Drone Warfare Does More Harm Than Good
CON (3 arguments)
Grabbers:
1) According to a 2010 report by the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, a Washington-based advocacy group, which was based on fieldwork in Pakistan's tribal areas where all of the drone strikes occur, most residents of the tribal regions believed the strikes are largely accurate and primarily killed militants.
2) In the Obama administration, between 1,507 and 2,438 people have been killed in drone strikes. Of those, 148 to 309, or between 10% and 12%, were civilians, according to the New America Foundation data.
3) In February, The Associated Press conducted a rare on-the-ground investigation of 10 of the deadliest U.S. drone strikes carried out over the previous 18 months. Reporters interviewed about 80 villagers from the areas affected by these 10 strikes and found that of the 194 people reported killed in the attacks, at least 138 were identified as militants.
The Plan [a.k.a. Counter-Plan]:
Firstly, we define drones as any unmanned aerial vehicle used in military defense.
We define drone strikes as a targeted explosive air strike from a UAV.
The United States Congress, as part of the 2012-2013 National Defense Authorization Act will establish Joint Force UAV. This organization will be composed of representatives from CIA, Department of Defense, Department of State and Department of Justice.
Joint Force UAV will be responsible for all covert drone operations conducted by the United States
Targets will be chosen if they represent a serious threat to US national security (for example, members of terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda).
Joint Force UAV, in conjunction with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), will utilize Advanced Precision Kill Weapon system that are high-precision, low-collateral weapons for deployment with the US UAV fleet.
Joint Force UAV will develop targeting protocols and procedures designed to minimize collateral damage.
Joint Force UAV will be in compliance with international law, such as the UN charter and the Geneva conventions.
Finally, the Joint force UAV will be improved whenever technology is sufficient enough for an update.
According to William Galston, it would reduce defense spending in 2022 to $605 billion"which is $100 million less than the military budget for 2013. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told how the Obama administration plans to achieve $487 billion in cuts over the next decade, in part by reducing the number of ships, planes and troops, but continuing to fund elite special forces -- and support technologies like unmanned drones. Panetta will request a Pentagon budget of $525 billion for fiscal year 2013, a $6 billion reduction from last year's budget and $33 billion less than what had been forecast a few years ago. The administration will also ask for another $88.4 billion to maintain the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, a reduction from the $115 billion being spent this year. Also with this money being saved, it will be going elsewhere. This is confirmed by Leon Panetta who told reporters that the impact of the cuts will be far-ranging, "make no mistake, the savings we are proposing will impact all 50 states, and many districts across America."
We need to eliminate terrorists somehow and UAVs are the best possible equipment with which to carry out this mission. All the other options either would result in significantly more casualties or would have other problems that would likely allow terrorists to escape.
First there is the collateral damage that would be caused by using other alternatives to striking terrorists. Professor Plaw of the University of Massachusetts says that when terrorists were being confronted by the Pakistani Army, who were attacking at the behest of the United States, 46% of casualties were collateral damage. A similar number of 41% was the figure when Israel was targeting Hamas. When compared to the 16 or 28% collateral damage figures for UAVs the choice should be easy.
Moreover other options have other disadvantages. Sending a hit squad in to eliminate terrorists may mean little collateral damage but would cause a diplomatic crisis as it would be tantamount to invading another country. Using a missile or local support on the other hand significantly increases the chances of the target escaping. Pakistan's ISI, military intelligence, has for example been accused of helping the Taliban – they could hardly be trusted to kill them.
There are only two things that really matter when targeting terrorists; is the terrorist eliminated, and is collateral damage kept to a minimum? In Pakistan there have been a total of 334 strikes by UAVs between 2004 and June 2012 with the total reported killed at 2496-3202 of which only 482-832 were civilians according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Moreover the number of civilians killed in strikes is falling; 28 percent of casualties in 2008 were civilians but by 2011 this had fallen to 16 percent and this is a figure that is likely to continue falling as drones improve technologically making identification easier and making strikes more precise. These figures show that the United States in its use of drones is not only hitting a lot of terrorist targets and eliminating them but is causing very little collateral damage in comparison to the number of strikes made.
With the Army no longer required to be large enough to conduct sustained attacks like it did in Iraq and Afghanistan, it will go down from 45 brigades to 38, part of a planned reduction of 80,000 soldiers from 570,000 to 490,000. The already planned reduction in the number of Marines will be larger than expected as it is reduced in size from 202,000 to 182,000. The reduction in forces for both services will still leave them larger than they were prior to 9/11. The Air Force will lose six of its 60 fighter squadrons -- estimated to be between 108 and 144 aircraft -- as well as 27 of its oldest giant C-5A cargo planes and 65 of the oldest C-130's still flying. Seven Navy cruisers and two amphibious ships will be retired early.