Give drones a medal

As his first term ends, President Obama has expanded the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense drone fleets, conducted over 300 drone attacks in six countries and killed perhaps more than 2,000 suspected terrorists by drone strikes. Many people in the United States, Europe and the Middle East are troubled by that record.

But what is it exactly about the drone program that is so disturbing? For me, killing anyone, including terrorists, is regrettable, but sometimes it is necessary. If we have to use lethal force against terrorists at times, drones are the best way to do that.

Before I explain why, a little recent history is in order. In full disclosure, I should make clear that I was one of the first people in the government to advocate the use of armed drones against terrorists. At the time, in 2000 and 2001, both the CIA and the Pentagon opposed the idea.

The CIA said its job was using spies, humans on the ground. Their spies, however, had been unable to tell us where Osama Bin Laden was in real time. Nor had they been able to carry out President Bill Clinton’s orders to use lethal force against Bin Laden. The Pentagon said it preferred to fly aircraft with pilots in them and that the Pentagon did not carry out covert operations.

Clinton, however, agreed with me and ordered the use of the Predator to find Bin Laden. We found him in October 2000 using a Predator. There was, however, no such thing then as an armed Predator, so we saw him but could not kill him.

After that experience, orders were given to create an armed drone, quickly. When President George W. Bush came into office, the CIA and DOD refused to fly the armed Predator to get Bin Laden in Afghanistan, including balking at a cabinet level meeting on Sept. 4, 2001.

A week later, the CIA and DOD were embracing the idea of an armed Predator as their own. Within a few more weeks, the armed Predator had its first victim, Muhammad Atef, the head of Al Qaeda’s military wing, in an attack in Kabul. Bush remained reluctant throughout the next eight years to use drones often against Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

Once in office, Obama had no such hesitation. Predator and its newer, larger version, Reaper, have killed scores of Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, as well as in Afghanistan and Yemen.

Despite that record of taking out Al Qaeda leaders, many reasonable people are troubled by America’s use of drones. The United Nations is creating an investigative office to examine the program for potential violations of international law and human rights.

Some of today’s opponents’ concerns seem to stem from the fact that the drones are, in the words of Bill Maher, “flying killer robots.” For others, it is a belief that the drones make killing “too easy” and risk-free to the U.S. pilots, possibly leading to excessive use of force. They fear that the decision to kill is being made at too low a level.

Some critics are troubled by the fact that this program is shrouded in secrecy, making detailed public oversight difficult. They wonder what standards are being used to decide who should be put on a “hit list.” Another issue is whether we are establishing precedents which we will regret when other nations employ drones.

Perhaps the most telling criticism is that people in the countries where the drones operate resent the attacks, think that the drones kill innocent bystanders and believe that the attacks are converting people to the cause of the terrorists.

Most of these concerns are still not persuasive to me. First, the drones are not machines that make decisions on their own. They are not robots. They are piloted; the pilots are simply thousands of miles away.

The fact that those pilots are safe and they are not engaged in a “fair fight,” which troubles some critics, has always struck me as positive. As an American, I do not like putting our military personnel at unnecessary risk.

As to the transparency issue, fighting terrorists requires a degree of secrecy to be successful, but this is one of the most well-known and transparent covert programs in history and, under U.S. law, covert action programs have classified oversight by two committees of Congress.

Moreover, there is transparency on some key aspects of the program. The administration has outlined in some detail its legal rationale, its decision-making process and its rules of engagement. The President himself has discussed those issues publicly, and he is personally involved in the decision-making process about where to strike and when. He and his team use an elaborate vetting process to establish through multiple sources the intelligence that a particular target is a terrorist commander or someone who intends to kill in an act of terrorism.

The concern about other nations employing drones is legitimate, but not a good argument for our foreswearing their use. Other nations have fighter aircraft and submarines and all manner of other weapons, which they misuse at times. Our setting aside such weapons would not stop others from employing them.

The U.S. was not the first nation to use an armed drone to go after terrorists (Israel was), and it is already one of more than two dozen nations flying drones. Because they are a relatively low-cost way of collecting intelligence and delivering weapons with great precision, nations are very unlikely to give up drones, no matter what we do.

The fear that we are creating new terrorists by killing innocent bystanders, though, does get to the most important issue in the drone debate. For me, that central question is: “What is the alternative?”

If we are going to attack suspected terrorists, no matter how careful we are, there will be some mistakes and some “collateral damage.” We should seek to drive the number of those casualties down to as low a number as we can, while still operating a program to defend ourselves against attack.

If we are to achieve that low collateral damage goal, we have to employ unarmed aerial vehicles. This is crucial to understand: Drones are more accurate than any other weapon or technique we have.

They are more precise, in fact, than any weapon or technique that’s ever been developed. Predators fly over a target for hours before they strike, sometimes days, to establish a “pattern of life” in the target area. If there are civilians in the target area, they do not strike. When drone attacks do occur, they employ precision-guided missiles with relatively small warheads.

I have examined the alternative methods of striking: F-16s, cruise missiles, commando raids. All of these methods are far more likely to kill innocent people and Americans. The attacking forces sweep in at high speed, have little or no time to assess the situation and then employ extremely lethal force over a fairly wide area.

Alternatively, we could rely exclusively on indigenous security forces, but often they are not capable of effective action and are at least as likely to create innocent casualties.

Thus, the real question is not should we use armed drones, it is rather should the U.S. employ force against terrorists in far-flung lands?

Should we be picking off suspected terrorists, maintaining a “kill list”?

It’s not a simple “yes” or “no” answer. U.S. lethal operations against terrorists are something we should want to be a rare event. We should simultaneously strive to prevent people from becoming terrorists through pre-radicalization and deradicalization programs to dissuade potential converts.

When force is required, it would be best employed by well-trained and disciplined units of the local governments, and if such units do not exist, we should create them.

But the fact is, the Obama Administration is pursuing both deradicalization and indigenous capacity-building with governments in the Islamic world. The President has also ordered the creation of new guidelines for the use of drones, to make their employment less frequent. So called “signature attacks,” those conducted on terrorist camps, will be reduced, and the emphasis will be placed on strikes against known terrorist commanders or groups known to be preparing attacks.

Greater emphasis will be placed on those terrorists creating a risk to Americans, although imminent attacks on citizens of our allies will also still be thwarted when possible. The new guidelines can be expected to reduce the number and restrict the types of drone attacks.

For the foreseeable future, however, drones will remain an important counter-terrorism tool. When used properly, they eliminate real threats and keep terrorist groups off-base, better than any other option the President has at his disposal.

And, at least for me, there is no doubt that it is better to eliminate terrorists before they strike, rather than to retaliate after there are dead Americans.

Clarke, a security consultant and author, is a former White House counterterrorism adviser to Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He was deputy assistant secretary of state for intelligence under President Ronald Reagan.