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Georgetown Professor: 'Drones Are Not Killing Innocent Civilians' in Pakistan
I'm not sure how many of you caught the segment last Friday on the Dylan Ratigan show on MSNBC featuring Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a 25 year army veteran and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency's Task Force STRATUS IVY and Georgetown University professor Christine Fair of the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS). The two were discussing the alleged failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad and potential connections to the Taliban in Pakistan. In the discussion, Lt. Col. Shaffer raised the issue of US drone strikes against Pakistan, which Shahzad reportedly has said were part of his motivation for the attempted bombing. "The Taliban are more motivated than ever to come at us," said Shaffer, saying that "the Predator program is having the same effect in Afghanistan two years ago in killing innocents" that it is now having in Pakistan.
Professor Fair, who has also worked for the RAND Corporation and as a political officer to the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, acted dumbfounded at the idea that the US drone strikes kill any civilians. "I take extreme exception top the way my colleague characterized the drones," Fair said. "Actually the drones are not killing innocent civilians. Many of those reports are coming from deeply unreliable and dubious Pakistani press reports, which no one takes credibly on any other issue except for some reason on this issue. There've actually been a number of surveys on the ground, in FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas]. The residents of FATA generally welcome the drone strikes because they know actually who's being killed. They're very much aware and who's being killed and who's not."
Here is video of the segment:
Some estimates, most of which are indeed Pakistani sources, suggest that the vast majority of Pakistanis killed are civilians. In an Op-Ed [1] for The New York Times last year, David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum, called for a moratorium on the strikes, saying they had "killed some 700 civilians. This is 50 civilians for every militant killed, a hit rate of 2 percent." They relied on "Pakistani sources," which are apparently offensive to Professor Fair. But Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the New America Foundation recently did a meticulous review [2] of the strikes, citing the following methodology:
"Our analysis of the drone campaign is based only on accounts from reliable media organizations with substantial reporting capabilities in Pakistan. We restricted our analysis to reports in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, accounts by major news services and networks--the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, CNN, and the BBC--and reports in the leading English-language newspapers in Pakistan--The Daily Times, Dawn, and The News--as well as those from Geo TV, the largest independent Pakistani television network."
Bergen and Tiedemann concluded that "the real total of civilian deaths since 2006 appears to be in the range of 250 to 320, or between 31 and 33 percent." They concluded that under President Obama Under President Obama, who has used the drones with much greater frequency than Bush, "about a quarter [of drone-inflicted deaths] appear to have been civilians."
I expect that Professor Fair, if confronted on this, will have to retract her definitive statement "the drones are not killing innocent civilians." It just simply is false.
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94 Comments so far
Show AllWhy do they give idiots like this any air time?
"They" give idiots like this LOTS OF TIME on the media because the media is the propaganda branch of our government. We, the people, must hear only what our 'leadership' want us to hear. Keep us dumb and scared and 'they' can do whatever they want---like more wars and more cuts in our domestic programs and more 'security' (translated into loss of civil rights)
Keep on voting for 'them' (the two corporate parties) and you will get more of the same.
Sounds like libertarian double speak. They drone on and on about how both major parties are the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. The right, and that includes libertarians, wants total privitization of everything. The left wants a government to work for the people, to do for us collectively what we cannot do for ourselves, individualy. There isn't even a faint resemblence between the two parties.
Both parties (Dem and Republican) are *OWNED* lock, stock and barrel by the Corporations.
If you don't believe me, look up the publicly available records of which Corporation gave how much to which candidate. The politicians then act according to what's best for the Corporate 'super-citizens'.
There is much said about political contributions and the *owning* of politicians, but if you look at the actual numbers, the biggest contributions to candidates come from us. For example, I have read that Goldman Sachs was Obama's biggest contributor when, in fact, Goldman Sachs' contribution only amounted to less than 1% of the total money collected by the Obama campaign. Of the $750 million rasied during the Obama campaign, $656 million came from individual donations. Go here for more:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
Corporations can now give more, but there is movement in Congress to regulate that.
Say what??!!!
Here's a little experiment for you to try:
Step 1) Go to Washington, D.C. Ask for an appointment to see a senator or congressman.
Step 2) When they ask you if you are a lobbyist or Corporate rep, be honest and tell them you are an average American citizen who wishes to speak to his elected representative in Government about your concerns vis a vis Government policy.
Step 3) Try not to be visibly angry when the receptionist either:
a) laughs in your face.
b) tells you all times for an appointment are already booked, and could you please call ahead the next time you want to visit, in perhaps three months?
c) has you escorted from the building by security.
batbird,
It may be that the biggest contributions to getting candidates elected come from us. Which is a sad indictment of us, allowing ourselves to be brainwashed by the PTB behind both parties.
