Soccer Dad

Of drones and doctrines

Given the acknowledgment in Sunday's Washington Post editorial that the guidelines for asymmetrical warfare are lacking, there are two recent stories of note.

The first is from the National that describes the American efforts against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The Predator attacks are controversial, but they are getting increasingly close to the senior leadership of both the Taliban and al Qa'eda. Commander Faqir can have no doubt by now that he is in the sights of the US drones.

The Predator MQ9, with its deadly armoury of two Hellfire anti-tank missiles, is known as the Reaper, for good reason. The use of the Reaper is an extension of a well-tried US special operations technique known to its proponents as "taking down the mountain", used to hunt such figures as Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drugs baron, and the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

It combines the collection of extensive intelligence with an operation to hunt the target's associates, removing them one by one, forcing the main target on the run and out into the open, where he can be targeted. It has already been used against one senior al Qa'eda leader, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of al Qa'eda in Iraq, killed by the US in June 2006.

However, the reporter notes:

There are problems with these attacks. The first concerns the number of civilian deaths. The most authoritative assessment of the attacks, by the New America Foundation, estimates that about one third of more than 1,000 people killed were civilians, fuelling anti-western feeling inside Pakistan.

The second is the dubious legality of the attacks under international law. To justify killing an enemy in a military operation, it is necessary to be under threat from that enemy. Critics say the US airman operating the Predator remotely from an operations room in the Nevada desert is scarcely under threat from the Taliban or al Qa'eda.

The second objection is nonsense. Even if the Predator is operated from Nevada, there are still American troops nearby. Still it does indicate a problem: it is a tactic that its critics are trying to undermine. The Goldstone Report was an effort to prevent Israel from defending itself against its enemies. America's enemies are no doubt looking as to how to apply Goldstone or similarly selective legal reasoning to restrain the American military.

And has Goldstone constrained Israel? After reporting on the improved military capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah, Amos Harel claims, that yes, Israel's military doctrine is being constrained by fears of future legal actions.

According to a report by Nahum Barnea in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily, Netanyahu has already drawn his conclusions from the Goldstone report: Israel must fight only short wars, which will end before the international community wakes up. This is a systematic doctrine whose chief advocate in the General Staff is the head of the Planning Branch (and a former fighter pilot), Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel. "Short" is almost code for "aerial." It takes far longer to mount a meaningful ground maneuver than to bomb Beirut from the air. At the moment of truth, Israel will face a serious dilemma: Should it initiate a massive blow to remove the danger, despite the major international damage this would cause?

I have no idea how accurate Barnea's report is, but I suspect that he's at least identified one of the considerations Israel will take into account in future military campaigns against terrorists. It would seem that Goldstone has accomplished his goal: he's constrained Israel's military options. Hopefully we'll never have to find out how severely.

Crossposted on Yourish.