Let’s Talk About Drone Strikes

Alex Stark wrote about the civilian harm from drone strikes in the American Prospect.

All too often, civilian deaths that occur during counterterrorism operations go unreported and uninvestigated, meaning too often the costs to civilians are not accounted for. It was very unusual when the Pentagon acknowledged on Friday that the strike was a “tragic mistake” and ordered an investigation. The U.S. military often fails to account for civilian deaths incurred during operations, leading to systematic undercounting.

The secrecy surrounding drone strikes means that the consequences for civilians rarely enter the political conversation. In Yemen, for example, U.S. military support for the Saudi-led coalition has rightfully drawn a great deal of scrutiny in recent years from a political coalition of Democrats and independents like Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Chris Murphy and Bernie Sanders, and Republicans like Sens. Todd Young and Mike Lee. In contrast, the civilian costs of U.S. counterterrorism operations in Yemen, seen by U.S. policymakers as a separate and parallel conflict to the Saudi-led coalition’s war with the Houthis, remain relatively underexamined.

Drawing a bright line between the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention and U.S. counterterrorism operations in Yemen, the 2019 bill passed by Congress directing the end of U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition specifically stated that it “shall not affect any military operations directed at Al Qaeda.” (In any case, Trump vetoed the bill.) In the opening days of the Trump administration, a special-operations raid on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula killed at least 14 civilians, including nine children, and one U.S. service member; it illustrated the civilian harm that such counterterrorism operations can create.