part of the world that has good reason to hate us, then we become the good guys and everything turns out fine. But that will require an effort few Americans are willing to make.
so you just use it to blow the mind. Give it some more time for mind-bending technologies to get developed.
This is part of a positive feedback loop: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/74916
Even those who "think differently" understand food, medicine, education, etc. It would be quite easy to wage peace instead of war, but Obama made his choice.
Now that we're trying to get out of these countries, further US troops are basically trading their lives for some multiple of that number in civilians lives that would be lost if we just let the countries collaspe.
Take your pick, it seems to me that Obama (and Bush at the end) was choosing to lose US lives to prevent the anarchy and loss of foreign civilian lives that would result of an irresponsible exit.
Arguing that we shouldn't have gone in the first place (which I think is the case) doesn't change the fact that today we are already there.
To answer your question directly, yes it would be more peaceful (it was more peaceful in both cases before we invaded and i expect things would settle down pretty soon after we left). More importantly, the blood would not be on our hands.
And (I'll say it again) if we waged peace by providing food, medicine, education, etc we could save a lot of lives, instead of stoking the cycle of violence.
I'm actually a little impressed that these people even are aware of issues like that.
In the old days, you'd know when the war is coming towards you. And a guy shooting someone with a gun is an easily understood event to even the most uneducated.
However, in this new kind of war, you hear the buzzing of the drones, but you have no idea how far away they are (they are supposed to be hard to see). And then, occasionally (which is worse than regularly) something blows up, almost as if by magic. The Hellfire missle tops out at mach 1.3, so you're not going to hear it coming.
Those people are suffering the classic stress symptoms of people living in a war zone.
you're right about very beginning. The "to go to war for free" is available and applicable to both sides, and thus, after a couple of iterations would lead to cost escalation. Remember the Stinger effect on the Soviet forces 20+ years ago in Afghanistan? The same way the next couple of steps are clearly visible: 1. Pakistanis buy Stingers(or likes) 2. USA start using stealth drones (google for SkunkWorks' one already being tested in Afghanistan) 3. Pakistanis buy small [mull cart/pickup truck mountable] radar/missile automated system like Phalanx or Kashtan CIWS 4. USA improve speed/stealth of the drones, increase the range and intelligence of Hellfire ...
As a result it is going to be more expensive and technologically intensive.
IMO, what we really need is a MASSIVE propaganda effort to isolate Islamist ideologues within Pakistan. Not sure how this will happen, but the parallel I have in mind is the downfall of Nazism in Germany. If NATO along sympathetic states like India pool their resources together, I think it should be possible to buy out/instigate/support any number of revolutionaries within Pakistan who will effectively portray the Islamists as the cancer of not just Pakistan, but of mankind itself.
That took the systematic leveling of a good chunk of Germany, just for starters. Perhaps not an optimal parallel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_...
The parallel was not between the specific route and methodology used, but the eventual outcome: the religious extremists must come to be viewed with the same revulsion with which the Nazis are viewed today. My point was that this can happen only through a massive propaganda campaign generously supported from outside.