Study Shows US Government's Drone Killing Strategy Is Having Zero Impact On Al-Qaeda Attack Numbers

from the counterterrorism-that-counters-nothing dept

As everyone with an interest in a healthy surveillance state will tell you, we've never been less safe from terrorism than we are now. While a lot of this carries an undercurrent of self-interest, there is some evidence out there that indicates the US government's policies aren't exactly making us any new friends.

The controversial extrajudicial killing program utilizing weaponized drones has been a particular point of contention. For one thing, the American public has yet to be let in on the government's legal rationale for acting as judge, jury and executioner of US citizens suspected of terrorist activity. This undisclosed reasoning has been perpetually on the verge of release for years now. Of course, when (and if) it's ever handed over to the public domain, it will very likely be redacted to the point of abstraction, rendering it mostly useless.

This largely apocryphal document is only part of the problem. The other issue is the targets of the administration's "targeted killing" program. As Zack Beauchamp at Vox points out, the government's strategy doesn't seem to be making any headway towards mitigating the al-Qaeda threat. (via Slashdot)

The basic premise of the Obama Administration's drone program is that decapitation, the killing of a terrorist organization's top leadership, works. Killing al-Qaeda's leadership should, in theory, limit the organization's ability to plot attacks on the US and its allies.

But what if that's not true? That's the core finding of a just-published study in the prestigious journal International Security. In it, Georgia Tech professor Jenna Jordan takes a look at the history of targeting terrorist leaders and draws lessons for the fight against al-Qaeda. According to Jordan, believing that targeted killing can actually weaken al-Qaeda means assuming al-Qaeda depends on a group of charismatic leaders. But that's wrong, and that mistaken assumption has led the Obama Administration to pursue a strategy centered on targeting al-Qaeda's leadership with drones when it'd really be better to cut down on targeted killings altogether.

Without a doubt, simply pursuing this program has done little to engender goodwill in countries