An excerpt from, "Former US Official: For Every Yemen Terrorist US Drones Kill, 40-60 New Enemies Are Created" by John Glaser, AntiWar.Com, October 24, 2013:
The list of former U.S. officials who believe drone strikes create more enemies than they eliminate juts got a little bit longer.Washington wants to create more enemies to fight and kill. That is the objective. So its drone policy in Pakistan and Yemen is a big success. Those who do not see this still have their heads in the sand.
“Drone strikes take out a few bad guys to be sure, but they also kill a large number of innocent civilians,” writes Nabeel Khoury, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Yemen from 2004 to 2007. “Given Yemen’s tribal structure, the U.S. generates roughly forty to sixty new enemies for every AQAP operative killed by drones.”
This is an old trope for those of us who have been criticizing the drone war for years. But the notion that it creates blowback is gaining in popularity of late. CNN, for example, just ran this segment, entitled “In Swat Valley, U.S. drone strikes radicalizing a new generation.”
The "AQAP operatives" (read CIA agents) are the decoy. The real target is the society and the country in question.
The Pakistani and Yemeni victims are trapped between two dark sides, having to choose between two equally evil villains - the US and its corrupt puppet government on one side, and the radical Islamists/Al-Qaeda terrorists on the other side. It's a fucked up situation. But that's what Washington's foreign policy is about.
Not even the Romans were this cruel.
