The NYT publishes an excerpt of a new book about the U.S. drone war in Pakistan. The drone war started with the killing of one of Pakistan's restive Pashtun gang leaders, not of an Al Qaeda fighter. The killing was the "payment" for being allowed by Pakistan to use further drone strikes to go after alleged Al Qaeda fighters.
But the story includes a very sorry excuse for launching these drone strikes. It presents the drone war as an alternative to the CIA's torture prisons and is thereby justifying it in a false choice:
As the negotiations were taking place, the C.I.A.’s inspector general, John L. Helgerson, had just finished a searing report about the abuse of detainees in the C.I.A.’s secret prisons. The report kicked out the foundation upon which the C.I.A. detention and interrogation program had rested. It was perhaps the single most important reason for the C.I.A.’s shift from capturing to killing terrorism suspects.
…
The ground had shifted, and counterterrorism officials began to rethink the strategy for the secret war. Armed drones, and targeted killings in general, offered a new direction. Killing by remote control was the antithesis of the dirty, intimate work of interrogation.
By presenting the drone war as an alternative to torture prisons it is explained as a lesser evil even though there were many other alternatives the CIA could have chosen.
For one there was no need to torture. Why not just put the wanted people into a regular prison? Why not put them in front of a court? Why not, instead or killing them and their families and thereby creating more "terrorists", remove the grievances that make them fight in the first place?
By presenting the problem as false choice the author is making a sorry propaganda excuse for an evil program.
