Examining Drone Attacks at the Institute and in the Media
This week, Spencer Ackerman, national security blogger and reporter at Wired.com, demands the drone program be taken away from the CIA and be declassified, spurring arguments in an on-going conversation on Twitter, the mainstream media and here at the Aspen Institute.
Former National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter addressed this at the 2011 Aspen Security Forum. Watch the beginning of this clip, where he says it doesn't matter where the strikes come from:
On Twitter:
Further viewing:
Are the US-led drone attacks in Pakistan refueling the Taliban? Former Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair discusses with Lesley Stahl of CBS News, also at the 2011 Security Forum:
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Comments
Director Leitner is correct in that the central issue to the drone question is not whether title 10 or title 50 entities initiate a drone attack. The point of contention is - should the US be initiating a drone attack in another country’s sovereign space?
The US recognizes both Pakistan and Afghanistan as independent sovereign countries; they are therefore accorded certain rights in the world community no less than the rights the US demands of other countries. Morally, without extenuating conditions, it is patently wrong to perpetrate drone attacks in another countries space without prior agreement of that country’s government or, at the very least, implicit support for the action.
In reality, the world is replete with extenuating conditions that burden and beset an otherwise moral people.
Balancing national strategic objectives while protecting the spirit of American virtues and values is one of the toughest calls any administration, liberal or conservative, will ever make. National security, as one of those strategic objectives, does not suffer complacency well. The need to act against a clear and imminent danger, such as eliminating key foreign targets with drone strikes, is an uncompromising national security imperative. The decision to initiate a drone attack must be weighed against moral, cultural, political, and military realities. In the end, the preeminence of the threat impels the decision to strike.
Drones are an intelligence/ special operations tool and as Admiral Blair rightly pointed out; discussion of their employment should be limited and controlled as any other national asset. In order to be effective the national intelligence apparatus must operate behind a defined level of secrecy. It’s called intelligence because it’s valuable information that is sensitive and cannot exist or function in a transparent environment. This secrecy is not inherently evil or undemocratic, but simply part of the price of ensuring the continuation of the American way of life.