Some of you may have already guessed that I am haunted by drone attacks.  They have taken up residence in my brain, though to a lesser degree than the millions of pounds of explosives of all kinds that we rained down upon Iraqis during the First Gulf War (and no; I won't dignify it by its name.)  By the Second Gulf War I'd learned some measure of compartmentalization; it didn't throw me into the deep depression the previous one had.  (Yes, bully for me; I'd agree; I'm less self-indulgent about my useless empathy these days). 

  But the drones...so many brands...so many styles...so many different armaments possibly on board, or not; (some are intelligence gathering only: just spy planes.)  I picture a small cluster of tiny houses out in a great expanse of farmland or grazing land, poppies...maybe a few goats tethered out back...sometimes it's daylight, sometimes the dark of night...and some either-uniformed-or-not soldier or CIA operative at Langley or in Nevada sits at his console watching. 

  He has satellite interface and incredible software that allows him detailed views of the land, in ever-widening reaches.  In the daylight, he can even see the faces of humans on the ground.  And he thinks he can tell his 'target' from another human on his screen.  And if he believes that this target is one of the hundreds on his list, he can remotely guide his little plane, a Predator, say, and zero in on one square yard thousands of miles away, and bomb or missile-attack this 'enemy'; and sometimes his family or friends.

I wonder what the little planes sound like; giant mosquitoes, maybe?  And I wonder how close they are before they can be heard?  And I wonder about the people who look up into the sky, and wonder what horror might be coming, and for whom; whose name is on the missile?  And I wonder about the names and the faces of the lives cut short; who are the people who will cry for them, bury them, and mourn them?  And have their hearts and allegiances changed forever by their deaths, caused by these mechanical killer bees from the sky; an unseen enemy, one that Afghans and Iraqis deem cowardly: no chance to see an enemy's face, no chance to fight back, or to protect their families.

  Are the Afghan children taught to run from them and hide, just as we were so fruitlessly taught to hide under our school-desk, and cover our eyes, in case of a nuclear attack?  Especially in the border regions, are they by now a background factor in people's daily lives?  Or can a man simply herd his goats, or shop in his bazaar, a woman weave her cloth or cook her family's meal, and have no thought of them?  Probably not.

  I detest killer drones.  And yes, I've read enough to grasp that they are being touted as the war technology of the future; no muss, no fuss killing machines.

  Yesterday a Café denizen called me out as "objectively a pro-Taliban for objecting to Our President's use of them (We will pretend that it was a joke, okay?).  'Fiddlesticks', of course, was one possible response.  'Clap-traddle' would have done, too. 

  But as irony would have it, I scooted onto rawstory.com for a bit of news this morning and found a new Gareth Porter piece out about (you guessed it): Drones.  And CIA operatives objecting to them.  He is interviewing Jeffrey Addicott, former legal adviser to U.S. Special Forces and director of the Centre for Terrorism Law at St Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, in an interview with IPS, which almost exactly mirrors an earlier report in April '09 by Jonathan Landay at McClatchey news.

  The upshot of both pieces was that some intelligence officials who believe that the drone program and kills are counter-productive, recruiting many more to extremist groups and ideologies than they kill (Uh...Al Qaeda and the Taliban, in parlance).

(Addicott specifies mid- and lower-level operatives.)

  Porter quotes him:

  "CIA officers "are very upset" with the drone strike policy, Addicott said. "They'll do what the boss says, but they view it as a harmful exercise."

  Leon Panettea answered criticism of the President's expansion of Bush's program by candidly admitting:

"Very frankly," Panetta declared May 18, 2009, "it's the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership."

  In his new piece, Porter mentions Micah Zenko, a fellow in Conflict Prevention at the Council on Foreign Relations:

"Zenko, who has studied the bureaucratic in-fighting surrounding such limited uses of military force, told IPS drone strikes have appealed to the Obama administration because they offer "clear results that are obtained quickly and are easily measured".

All the other tools that might be used to try to reduce al Qaeda influence in Pakistan and elsewhere take a long time, require cooperation among multiple actors and have no powerful political constituency behind them, Zenko observed.

Dissent from those who are involved in the programme itself has little effect when it is up against what is perceived as political pressure to show progress against al Qaeda - no matter how illusory." 

  Addicott also tells Porter that many CIA officers believe the drone program is a loser, and that it is just killing low-level Taliban, not "decapitating Al Qaeda" as the Obama administration would like us to believe.  He claims it is only working as an attrition strategy, 'demoralizing the rank and file,' which he says the administration privately admits.  He adds:

"Because the drone strikes kill innocent civilians and bystanders along with leaders from far away, they "infuriate the Muslim male", said Addicott, thus making them more willing to join the movement. The men in Pakistan's tribal region "view Americans as cowards and weasels".

  There don't seem to be a dearth of those willing to be trained as Taliban or Al Qaeda; these Intelligence Officers understand that these aren't multi-headed Hydra organizations whose heads won't grow back as soon as one is cut off.

  But: "Obama's trying to show people that we're winning."

*I shoud have, of course, included Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia in the discussion of drone attacks in general, but these referenced pieces concerned mainky Afghanistan.  The other theaters of attack are covert (but not really hidden) Special Forces Wars.