In today's paper, we read that an American drone strike killed two hostages, one an American citizen and one an Italian citizen, who were being held by Al-Qaeda in January. By all accounts, proper procedure was followed, and the site in question was surveyed extensively to ensure that it was a legitimate target of war. But the fact that two civilian hostages were killed shows the limits of the President's drone policy, even when everything is done according to the book.
The problem is that there is no way to account for the possibility that civilians are present when strikes occur. The hostages, Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, are just two of over 3,000 civilians who have been killed by drone strikes under the program, began by President Bush and continued by President Obama. Each one of these people killed by these drone strikes will only serve to polarize this country and antagonize more people, who could choose to sign up for Al-Qaeda and ISIS. With each one of these civilians killed, Al-Qaeda and ISIS become stronger than if those strikes had not occurred.
Other limits have become apparent during the course of our drone program. When drone operators are controlling a drone from afar, they have no way of knowing whether the movement on the ground that they see is a terrorist convoy or a wedding party. What should have been the happiest day in someone's life becomes the most tragic because of the errors of a drone operator halfway around the globe. And drone operators themselves get PTSD in the same manner that they would have if they had engaged in actual fighting on the ground.
The drone strikes also raise serious legal issues for our drone program. Under the Fourth Amendment, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. All people are entitled to a trial; even the Nuremburg defendants were given a fair trial and effective legal representation. The lack of constitutional safeguards in our drone program undermines public confidence in our government as a nation of laws and adds fuel to the fire of Alex Jones and certain writers of Veterans Today, who think that the US is planning a full-blooded martial law rehearsal in the summer. The ACLU, which is not convinced that adequate safeguards exist in our drone program, said:
Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the fact that the government did not know that the hostages or American Qaeda figures were present showed the problems in the drone war. “These and other recent strikes in which civilians were killed make clear that there is a significant gap between the relatively stringent standards the government says it’s using and the standards that are actually being used,” he said.
But if these standards were actually used, then that only makes the matter worse because it highlights the limits of what a drone program can accomplish. While the President rightly ordered the incident declassified so that Mr. Weinstein's and Mr. Lo Porto's families can know the truth of what happened, he needs to live up to his promise to be the most transparent administration in US history and go farther. Suspected terrorists, instead of being killed by drones, rendered to secret facilities, or taken to Guantanamo should be arrested in conjunction with local authorities and taken to the US to face trial. The trials should be completely open and media should be encouraged to cover it like what was done with the Tsarnaev trial. Suspects should be given a fair trial and effective legal representation. In the end, what will emerge is a complete picture of the war crimes committed against the world by Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The reason that the Nuremberg Trials were so effective was that the focus was on the Nazis and how they planned and implemented a war of aggression against the rest of humanity. But when extra-judicial methods such as drone strikes are used, then the focus is on the President and his methods whether we like it or not. This raises a question in many peoples' minds whether we are a better nation than the people we are claiming are such a threat to world peace and our national security. And then they wonder why so many foreigners are attracted to ISIS and their barbaric movement.