[Peace-discuss] Those "surgical" air & drone strikes

[J.B. Nicholson]

Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss wrote:
> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/airstrikes-pentagon-records-civilian-deaths.html

Thanks for pointing us to this. It's nice to see establishment media report on this 
(albeit far too rarely; kind of like how corporate comic John Oliver did a one-off 
episode of "Last Week Tonight" about drone war in 
https://youtube.com/watch?v=K4NRJoCNHIs about 7 years ago). It also would have been 
nice of the NYT to mention why Daniel Hale went to prison (see 
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/27/drone-whistleblower-daniel-hale-sentenced-45-months-prison-exposing-us-war-crimes 
for info on this). Hale is a drone whistleblower. That NYT article doesn't mention 
Hale by name. Information on what happened to Hale would help explain why "The only 
official accounting of that promise is the hidden Pentagon documents.".

How many people will remember this when the next Tulsi Gabbard comes along? That 
person could get also credit for being called a "peace candidate" and "anti-war" 
while endorsing drone strikes just like Gabbard did. Gabbard very clearly endorsed 
drone strikes when she did an interview with The Intercept in January 2018 (see and 
hear https://theintercept.com/2018/01/17/intercepted-podcast-white-mirror/ starting 
around 28m43s into the recording), including her use of the pro-war propaganda 
"surgical strikes":

> Jeremy Scahill: I’m wondering what your position, I know that in the past you have
> said that you favor a small footprint approach with strike forces and limited use
> of weaponized drones. Is that still your position that you think that’s the — to
> the extent that you believe the U.S. military should be used around the world for
> counterterrorism, is that still your position?
> 
> Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: Well, when we’re dealing with the unconventional threat of
> terrorist groups like ISIS, al Qaeda and some of these other groups that are
> affiliated with them, we should not be using basically what has been and continues
> to be the current policy of these mass mobilization of troops, these long
> occupations and trillions of dollars going in, really abusing the Authorization to
> Use Military Force and taking action that expands far beyond the legal limitations
> of those current AUMFs.
> 
> So, with these terrorist cells, for example, yes, I do still believe that the
> right approach to take is these quick strike forces, surgical strikes, in and out,
> very quickly, no long-term deployment, no long-term occupation to be able to get
> rid of the threat that exists and then get out and the very limited use of drones
> in those situations where our military is not able to get in without creating an
> unacceptable level of risk, and where you can make sure that you’re not causing,
> you know, a large amount of civilian casualties.
I wrote more about this in 
https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/02/13/is-tulsi-gabbard-really-anti-war-no-shes-pro-drone-and-for-surgical-strikes/

Far better insight came from Heather Linebaugh. Linebaugh served in the United States 
Air Force from 2009 until March 2012. Her bio in The Guardian says she worked in 
intelligence as an imagery analyst and geo-spatial analyst for the drone program 
during the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two years before Rep. Gabbard said the above Heather Linebaugh said the following in 
the "National Bird" documentary:

> Hearing politicians speak about drones being precision weapons, being able to make
> 'surgical strikes', to me it's completely ridiculous, completely ludicrous to even
> make those statements. It's as flawed as it can be with those people operating it
> from across the world. If they really think they can send a bomb through a window
> of a compound and hit one militant then why are we seeing so many civilians die of
> collateral damage? I'd like to ask those politicians have they not been notified
> of that? Do they not know what's going on in their own war that they're 
> controlling?
"National Bird" also features Daniel Hale. You can see a clip of Hale & Linebaugh in 
"National Bird" in https://youtube.com/watch?v=1T0k110d6W4 . I recommend watching the 
entire documentary.

Linebaugh is also the author of:

"I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on" in 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/29/drones-us-military