Obama Dances With Drones
by Steve Weissman,
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
(Photo-illustration: Everett Bogue / t r u t h o u t)
In America's relations with Islamic countries, a peculiar dishonesty reigns. It is all so hush-hush, and often done
with a wink and nod, as the rulers of these lands lead Washington to believe one story while telling their own people
the opposite. The media reports are hard to forget: Arab nations wanted the Bush administration to invade Iraq. Sunni
Arab leaders are urging Israel and the United States to bomb suspected nuclear sites in Shiite Iran. And, from The New
York Times last week, "Pakistan Rehearses Its Two-Step on Airstrikes."
Citing unnamed Pakistani and American officials, the well-placed Jane Perlez reported that Pakistani President Asif Ali
Zardari had given the Obama administration the go-ahead for our remotely piloted drones to fire rockets at targets
inside the country. Most of the drones, she wrote, take off "with Pakistani assent from a base inside Pakistan."
Her account, though breathless, was hardly breaking news. Over a year ago, in March 2008, Newsweek reported that
then-President Pervez Musharaff had given Washington "virtually unrestricted authority" to launch Predator drones from
secret bases near Islamabad and Jacobabad. The Washington Post similarly spoke of a tacit understanding that Washington
had with Musharraf and Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani to allow US strikes on foreign fighters operating in Pakistan, but
not against the Pakistani Taliban.
What Jane Perlez added was a candid discussion of how President Zardari was talking out of the other side of his mouth
as well. He was, she reported, continuing to proclaim publicly "that the drones represent an infringement of Pakistani
sovereignty that the government cannot tolerate." Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi went even further, publicly
rebuking Washington for the drone strikes, which were - he said - eroding trust between the allies. He said all this
while standing next to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Richard Holbrooke, President
Barack Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to Perlez, Ambassador Holbrooke dismissed the rebuke
as something to be expected.
Expected? Perhaps. But who benefits from what Perlez called the diplomatic dance around the drones? More important, who
stands to lose?
For Obama, the go-ahead serves to justify his position during the presidential election campaign that the United States
should make a priority of striking militarily against al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. Candidate Obama said he would do it
with or without Pakistani permission, which brought furious condemnation from both Hillary Clinton and John McCain. All
three must have known from their advisers that Musharaff had already given his assent, much as candidate John F. Kennedy
knew that the Eisenhower administration had already planned to invade Cuba when he called in his debates with Richard
Nixon for tough action against Fidel Castro. As with JFK, Obama's apparently undiplomatic assertion let him stand tall
and talk tough, which is politically what he thought he needed to do.
Once Obama won the presidency, the game should have changed. The question to ask before going any further was whether
the military gains from killing al-Qaeda leaders justified the political reaction from ordinary Pakistanis every time
one of the drones killed women, children and wedding guests, which the drones do all too often. No doubt the question
has been quietly asked and answered, though only within the White House, and President Obama has decided that whatever
the political costs, the military gains count more.
Next the American brass will likely push for the right to send Special Forces on covert raids into Pakistan, as
high-level officials reportedly urged General Musharaff to accept during a meeting in January 2008. Mushareff pointedly
refused, but Zardari, who is widely seen in Pakistan as an American puppet, might prove more amenable. And even if
Zardari says no, the American military will urge Obama to give the go-ahead for covert raids on his own, as he said he
would do during the presidential campaign.
Zardari's permission for the drones to operate in his country and the Pakistani military's zeal to have drones of their
own do not in any way diminish the huge popular backlash against the weapons. But Islamabad's refusal to stand openly on
the issue puts the onus on Washington, making it easier for Islamist opponents to build a nationalistic, anti-American
movement in the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. This is a threat that will
keep on growing no matter what happens to al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.
Even more telling, the insistence on a secret understanding should in itself have warned Obama that the killer drones
had become too hot to handle. Sadly, he failed to take the warning to heart. In his pursuit of a military victory
against al-Qaeda, and his insistence that the Zardari government seek a military showdown with the Pakistani Taliban and
their Islamist allies, our normally astute president simply cannot see that the remotely piloted Predators only feed an
ever-escalating civil war. Killing bin Laden with a drone or commando raid would certainly give many Americans enormous
satisfaction and win Obama unending political praise at home. But that is hardly worth the price of losing a
nuclear-armed Pakistan to the Islamist jihadis.
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A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France.