The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and director of Intelligence for the Joint Special Operations Command (3-Star General Mike Flynn) says in an interview set to air later this month:
When you drop a bomb from a drone … you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good.
Pressed by the interviewer about whether drone strikes create more terrorists than they kill, the general responded:
I don’t disagree with that.
Clinton and Bush’s counter-terror czar (Richard Clarke) – the guy who created the drone assassination program – says that Obama’s drone assassination program is “creating terrorists rather than eliminating them.”
Top CIA officers say that drone strikes increase terrorism (and see this). Indeed, the CIA warnedObama that drone strikes might be counter-productive from a national security standpoint.
4-star general Stanley McChrystal – former Commander of the International Security Assistance Force, Commander of all U.S. Forces Afghanistan, Director, Joint Staff, and Commander, Joint Special Operations Command – said:
What scares me about drone strikes is how they are perceived around the world. The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes…is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who’ve never seen one or seen the effects of one.
McChrystal explained:
For every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies.
Michael Boyle – a member of Obama’s counter-terrorism advisory group in the run-up to the 2008 election – conducted a study which found:
[Most Americans remained] unaware of the scale of the drone programme…and the destruction it has caused in their name.[Drones are having] adverse strategic effects [by causing hatred among the local populations where US bombs falland also by] encouraging a new arms race that will empower current and future rivals and lay the foundations for an international system that is increasingly violent.
A report by researchers at the Stanford and NYU schools of law found that the drone program is “terrorizing” the people of Pakistan and that it is having “counterproductive” effects. T]e report finds … the drone war has helped recruitment efforts of extremist groups like al-Qaeda.
Of course, the failure of drone strikes in Yemen to curb radicals – and the rise of ISIS – show that the entire policy is an abject failure.
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