US Drones In Fighting Terrorism

“Outcome of the U.S. drone strikes in fighting terrorism: comparing deterrence and backlash theory”
Fourteen years after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. is still at war with the new terrorism. The use of technology is the significant feature of this war, and drones are one of the most developed tools of warfare. The drone strikes began one year after the 9/11 attacks in 2002. United States has increased its reliance on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), more commonly known as drones, to target overseas terrorists that have become the subject of considerable discussions.
While President George W. Bush inaugurated drone strikes as a counter-terrorism strategy, more than 85 percent of the operations conducted in Pakistan came under President Barack Obama’s
administration. Extension of these operations is not limited to Pakistan; drones are commonly used across the Middle East & Africa. Although academic assignments about terrorism and its different aspects increased strikingly after 9/11, experimental research on the use of drone strikes on terrorism is not feasible. Although a terrorist attack has all of the characteristics of a crime, political and emotional implementations blur definition of both terrorism and counterterrorism (Clarke & Newman, 2006; LaFree & Dugan, 2009). For instance, violent British counterterrorism interventions in Northern Ireland might seem like terrorist attacks in the eyes of people who lived there or the people of Palestine might see terrorist fighters of Hamas, the military party of Palestine, as the fighters of freedom (Lafree, Korte, and Dugan, 2009, LaFree & Dugan, 2009). Moreover, terrorism is a complex model of behavior and socioeconomic conditions, strategic patterns, and political or religious ideologies can affect its pattern. Therefore, even if after series of counterterrorism strategies we observe a decrease in the rate of terrorist attacks, it might be because of other factors like lack of apparatus or concentrating on training young soldiers at that time which are irrelevant to the external operations of the U.S. government. Furthermore, the nature of many terrorist groups change over time; for example, their leader may decide to change their modus operandi and engage in acts that do not involve terrorism. The creation of Liberation Organization of Palestine followed this pattern; shifting from terrorism to peaceful actions and is now known as a legitimate political party in the world. The other problem with evaluating the impacts of counterterrorism strategies in a specific geographic area is that the intervention might decrease the terrorist attacks in that area, but the leaders and fighters of a terrorist group might move to other cities or even countries to perpetrate revengeful fatal actions. Nevertheless, regarding operating broadscale counterterrorism policies and its financial and spiritual costs, scrutinizing influence of these strategies and more specifically assessing their success is necessary.
Studying the impact of counterterrorism interventions, even when we limit them to the military interventions concentrating on drone strikes, does not mean that we can generalize our findings to other countries. This also makes it difficult to compare the causes of terrorism across countries. (explain more)
“The drone strikes are supposed to pick off dangerous terrorists a few at a time, without endangering American lives or risking the years long bloodshed of conventional war”(Shane, 2015).
However, the idea that the drones would annihilate the terrorists without harming anyone else is not as simple as it sounds. The operators who fire missiles onto the other side of the world are making an imperfect guess because most drone strike targets are very difficult to access to outside observers (Speri, 2014). Furthermore, although some drones have targeted Al Qaeda leaders, many of them have been strikes against individuals with unknown identity whose behavior model apparently connected them to terrorist groups (Shane, 2012). Regarding these points at least 1,100 civilians have been killed during the war and more than 200 of them were children (The Bureau, January 2015). The death of civilians may result in negative backlash effects, creating strain and anomie, and reducing the legitimacy of those fighting terrorism. Strain theory suggests when people of a society treated unfairly or they suppose that they have been treated unfairly, they violent crime results. In this case, more terrorism may be a response (LaFree and Ackerman, 2009). The terrorist propagandas against the U.S. and the government of Pakistan that cooperate with the U.S. in conducting strikes makes less these administration less legitimate. Consequently, people who were law-abiding would be more likely to obey social controls stimulating them to retaliate the attacks. This means although the drones apparently are killing terrorists, they are simultaneously creating more extremists and
fanatics.
On the other hand, Deterrence models support these kinds of military actions against terrorism. The rational choice theory argues that offenders before committing any crime evaluate the probability of their apprehension and punishment (Ross & Lafree, 1986). Thus, potential fighters observing elimination of terrorist groups by drones would not attend to these groups because the probable punishment will be death. The situational model explains that the subsequent actions of people are predicted by the constraints and opportunities that the situation they are living in prepare them (Fahey et al, 2011). Concerning drone strikes, targeting leaders and terrorist facilities limits the chance of interactions with more experienced fighters who can train people who tend to cooperate in terrorist activities, and destroy the necessary equipment of terror and assassination. However, as mentioned above due to limited knowledge about covariation of these operations with other operations and the destruction of strikes in each operation studying and making any conclusion about the result of this policy is not completely reliable.