I have a question I’ve not been able to find any attempt to answer, much less an adequate attempt: Do drone strikes engender more, or less antipathy than soldiers; whether it be from citizens, allies or possible enemies?
This isn’t meant to tackle the bigger question of armed response to terrorism, especially since it’s my view that the best response to terrorism is no response. I think we’d be better off if we just wrote terrorism off as a cost of living in a free society. In other words, outside of using intelligence and whistleblowers or warrants and arrests to dismantle terrorist cells, we should simply view terrorism the same way we view natural disasters, with a focus on prediction rather than some pie-skied hope of a world without such occurrences.
I also hasten to point out this isn’t a question being posed for purely sophistic reasons. Terrorism is irrational, as are the hearts and minds we hope to bring to our side. That being the case, the most effective course of action by way of numbers may not be the most effective in terms of outcome.
So. Troops or drones. Which engenders more hate? Which is more likely to radicalize?
I would argue that drones cause more of a backlash. Unlike human troops, they’re a nameless, faceless thing that kills without warning and essentially can’t be retaliated against (unless you have SAMs.)
The problem is not only the drones but the people operating them who are divorced from the reality of war, viewing targets from a tiny screen and not getting the whole picture.
I’ve heard the hypothesis that drones create more terrorists than they kill, and after two decades of drone warfare, I’ve yet to see a single substantiation of the assertion.
I think the issue of hearts and minds has far, far less to do with the type of military force applied, than it does with factors like whether force is applied with discrimination, whether the war is carried out with the recognition that force alone does not typically resolve political disputes, and so on.
I’d think that occupying troops are a constant reminder that someone, somewhere else is sending these guys in to compel you to do something. That’s going to be an everyday, constant sort of irritation/hatred.
Drone strikes, OTOH, are more like lightning in the sense that 99.9% of the time, everything is fine, and then out of the blue, a Hellfire missile wrecks your neighbor’s house. Then, it’s back to normal-ish for the foreseeable future.
I’d think occupying troops would engender more hate overall, even if it’s not concentrated in spikes right after drone strikes.
Okay, I have tried to answer this post several times and I’m struggling. The OP is so confused and so completely misinformed in their assumptions that the argument is “not even wrong.”
What are we actually talking about here? Domestic law enforcement? Or overseas counterinsurgencies? Because the Unabomber was a terrorist, but nobody suggested using air strikes or the 1st Cavalry Division to capture him.
This is absurd on several levels, but the one I want to point out is that you just contradicted yourself in the space of a paragraph. You first sentence says the best response is to do nothing, but the last sentence says we should use force. So which is it? Because last I checked, conducting an arrest still involves men with guns kicking in someone’s door. And who do you expect to do this?
Since we’re talking about troops and drones, I’ll assume you mean some kind of overseas, Al-Qaeda style terrorist network. Here’s the thing: Those groups exist in places where law enforcement is weak or nonexistent. There is a reason Al Qaeda bases itself in places like Yemen and Afghanistan. There’s a reason ISIS exists in Syria. These countries are massively unstable, and often in a state of ongoing civil war. The government is either complicit in the terrorism, or they lack the resources to combat it. So how do you expect someone to use a warrant and make an arrest?
The experience so far has shown that the best possible outcome is for local (eg host-nation) security forces to make an arrest. This demonstrates to the locals that their government is stronger than the terrorist or insurgent and is able to take care of them. Before that can happen, however, the security forces need to establish their presence and defend themselves. There is a saying that “the purpose of a military is to protect the police.” It means that military forces have to be used to eliminate certain threats so that the police can focus on their work of investigating and establishing rule of law. In practice, the police in many of these countries are so weak, corrupt, or under-trained that they require Western military forces to assist them in doing their jobs.
On the other hand, literally “doing nothing” might be the worst possible idea. The modern terrorist group is a hybrid of criminal and insurgent. By committing bombings (or whatever attack) they demonstrate their power, cause people to lose faith in government, and grow their organization. Eventually they hope to overthrow the government. (Again, it would be really helpful if OP could specify exactly what they mean, because talking about Al-Qaeda in 2000 is very different from talking about ISIS in 2014).
Syria gives us the best example of what “doing nothing” looks like. The Syrian Civil War creates conditions where no government power existed. The terrorists grew their strength to the point where they were functionally an army, and proceeded to conquer vast swathes of territory. Basically a third of Iraq was already inclined to rebel against the Shiite government, and so the result was a catastrophe that allowed a terrorist group to challenge the power of the state.
