On August 29th, just two days before the Biden administration’s deadline to complete America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, an unnamed official from the newly established “Over-the-Horizon Strike Cell” authorized a strike from an MQ-9 Reaper drone that killed ten Afghan civilians, including seven children. This is a tragedy. Individual Americans, myself included, should be ashamed that […]
On 5 January, 2018, Russian forces stationed in Syria suffered what appears to be the first case of swarm drones attack in history. Despite the UAVs being of a rather crude nature, this episode constitutes a further development in non-state actors’ use of UAVs. Additionally, allegations about the involvement of an external state actor spark […]
Up until recently, the debate over drone policy has largely been the territory of a small group of vocal critics — a persistent if not particularly high-profile media issue, but not one that particularly troubled the U.S. public. Polls indicated broad popular support for the use of drone strikes abroad, mainly out of a belief […]
The Set-Up Overflowing with distrust, deception, and ulterior motives, America and Iran’s tumultuous saga has the makings of a made-for-TV, B-rated movie. The twists, turns, and over-the-top drama are a guilty pleasure for movie viewers just as news junkies cannot get enough of the endless dramatics between the United States and Iran. The world wants […]
The protest and violence associated with a film highly offensive to Islam is sure to play an outsized role in foreign policy discussions for the rest of the presidential race. Mitt Romney’s initial reaction to the Obama administration’s handling of unfolding events—and the backlash against Romney that this criticism generated—was a topic of frequent, well-covered […]
Bradley Strawser, an assistant professor of philosophy at the Naval Postgraduate School, recently (and somewhat predictably) took some flak after the Guardian published a piece in which he appeared to make a fairly unequivocal moral case in support of U.S. drone policy. “It’s all upside. There’s no downside. Both ethically and normatively, there’s a tremendous […]
According to a report by the Washington Post just over 2 weeks ago, US officials have engaged Australia in informal discussions over a proposed US drone base in the Cocos Islands 2,000 kilometers north-west of Perth. Allegedly, the proposed base would house a fleet of Global Hawk drones. At a unit cost of $218 million […]
U.S. Envoy to Pakistan, Holbrooke expresses possible U.S. assistance in energy development in Pakistan offering hope to everyday Pakistani’s. President Gilani specifies increased funding is most useful and this could serve as a profound opportunity to finally begin winning hearts and minds of Pakistani’s and move in the direction of truly securing Pakistan for the long term.
Breaking news informs us that Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud is “believed dead when a drone fired two Hellfire missiles along the Afghan border”. U.S. and Pakistani officials have yet to confirm the reports let alone acknowledge this as a triumph against Tehrik-e-Taliban, the organization Mehsud headed. Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik expressed “cautious optimism” while […]
Latest sources tell us that unmanned CIA predator aircraft are credited with killing Osama bin Laden’s son with strikes in Pakistan earlier this year. Although this has yet to be officially confirmed given the highly “sensitive nature of CIA operations along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier” according to the Washington Post, debate on the use of unmanned […]