{"id":19184,"date":"2013-04-08T06:10:59","date_gmt":"2013-04-08T14:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=19184"},"modified":"2013-04-08T06:10:59","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T14:10:59","slug":"drone-targets-reflect-local-animosities-not-threats-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/08\/drone-targets-reflect-local-animosities-not-threats-to-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Drone Targets Reflect Local Animosities, Not Threats to US"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, The New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> that the first ever CIA drone strike in Pakistan was not aimed at an al-Qaeda operative plotting to attack the US or US forces in Afghanistan, but rather targeted a man the Pakistani government didn’t like.<\/p>\n

Mr. [Nek] Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the\u00a0C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a\u00a0Predator drone\u00a0in Pakistan to carry out a \u201ctargeted killing.\u201d The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the\u00a0Taliban\u00a0who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The bombing killed Nek Muhammad “and several others, including two boys, ages 10 and 16.”<\/p>\n

\"nek_mohammad\"

Nek Muhammad<\/p><\/div>\n

This account serves as further proof that the US rarely knows who it kills in the drone war. Targets are often chosen through a shoddy process of human intelligence and frequently reflect local animosities as opposed to actual threats to the US.<\/p>\n

Killing enemies of the state also happens in Yemen.\u00a0Last year, The<\/em>\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cthe distinction may be blurring between operations targeting militants who want to attack Americans and those aimed at fighters seeking to overthrow the Yemeni government.\u201d<\/p>\n

For drone war advocates, the legitimacy of the targeted killing program rests on the notion that those targets pose a threat to America and its forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Careful observers have known for a very long time that this standard is not met<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Signature strikes” allow the CIA to bomb groups of people exhibiting \u201csuspicious behavior,\u201d a loosely-defined judgement that gives the agency carte blanche to kill whoever it pleases. And once the victims are dead, all military-age males are automatically considered terrorists<\/a> unless\u00a0posthumously proven innocent.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0the leaked Justice Department legal memo<\/a>,\u00a0the Obama administration dropped the requirement of \u201cimminence\u201d to justify the use of force.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe condition that an operational leader present an \u2018imminent\u2019 threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,\u201d the memo states.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0all that\u2019s necessary to decide on a target is for\u00a0high-level US officials to say the targets are \u201csenior operational leaders\u201d of al-Qaeda or \u201can associated force.\u201d And we know in at least some cases, like when the CIA does Islamabad a favor, not even this standard is met.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that the first ever CIA drone strike in Pakistan was not aimed at an al-Qaeda operative plotting to attack the US or US forces in Afghanistan, but rather targeted a man the Pakistani government didn’t like. Mr. [Nek] Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the\u00a0C.I.A., […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-19184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19184"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19187,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19184\/revisions\/19187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19184"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}