Foreign Policy In Focus

The U.S. use of drones in Pakistan is not only illegitimate, but less precise than advertised.

In his latest salvo at the U.S. drone campaign, Conor Friedersdorf, the Atlantic's resident anti-militarist, writes about his exasperation with the terminology "surgical" when applied to drone strikes. The Obama administration, he writes, has "successfully transplanted the term into public discourse about drones."

I've been told American drone strikes are "surgical" while attending Aspen Ideas Festival panels, interviewing delegates at the Democratic National Convention, and perusing reader emails after every time I write about the innocents killed and maimed in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.

It is a triumph of propaganda.

But, Friedersdorf points out:

Using data that undercounts innocents killed, The New America Foundation reports that 85 percent of Pakistanis killed in drone strikes are "militants," while 15 percent are civilians or unknown. What do you think would happen to a surgeon that accidentally killed 15 in 100 patients? Would colleagues would call him "surgical" in his precision?

No, he'd likely be named a defendant in medical malpractice suits. Friedersdorf again:

… it is a downright dishonest metaphor when invoked by an administration that could make their strikes more like surgery but doesn't. For example, the Obama Administration could make certain of the identity of the people it is "operating on." Instead it sometimes uses "signature strikes," wherein the CIA doesn't even know the identity of the people it is killing. It could also attempt autopsies, literal or figurative, when things go wrong. Instead, it presumes sans evidence that all military-aged males killed in drone strikes are "militants." 

Friedersdorf's criticism, of course, isn't constructive; he isn't seeking to assist in legitimizing our drone strikes. He's just pointing out that the program is even worse than it has to be.

A century ago, the Ottoman Empire was falling apart as a result of disastrous wars and economic decline. Dubbed “the sick man of Europe,” the Ottoman Empire was not ultimately able to pull itself together. It expired in the flames of World War I, but not before pulling down a good chunk of the world order with it.

Today, the United States faces considerable economic challenges and has suffered numerous setbacks because of our own disastrous wars. Our reputation in the international community remains quite low. We are coming dangerously close to earning the epithet of “the sick man of North America.” And our decline in health also threatens global stability and security.

Every week for the last six years, I’ve written a column called World Beat about the health of U.S. foreign policy. With a few exceptions – the recent overture to Burma, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq – the diagnosis has been dismal. For the first couple years, I chronicled the insanities of the Bush administration. For the last three years, I’ve dissected the policies of the Obama administration. There has been, alas, more continuity between the two administrations than anyone predicted when Barack Obama took office.

I had low expectations for Obama from the beginning – not because I doubt his talents as an individual, but because I fear for the health of our political institutions and I recognize the power of our economic elite. Obama lacks the leadership skills, the political intention, and the congressional backing to transform institutions and challenge entrenched economic power. U.S. foreign policy remains on the same perilous trajectory that Bush and his cronies launched it on. And so we are still the sick man of North America, dangerous in our relative decline.

In All Over the Map: the Best of World Beat, I’ve brought together a collection of the best of these columns. This modestly priced ebook covers the worsening health of U.S. foreign policy and the efforts to revive the patient. It looks at movements around the world that champion peace, democracy, and economic sustainability. It profiles the people and the ideas that can guide us out of our perilous predicament. The book includes essays on the death of Osama bin Laden, the continuing U.S. drone wars, graphic novels that cover global affairs, the use of dance therapy with child soldiers, the dissident art of Ai Weiwei, the politics of the Muslim Brotherhood, the politics of overseas adoption, eyewitness reports from Korea and Albania, and much much more.

Hope was the watchword of the 2008 elections, and it propelled Obama into office. We must still hope. Quoting a famous African proverb, Hillary Clinton is fond of saying that “it takes a village to raise a child.” Similarly, it takes an electorate to raise a president. We can still push Obama – and subsequent presidents – in the direction of democracy, equitable prosperity, and environmental sustainability. We can still push the international community toward these goals. All Over the Map is a guide to the vital signs of the United States and the world as well as the methods to improve our chances of recovery.

President Eisenhower is well-remembered for warning the public in his final address to the nation to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex.” But it is little known that Eisenhower, in that same speech further cautioned that “we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

In May, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steve Chu announced that 42 university-led nuclear research and development projects would receive $38 million through the Department of Energy’s “Nuclear Energy University Program” designed to help advance nuclear education and develop the next generations of nuclear technologies. "We are taking action to restart the nuclear industry as part of a broad approach to cut carbon pollution and create new clean energy jobs," said Secretary Chu. "These projects will help us develop the nuclear technologies of the future and move our domestic nuclear industry forward."

At a time when the United States should be creating a new Manhattan Project for safe, clean, green energy from the sun, wind, and tides, the Obama administration is trying to recreate the old Manhattan project, training our best and brightest to continue to wreak havoc on the planet with nuclear know-how. Instead of letting the old nuclear complex rust in peace, the government is proactively taking the initiative to create a whole new generation of Dr. Strangeloves, enticing young people to study these dark arts by putting up millions of precious dollars for nuclear programs and scholarships.

What a disappointment that Dr. Chu, a Nobel laureate scientist, appointed by Obama for “change we can believe in”, represents the old paradigm of top-down, hierarchical, secret nuclear science. It’s just so 20th century! Chu has apparently ignored the myriad studies that show that dollar-for-dollar, nuclear power is one of the most expensive ways to meet energy needs, when lifecycle costs are compared to solar, wind, geothermal, appropriate hydropower and biomass, as well as efficiency measures. This is also true for reducing carbon emissions, as expensive nuclear power would actually exacerbate catastrophic climate change since less carbon emission is prevented per dollar spent on costly nuclear technology compared to applying those funds to clean energy sources and efficiency.

Further, countless studies, including recent reports from three communities in Germany with nuclear reactors, indicate that there are higher incidences of cancer, leukemia and birth defects in communities with toxic nuclear power plants that pollute the air, water, and soil in the course of routine operations. And a recent report from the New York Academy of Sciences, by distinguished Russian scientists, finds that deaths from the disastrous accident at Chernobyl now number over 900,000. Dr. Chu, a nuclear physicist, is well aware that the radioactive byproducts of nuclear power will remain toxic for 250,000 years and that there is no known solution to safely store this lethal brew for the eons it will threaten human health and the environment.

Americans should oppose any further funding for this failed, dangerous technology as well as the inordinate subsidies presently planned for the nuclear industry. It’s time to invest in a clean energy future that will create millions of jobs and enable the US to earn an honest dollar by developing desirable new technology to offer to the world. Instead we will be providing a growing number of countries the wherewithal and technical know-how with which to make a nuclear bomb, while subjecting their communities to the consequences of toxic radiation.

Alice Slater is the New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.