How Do Drones Combat Terrorism?

Overall, the last decade and a half have been forgettable and largely a mistake on the US’s behalf. The entire war on terror failed as a whole with ground troops fighting despite early success with the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan following 9/11. Yet, afterwards, the Taliban resurged and the USMNT did little to quell this resurgence. In Afghanistan, more than three hundred thousand Afghan civilians died during the bombing campaign(Choices 187), demonstrating a horrible and tragic failure on the US’s behalf to bring freedom and security to civilians where these terrorists were in control. Furthermore, in Pakistan, in 2009 alone, another twenty-five thousand Pakistanis were killed by militants as well as hundreds of soldiers(Choices 196), …show more content…
The new CIA technology, which Obama has frequently used during his terms as president, has been very effective in killing terrorists with their use in Pakistan. Although many people oppose the use of drones, the ratio of civilian deaths to the deaths of terrorists is much lower than ratio of civilian deaths to terrorist deaths per the CIA analysis(Choices, 225). Morally, however, drones have received lots of criticism with people like Scott Shane from the NY Times saying, “drones may actually be encouraging unnecessary killing.”(Choices, 226). Others, such as Daniel R. Brunstetter further this idea by saying that drones are becoming, “a default strategy to be used almost anywhere.” Many people believe that President Obama’s frequent use of drones is highly immoral but the numbers speak for themselves and as Bradley J. Strawser, a Naval Academy assistant professor points out, “all the evidence we have so far suggests that drones do better at both identifying the terrorist and avoiding collateral damage than anything else we have”(Choices, 225). Drones are really the moral high ground for war, an irony in itself, but nevertheless true. Drones are the only combat policy that America has used during the war on terror that has been …show more content…
The US’s investments in these countries to rebuild and especially in Afghanistan, which has “no industry or manufacturing sectors to speak, and it depends on importing the goods it needs from other countries,” has not worked out very well. Rather, the 35 percent of the unemployed Afghani’s have turned to the illegal “poppy economy” which is the only growing industry in Afghanistan(Choices, 197). The US has succeeded with the training of military and police in Afghanistan but failed by allowing blatant corruption in the Afghanistan government surrounding President Karzai. President Karzai’s reelection was targeted by accusations of electoral fraud, cheating, and intimidation which the US should have investigated if they were really determined to bring democracy to Afghanistan. As Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the UN points out, “Afghanistan now faces significant challenges and the new president must move swiftly to form a new government that is able to command the support of both the Afghan people and international community,”(Choices, 198). Really, the US’s policy although it has good intentions lacks in these countries and the US needs to increase its foreign aid funding in these countries which it has ravaged by its war on