Part of my confusion is because all of this should be well known. The OP reads as if it was written in 2007. I don’t mean to be cruel, but it sounds as if OP has a very elementary and out-of-date understanding of the situation.
Anyway… To directly address the OP’s question… Nobody seriously thinks that air strikes are the best idea. Nobody genuinely believes terrorism or insurgencies can be defeated through bombing alone. I doubt anyone ever thought that. Maybe Curtis LeMay. But sometimes airstrikes are the best option when other options do not exist.
And while ground forces might be preferable in virtually all cases, ground forces that are employed incorrectly might actually be worse than air strikes. It depends very much on the nature of the conflict and the circumstances.
An individual drone strike is causes less death and destruction than a manned mission of any kind, by virtue of the fact that a lot more has to be done (and blown up and/or shot at) to reduce the chances of human casualties among the attackers. That is much worse for you if you live in the neighborhood, and much more likely to radicalize you or engender hatred.
The issue is that a drones strike is far more likely to be carried out than a manned mission, for all the reasons I describe above. So drone strike that does happen will radicalize more people than a manned strike that doesn’t.
That’s not really a problem. You’ve completely ignored the entire target selection, identification and kintetic strike process. Drone pilots aren’t just shooting at whatever they think looks like a bad guy. There is a team of intelligence personnel, battle trackers, legal advisors and ground commanders involved in the process. And they’re not all just huddled around a single FMV feed on a tiny monitor. Every single missile fired goes through an approval process, starting from the time someone not “divorced from the reality of the war” requests the strike, to the time the drone pilot gets eyes on and in strike posture, to the final approval.
Menachem Begin first introduced terrorism to the Middle East in modern times. The idea was to drive the British out of Palestine, so it could be converted. In warfare, such tactics aren’t called terrorism. They’re called guerilla tactics. They are employed so an enemy’s superiority in soldiery and weaponry can’t be used to best advantage. I do recall Al Qaeda declaring war against the U.S. I do recall Bin Laden being ridiculed as a crackpot at the time. “How can a guy in a turban sitting in a cave fight a war against US?”
The ISIS, or ISIL, strategy is to conquer land enough to establish a caliphate. Convert it. They aren’t hijacking jets and diverting them to Cuba to force the release of some fellow members unjustly imprisoned somewhere. They can’t conquer England or Canada, so they go for someplace not so well endowed. You can characterize these places as unstable, with weak law enforcement if you wish. You can also characterize them as economically undeveloped, or extremely rural. However you characterize the place, you can bet ISIS/ISIL don’t see their tactics as any less strategic than did Menachem Begin against the English.
We characterize them in terms we prefer, both the organization and their tactics. I imagine taking seriously the idea of establishing a caliphate in this 21st Century world is seen as laughable by those whom these organizations have stated are their enemies. We characterize our own organizations and our own territories the way we wish as well. I recall Chairman Mao claiming the U.S. is a paper tiger. To him we were. Who won that ideological struggle? After dealing with them in Korea, how would someone like Douglas MacArthur view the China of the 21st Century? If he heard the adjectives being used now, could he guess who we were talking about?
Even Ronald Reagan said, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” His administration sold arms to terrorists to fund freedom fighters, according to them. What they did was just as illegal as it would have been had they changed the adjectives around, i.e., sell arms to freedom fighters to fund terrorists. The point being, ideology is constructed on much more complicated concepts than using drones. One honest reaction of an enemy of the U.S. in the Middle East could be jealousy over the sophistication of the arms being used against him. Rather than hating the U.S., he might be wishing his side was as well endowed.
What are most influential in generating something other than enmity (rather than the unfortunate construction of less enmity) are honesty and integrity. Right behind these is consistency. Respecting one’s enemy is not an unknown condition. How Imperial Japan conducted warfare in the jungles of Burma had no effect on enlistment to fight against them in the U.S. The fact we were at war was all the initiative required. To believe using drones or soldiers has anything to do with the mindset; they wouldn’t conduct warfare against us if we used soldiers, but they would if we use drones, is to completely misapprehend the mentality involved and in so doing insults those this question of the OP’s addresses. Involving oneself in armed struggle occurs with a more complicated set of ideas and desires.
This is the Era of the Ego in the United States. Here it’s customary to be derisive and dismissive of people who are supposed to be on the same side as we are. The pejorative language which results serves as insightful and comprehensive. If the enemy finds it caustic and overbearing, that’s his problem. The world is full of snowflakes. This lack of objectivity doesn’t abide well with Sun Tzu and his Art of War. Understanding the enemy is critical to succeeding against him. Fooling oneself precedes certain defeat. You can’t really believe to drone, or not to drone governs this…can you?