WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The Obama administration’s reliance on drone strikes abroad threatens to create a “slippery slope” toward endless war and sets a dangerous precedent that other countries could follow, former senior U.S. officials said in a report yesterday.
The report acknowledged that the armed unmanned aircraft are a useful tool in the U.S. counterterrorism arsenal and are “here to stay,” but it called on President Barack Obama to allow increased public scrutiny and tighter oversight for the secretive program while developing international norms.
“We are concerned that the administration’s heavy reliance on targeted killings as a pillar of U.S. counterterrorism strategy rests on questionable assumptions and risks increasing instability and escalating conflicts,” said the independent panel, which was sponsored by the Stimson Center think tank. The report by the 10-member task force, including former high-ranking State Department and Pentagon officials, comes as the United States considers drone strikes in support of beleaguered Iraqi government forces fighting Sunni insurgents who have taken over a large swathe of northern Iraq.
It concluded that “while tactical strikes may have helped keep the homeland free of major terrorist attacks,” this has come at a cost of “blowback” for Washington in places like Pakistan and Yemen.
The former officials warned that, given the low-risk, low-cost nature of drone technology, “the increasing use of lethal UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) may create a slippery slope leading to continual or wider wars.”
