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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/obama-drone-war-isis-recruitment-tool-air-force-whistleblowers
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Obama's drone war a 'recruitment tool' for Isis, say US air force
whistleblowers
Four former service members - including three sensor operators - issue
plea to rethink current airstrike strategy that has `fueled feelings of
hatred' toward US
Ed Pilkington in New York and Ewen MacAskill in London
Wednesday 18 November 2015 17.48 GMT Last modified on Wednesday 18
November 2015 22.02 GMT
Four former US air force service members, with more than 20 years of
experience between them operating military drones, have written an open
letter to Barack Obama warning that the program of targeted killings by
unmanned aircraft has become a major driving force for Isis and other
terrorist groups.
The group of servicemen have issued an impassioned plea to the
Obama administration, calling for a rethink of a military tactic
that they say has "fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism
and groups like Isis, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment
tool similar to Guant?namo Bay".
In particular, they argue, the killing of innocent civilians in drone
airstrikes has acted as one of the most "devastating driving forces for
terrorism and destabilization around the world".
The letter, addressed to Obama, defense secretary Ashton Carter and
CIA chief John Brennan, links the signatories' anxieties directly to
last Friday's terror attacks in Paris. They imply that the abuse of
the drone program is causally connected to the outrages.
"We cannot sit silently by and witness tragedies like the attacks in
Paris, knowing the devastating effects the drone program has overseas
and at home," they wrote.
The joint statement - from the group who have experience of operating
drones over Afghanistan, Iraq and other conflict zones - represents a
public outcry from what is understood to be the largest collection of
drone whistleblowers in the history of the program. Three of the letter
writers were sensor operators who controlled the powerful visual
equipment on US Predator drones that guide Hellfire missiles to their
targets.
They are Brandon Bryant, 30, who served in the 15th Reconnaissance
Squadron and 3rd Special Operations Squadron from 2005 to 2011; Michael
Haas, 29, who served in the same squadrons during the same period; and
Stephen Lewis, 29, who was with the 3rd Special Operations Squadron
between 2005 and 2010.
The fourth whistleblower, Cian Westmoreland, 28, was a technician
responsible for the communications infrastructure of the drone program.
He served with the 606 Air Control Squadron in Germany and the 73rd
Expeditionary Air Control Squadron in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
The four are represented legally by Jesselyn Radack, director of
national security and human rights at the nonprofit ExposeFacts. "This
is the first time we've had so many people speaking out together about
the drone program," she said, pointing out that the men were fully
aware that they faced possible prosecution for speaking out.
In the wake of the Paris attacks, Obama has stuck firm to his
determination to avoid sending large numbers of US troops to Syria,
beyond the limited engagement of special forces. The natural,
though unspoken, consequence of such a strategy is a deepening reliance
on aerial attacks in which unmanned drones increasingly play a leading
part.
The number of lethal airstrikes has ballooned under Obama's watch.
The Pentagon has plans further to increase the number of daily
drone flights by 50% by 2019.
From its inception, the drone program has been troubled by reports of
mistaken targeting. Classified government documents leaked to the
Intercept revealed that up to 90% of the people killed in drone strikes
may be unintended, with the disparity glossed over by the recording of
unknown victims as "enemies killed in action".
In one of the most widely publicised errors, the US government was
accused by one of its own officials of making an "outrageous mistake"
in October 2011 when it killed the US citizen Abdulrahman
al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old son of Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida leader
who was also a US citizen and was killed by a CIA drone two weeks
previously.
One of the four drone operators who signed the letter to Obama, Brandon
Bryant, was part of the team that tracked Anwar al-Awlaki by drone for
10 months shortly before he was killed. In an interview with the
Guardian, Bryant said that he was not opposed to drone technology per
se, which he saw as having beneficial uses.
"We just understand that in its current form the program is being
abused, there's no transparency, and we need to be open to other
solutions."
Bryant said that in his view he had been made to violate his military
oath by being assigned to a mission that killed a fellow American. "We
were told that al-Awlaki deserved to die, he deserved to be killed as a
traitor, but article 3 of section 2 of the US constitution states that
even a traitor deserves a fair trial in front of a jury of his peers."
Two of the four drone operators have also spoken out in a film about
the US program, Drone, that premieres theatrically in New York on
Friday. The other two are going public for the first time, having just
come forward in the past few weeks.
Obama this week made clear that he would continue to resist putting
more boots on the ground in Syria following the Paris attacks. Speaking
at the G20 summit in Turkey, he said "part of the reason is that every
few months I go to Walter Reed [military hospital] and I see a
25-year-old kid who is paralysed or has lost his limbs, and some of
those are people who I have ordered into battle".
But the former drone operators argue that the strategy is
self-defeating, as the high number of civilian casualties and the
callousness of drone killings merely propagates anti-US hatred. "Right
now it seems politically expedient," said Cian Westmoreland. "But in
the long term the bad side of a Hellfire missile and drones buzzing
overhead is the only thing that a lot of these people know of the
United States or Britain."
Bryant accepted that there was no negotiating with extreme, violent
terrorists of the type that carried out the Paris attacks. "But you
have to prevent such people being created," he said. "We validate them,
we keep this cycle going. Their children are afraid to play out in the
sun because that's when the drones are coming."
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