Spencer Ackerman broke an important story today in the Guardian.
US drone strikes more deadly to Afghan civilians than manned aircraft – adviser
Study focusing on one year of conflict contradicts claims that robotic planes are more precise than manned counterparts
A study conducted by a US military adviser has found that drone strikes in Afghanistan during a year of the protracted conflict caused 10 times more civilian casualties than strikes by manned fighter aircraft.
The new study, referred to in an official US military journal, contradicts claims by US officials that the robotic planes are more precise than their manned counterparts.
It appears to undermine the claim made by President Obama in a May speech that "conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and likely to cause more civilian casualties and local outrage".
[Emphasis added]
At the time that President Obama made that statement, the data for this study was already available.
Pres. Obama speech in May:
America does not take strikes to punish individuals – we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat. And before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.
This last point is critical, because much of the criticism about drone strikes – at home and abroad – understandably centers on reports of civilian casualties. There is a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties, and non-governmental reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in all wars. For the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me, and those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred through conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But as Commander-in-Chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives. To do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties – not just in our cities at home and facilities abroad, but also in the very places –like Sana’a and Kabul and Mogadishu – where terrorists seek a foothold. Let us remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes.
Where foreign governments cannot or will not effectively stop terrorism in their territory, the primary alternative to targeted, lethal action is the use of conventional military options. As I’ve said, even small Special Operations carry enormous risks. Conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and likely to cause more civilian casualties and local outrage. And invasions of these territories lead us to be viewed as occupying armies; unleash a torrent of unintended consequences; are difficult to contain; and ultimately empower those who thrive on violent conflict. So it is false to assert that putting boots on the ground is less likely to result in civilian deaths, or to create enemies in the Muslim world. The result would be more U.S. deaths, more Blackhawks down, more confrontations with local populations, and an inevitable mission creep in support of such raids that could easily escalate into new wars.
Link
May, 2012, John Brennan also misled the public when he stressed the accuracy and surgical nature of drone strikes.
Brennan defended targeted killings as an effective tool against Al Qaeda that helps minimize civilian casualties and likened the use of drones to laser surgery, saying: "It's this surgical precision—the ability, with laser-like focus, to eliminate the cancerous tumor called an al Qaeda terrorist while limiting damage to the tissue around it—that makes this counterterrorism tool so essential."
http://www.motherjones.com/...
While writing this post, I noticed that Jim White has written about this Ackerman article as well, and he's done a stellar job of it. In addition to quotes and commentary, he has also found a PDF issue of a National Defense University publication called Prism, in which more information about this Larry Lewis study has been published.
Ackerman points out in the article that Lewis mentions some of this work in a recently published article in Prism, which is published by NDU (note: To make things clearer to folks reading Marcy’s work on Snowden, I will call the journal Prism and not PRISM, even though the Guardian is once again breaking the news and the journal uses all caps in its name). Although NDU doesn’t make it easy to find the most recent issue of Prism, I finally found a pdf of the entire latest issue here, where the article by Lewis and coauthor Sarah Holewinski (who is at the Center for Civilians in Conflict) can be found on pages 57 to 65.
Lewis and Holewinski open by framing the issue of protection of civilians as a lesson that the US military has to learn repeatedly:
Civilian casualties can risk the success of a combat mission. While not new, this is a lesson us defense forces have had to repeatedly relearn. Historically, civilian protection and efforts to address harm became priorities only when external pressures demanded attention. As the Pentagon reshapes its defenses and fighting force for the next decade, continuing this ad hoc pattern in the future is neither strategically smart nor ethically acceptable.
[...]
Lewis and Holewinski describe the impact of both failing to protect civilians and lying about operations in which civilians have died. After describing relatively well-known examples of drone strikes in Pakistan that included such horrors as a double-tap targeting rescuers, the strike on a jirga addressing mining issues that killed up to 40 civilians or deaths at a restaurant, Lewis and Holewinski move back to Afghanistan [...]
- See more at: http://www.emptywheel.net/...
Jim's post needs to be read in full, and I hope to see a lot more writing and analysis of this study, one of the most important war related studies that I have seen in quite some time.
We've been misled, and not just a little. The importance cannot be understated. Just to get a sense of how much we've been misled, to use just one example (there are many, including the ones in the speeches that I've already cited), consider what our Senate Intelligence committee, charged with oversight for these drone programs, believes about civilian deaths by drone strike, based on information given to them by John Brennan. The chairwoman of that committee, in addition to accepting the Brennan rhetoric about surgical precision, also parrots his claim that the number of civilian deaths by Predator drones with Hellfire missiles is in the single digits, and this is what she told the country in that hearing.
Opening the Senate confirmation hearing for CIA director nominee John Brennan, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) offered a mini panegyric to drone strikes. She lamented the secrecy surrounding the CIA’s drone program as she wanted to be able to speak more openly about its successes and the minimal collateral damage of drone wars. She stated that civilian casualties caused by U.S. drone strikes each year has “typically been in the single digits.”
[Emphasis added]
Salon