US President Obama Accused Of Overusing Drones As Substitute For Guantanamo Bay
https://nigeriaafrica1.blogspot.com/2013/05/us-president-obama-accused-of-overusing.html
John Bellinger, the lawyer who first drew up the U.S. policy on drone strikes has accused the Obama administration of overusing them due to a reluctance to capture prisoners and send them to Guantanamo Bay.
He believes that the use of drones has dramatically increased because Obama is unwilling to keep suspected al-Qaeda members in jail.
“This government has decided that instead of detaining members of al-Qaida [at Guantánamo] they are going to kill them,” he told a conference at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Although the president has repeatedly campaigned to have the infamous detention facility shut down, the arguments within the government over what method of detaining terrorists is the most efficient and effective usually end with a lackluster result.
An estimated 4,700 people have now been killed by roughly 300 US drone attacks in four countries.
Critics fear that the U.S.’s liberal use of drones could influence other countries to do the same.
But Philip Zelikow, a member of the White House Intelligence Advisory Board noted that the only reason we continue to use drones in this manner is because we are still technically at war with al-Qaeda and we are still obtaining more and more evidence that several individuals are indeed planning attacks on U.S. soil.
He also said that if al-Qaeda were to deploy drones in the U.S., the response that would follow would be more than just a few planes with bombs.
“[An al-Qaeda drone attack] it would be an act of war, and they would suffer the consequences,” he said during the debate at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.
Zelikow, a former diplomat who also works as a professor of history at the University of Virginia, said he believed that as long as we obtain evidence that people are planning to attack the U.S., we can still use drones as much as we want. But he also said that we should much clearer on what constitutes someone as a legitimate threat requiring action, i.e. an “enemy combatant.”
He ended the conversation by stressing how important it is to remind the public that drones are only being used to respond to threats made against innocent Americans.
“This government has decided that instead of detaining members of al-Qaida [at Guantánamo] they are going to kill them,” he told a conference at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Although the president has repeatedly campaigned to have the infamous detention facility shut down, the arguments within the government over what method of detaining terrorists is the most efficient and effective usually end with a lackluster result.
An estimated 4,700 people have now been killed by roughly 300 US drone attacks in four countries.
Critics fear that the U.S.’s liberal use of drones could influence other countries to do the same.
But Philip Zelikow, a member of the White House Intelligence Advisory Board noted that the only reason we continue to use drones in this manner is because we are still technically at war with al-Qaeda and we are still obtaining more and more evidence that several individuals are indeed planning attacks on U.S. soil.
He also said that if al-Qaeda were to deploy drones in the U.S., the response that would follow would be more than just a few planes with bombs.
“[An al-Qaeda drone attack] it would be an act of war, and they would suffer the consequences,” he said during the debate at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.
Zelikow, a former diplomat who also works as a professor of history at the University of Virginia, said he believed that as long as we obtain evidence that people are planning to attack the U.S., we can still use drones as much as we want. But he also said that we should much clearer on what constitutes someone as a legitimate threat requiring action, i.e. an “enemy combatant.”
He ended the conversation by stressing how important it is to remind the public that drones are only being used to respond to threats made against innocent Americans.
