Finally… a good use for our drones

First the bad then at the end of this posting, the good…

If you’re thinking that I approve of our current policy of droning suspected militants or terrorists in houses where our government claims that only militants are killed, and no innocent people are, I don’t. If you want to find the good use now, it’s near the end of this post.

I don’t approve of our administration claiming that every person killed is by definition a militant or terrorist, so that the use of those Hellfire missiles is reasonable. I know that it’s easy to play drone video games over here and not risk any of our people, but this indiscriminate use of drones is unconscionable.

All it does, as the Pentagon and CIA calls it, is “mow the lawn.” You kill a group of people, all labeled as terrorists, militants or whatever and you produce a new larger generation of terrorists bent on revenge.

So our government orders more drone strikes.

This was an utterly foolish foreign policy under George W. Bush, and is even worse under President Obama who has his own kill list. Even more foolish, our government is really annoying the Pakistani public at large. Why is it a problem?

Because Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

If Pakistan, like Iran, falls and embraces a hostile Islamic  government one of those weapons may make it here. It could be flown in a private jet that takes off from the Caribbean, without departure U.S. Customs inspections, and detonated over the east coast as high up as possible. That EMP pulse will destroy almost all of our electronics, from cars to computers to … everything with a circuit board for hundreds of miles. Almost everything with electronics will fail instantly.

Planes will fall from the sky, cars will stop dead, traffic lights will go dark, the water supply will quickly stop providing water once the storage tanks run out, TVs and radios will stop working and food will quickly rot. The list will go on and on.

The affected area will quickly revisit the 19th century. There will be chaos and riots in the streets, that the National Guard and the police will not be able to stop. Why? They’ll not have a way to get to the areas where the riots and looting will begin.

They could do the same from Tijuana, Mexico, fly across the border and detonate high above Los Angeles. Even if intercepted, it won’t make any difference where the bomb goes off; it will be over the United States. It will be a disaster that will make 9/11 look like a minor event.

These aren’t secrets but are frequently thought about scenarios. That’s why we must stop Pakistan becoming a failed state, where the public embraces an Islamic government. Killing Pakistani citizens is not the way. It’s just stupid.

If you think 9/11 was bad, just wait for an EMP strike. We’ll be using horses and buggy’s to get around and have food riots.

Our weakness is our dependence on electronics and the political requirement to outspend our enemies thousands of times to one. They know it, and will exploit it.

It’s also clear that the administration can now and in the future, kill U.S. citizens overseas by claiming that it’s legal. It is the new normal. Our government droned al-Awlaki’s 16-year old Colorado born son, two weeks after droning his father.

The legal justification is self serving; the Obama administration cannot say that killing U.S. citizens isn’t legal. It’s like a fox guarding the hen-house and saying that it is authorized to eat the chickens by waiving a piece of paper written by another fox.

I also don’t approve of CIA “double or triple taps,” where drones loiter after an attack and then fire second or third missiles at the destroyed house hours later while neighbors are digging for survivors. Is every one of those neighbors militants’ or terrorists?

Senator Lindsey Graham said that we’ve killed over 4,500 people in drone strikes, many of which were, it’s claimed, directly ordered by President Obama. I’ve read that the president personally approves each killing. If that’s so then his share is about two a day, every day of his presidency. Can you imagine the psychological damage playing God every single day, especially when so many women and children are killed by accident?

I actually think that John Brennan, soon to run the CIA, does that and the orders are just rubber stamped, without any close scrutiny.

Even when a person is executed by firing squad, one fires a blank so that no one is really sure that he actually fired the fatal shot. I’m sure that most hoped that they fired the blank. Not so with drone strikes.

So what do I approve of? Well, we can actually use drones and create a lot of good will and not a multiplicity of new generations of enemies by doing something good with them… for a change.

Here’s what we should do…

The African nation of Gabon (among others) has an epidemic of elephant poaching. Since 2004, over 11,000 elephants have been slaughtered by poachers in the Minkebe national park. Most of the poachers are from Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Why? Because of the enormous profits from selling the illegal ivory tusks to Asia for jewelry and medical potions.

It has been reported that the central African elephant population has declined by 62% over ten years and they’ll become extinct in another fifteen!

The problem is that Gabon is a poor nation, and only has ground patrols trying to catch the poachers in the 11,500 square mile game reserve where these animals are “protected.”

Our State Department would score an international goodwill coup if it stationed a few of our drones to do around the clock aerial reconnaissance using infrared and optical devices. They could inform the local authorities, and even chopper them to the poacher’s location so they can be arrested and prosecuted. You can call it foreign aid, where the aid isn’t a large supply of weapons for a change.

The same is true in Kenya and other African countries. Poachers are destroying the rhino population, as the horns are very popular in Asia and command a lot of money. It’s reported that Mozambique has no rhinos left at all! They are all been killed, typically by poachers using AK47’s with silencers to riddle rhinos with bullets, cut off their horns and vanish.

This would another good use for drones, even used (with the host country’s permission) firing low cost rockets. The poachers would stop killing off the rhino population or die. Their choice.

Unfortunately, although foreigners really like Americans tourists during peaceful times, when they are angry with our government they do not separate the American public from its government. That puts U.S. tourists at increasing risk while traveling abroad. That’s thanks to our stupid foreign policy.

You don’t need Hellfire missiles, just common sense. Does the Obama administration have any? You decide.