Brian Williams - Predators

One al Qaeda message lamented the impact of the strikes: “The harm is alarming, the matter is very grave. So many brave commanders have been snatched away by the hands of the enemies. So many homes have been leveled with their people inside them by planes that are unheard, unseen and unknown.” 27This war of attrition has hurt al Qaeda’s ability to plot. According to Jane Mayer,

Surviving militants are forced to operate far more cautiously, which diverts their energy from planning new attacks. And there is evidence that the drone strikes, which depend on local informants for targeting information, have caused debilitating suspicion and discord within the ranks. Four Europeans who were captured last December after trying to join Al Qaeda in Pakistan described a life of constant fear and distrust among the militants, whose obsession with drone strikes had led them to communicate only with elaborate secrecy and to leave their squalid hideouts only at night. 28

Many Taliban leaders, fearing local spies, have fled from the tribal areas to cities in non-Pashtun urban areas, such as Quetta in Baluchistan or the southern port town of Karachi, seeking a safer sanctuary. This has put them farther from the field of operations in Afghanistan and the FATA. 29A Saudi terrorist named Najam, for example, lost his legs in the June 2012 drone strike that killed Abu Yahya al Libi and fifteen other militants and was forced to flee Pakistan for his native Saudi Arabia to recuperate. 30Al Qaeda members have also attempted to flee FATA for Yemen to escape the drones.

Noticing this trend, a senior American counterterrorism official said, “The enemy is really, really struggling. These attacks have produced the broadest, deepest and most rapid reduction in al-Qaida senior leadership that we’ve seen in several years.” 31Former CIA director Hayden said, “A significant fraction of al-Qaeda senior leadership in the tribal region has been ‘taken off the battlefield.’” 32Former CIA chief Panetta similarly claimed, “These operations are seriously disrupting al Qaeda…. It’s pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling and that we really do have them on the run.” 33

Some Pakistanis seemed to agree with this assessment, and a senior Pakistani intelligence official estimated, “Some 60 to 70 percent of the core al Qaeda leadership has been eliminated, dealing a serious blow to the network’s capacity to launch any major attacks on the West.” 34Taliban prisoners have told their interrogators that the drone attacks have taken a psychological toll as well. One source has them saying, “Hey, we’re doing all the dying out here. How much longer can we put up with this?” 35In 2011 an al Qaeda leader admitted, “There were many areas where we once had freedom, but now they have been lost. We are the ones that are losing people, we are the ones facing shortages of resources. Our land is shrinking and drones are flying in the sky.” 36

As a result of the attacks, insecurity and distrust grew among al Qaeda members. According to a U.S. official, “They have started hunting down people who they think are responsible. People are showing up dead or disappearing.” 37A second counterterrorism official said, “This last year [2008] has been a very hard year for them. They’re losing a bunch of their better leaders. But more importantly, at this point they’re wondering who’s next.” 38

The constant threat of attack or surveillance has forced the Taliban and al Qaeda to dismantle their training camps in favor of hidden classrooms or dugouts in the mountains. One Taliban commander said, “Arab nationals and key al-Qaeda members never stayed together and often spent the nights underground or in caves.” 39A Taliban commander in North Waziristan similarly explained, “In the early days of our jihad, our training camps were visible and people would come and go. We were not so concerned about the security of our locations, but that is all changed now. We abandoned all our old camps and re-located to new places.” 40A Taliban militant added, “We don’t even sit together to chat anymore.” 41Al Qaeda members in particular have also given up on using cell phones as a means of communication for fear that they will be tracked and killed, as Nek Muhammad and countless other terrorists were. The same holds true for Yemen. A Yemeni who was opposed to AQAP and related militants said, “Al Qaeda hates the drones, they’re absolutely terrified of the drones… and that’s why we need them.” 42

The deaths of so many high-level al Qaeda leaders has also meant that many mid-level operatives who are inexperienced and lacking direct ties to bin Laden have been elevated to higher positions in the organization. In fact at least three number threes in al Qaeda and three number twos have been killed by drones. Dozens of lower-ranked al Qaeda leaders have also been killed. With each strike their replacements are becoming less skilled and experienced. Intelligence officials report that as a result, the caliber of al Qaeda’s plots has “degraded”; they are now “strikingly amateurish compared with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and other airline plots that followed.” 43

According to the Japan Times , the former number three in al Qaeda complained to bin Laden that the drones were killing operatives faster than they could be replaced. 44The Washington Post pointed out that prior to his death, bin Laden had received numerous e-mails from his followers complaining about the toll taken by CIA drones. 45Former White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan summed up his predictions for the drone strikes’ effects on al Qaeda’s ranks saying, “If we hit al-Qaida hard enough and often enough there will come a time when they simply can no longer replenish their ranks with the skilled leaders they need to sustain their operations.” 46

In summary, then, perhaps the best argument for the drone strikes is that they work strategically as a means to break down the Taliban and al Qaeda’s ability to kill civilians in the West and in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Drone strikes also act as a critical means of tactical deterrence and have been responsible for killing hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban and al Qaeda leaders and rank-and-file members. Those who have not been killed have lost their ability to take advantage of their safe haven in the FATA to openly plot and carry out new mass-casualty and insurgent attacks in the region.

The New York Times best summed up the effects of the drone strike on the enemy: “With their ranks thinned by a relentless barrage of drone strikes, some experts believe Al Qaeda’s operatives in Pakistan resemble a driver holding a steering wheel that is no longer attached to a car.” 47The fact that many of the cars that Taliban terrorists drive in Afghanistan and Pakistan are vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) used to deliberately kill civilians might be the ultimate rationale for continuing the strikes.

DRONES ARE THE SAFEST, MOST HUMANE WAY TO KILL TERRORISTS

Drones are indisputably the most humane, precise, and clean way for the American officials tasked with defending America from al Qaeda terrorists (who have already killed thousands of civilians) to protect the United States, the West, Afghanistan, and Pakistan from future mass-casualty terrorism. This statement is especially true when one considers potential alternative methods, such as arrests (which are not an option because the Pakistanis have forbidden U.S. ground forces on their land) or aerial bombardments by clumsy, conventional manned aircraft of the sort used in bombing campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and Bosnia.