What it all says about us is that it is we who need to pay attention and make better choices as to what's done in our name, and to demand openness and accountability in our government of the people.
Apparently Barack Obama can be had for not all that much..."hey sailor, need a bailout? I'm your boy!"
Say What??!!!
"The right, and that includes libertarians, wants total privitization of everything."
You mean they want people to have the power to individually achieve and better themselves as they see fit or die by the wayside.
" The left wants a government to work for the people, to do for us collectively what we cannot do for ourselves, individualy."
You mean they want the government to take from some and give to others so nobody has self freedoms in the name of fairness.
"You mean they want people to have the power to individually achieve and better themselves as they see fit or die by the wayside."
Yup. Libertarianism is pretty brutish, isn't it?
They also seem blind to the manner that prior family wealth, and privlege greatly influences who "individually achieves" and who "dies by the wayside".
Socialism in no way discourages achievement - for whick luck (of genes, family, and chance-fortune) always plays an 80% role. Socialism only bleieves that an wealth and power over others should NEVER be a reward for anything - achievement or otherwise.
Did our greatest achievers - Mozart to Einstein to Salk, to Bertrand Russel need the allure of money and power to "achieve"?
Sioux Rose
SABO CAT: Excellent post.
Neither did Mao, Stalin, Hilter etc, they all created great things in the name of humanitly.
Batbird,
Please awaken from your winter hibernation and come out of the cave and open your eyes (and mind) to reality.
OYE
batbird,
You are correct, in a way, that one party calls for some things while the other party calls for other things. So they can both look like they are on the right side of some issues. Neither party really gets in the other party's way. Altogether, both parties completely screw us.
I do not believe both parties are identical; I do not want privatization of much, and I do not want corporatization of anything. However, imagining that the Democrats are the left or that the left is in the government of the US is considerably further from the truth than that.
The parties represent different managerial styles, but both are pro-corporatist and pro-bailout, pro-war and pro-drone and pro-assassination and pro-torture, anti-health and pro-insurance, pro-nuclear and pro-hydrocarbon and anti-green, anti-worker and anti-immigrant, anti-trial for both Bushy terrorists and rendered prisoners, anti-habeas corpus and anti-Bill of Rights.
That is a resemblance, and it is not faint.
Control of the msm by the fascist amerikan empire- keeps the people fat dumb and happy/ fearful.... CAN NOT give up tho....major change can only happen with major effort- resist the empire on all levels, at all times and in all way non-violent !
tioche, this is so true. The challenge is how can we persuade (I've been trying hard-sell and soft-sell) friends, relatives, and aquaintances to abandon TV news and go to sites like CD, Democracy Now, ZNet, Counterpunch, Truthout, Truthdig, Care2, TomPaine.com, NarcoNews, UpsideDownworld, Firedoglake, Indymedia, etc?
Because all the idiots watching the idiot propaganda, idiot boxes continue to be brainwashed by our whore MSM!
Jeremy, that is just why I don't bother to watch any
mainstream media, especially MSNBC the real FAUX
Unfortunately, while in theory one would expect Professor Fair to retract her statement, it is probably more likely that the good professor will follow the dictum of the former Nazi propaganda Nazi minister Joseph Goebbels who noted that the bigger the lie the more likely it is that people will believe it. Those who wish to continue their falsehoods seldom allow anything as inconvenient as facts to get in the way of their less than truthful message.
Mr. Scahill, please use a proofreader.
q
Exactly. Actually I was going to snark about how no one who was innocent would ever be in the line of fire. No all powerful god would allow the glorious soldiers of his chosen country (America of course) to hit any but the most evil of people when they opened fire. If children were killed they'd have grown up to make Hitler look like Ghandi.
EVERYONE the US and NATO attack in Pakistan and Afghanistan is a civilian. With the exception of a few hundred Arab jihadists, they are all people who live there and are defending their country against invaders.
[In about a year we'll see this exact hypothesis on the History Channel.]
Eeek, ummm, is it too late to delete my post? No, well anyhow. There are some things that I wouldn't want to make money from. I could have been a prostitute when I was younger, but I thought better of it. Could have posed for porn, but didn't really want that either. If that snark does enter the realm of 'accepted' truthieness, I'd rather not profit from it either. For the same reasons as not wanting to be a ho or a show.
Damn, I'm so stupid. You're right - how could we forget that.
And I'm not being sarcastic. The ones responsible for these remote control attacks have admitted as much with crap like "well, if they're not actual active fighters, then at the very least they're sympathizers , so wtf. Kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out."
"I take extreme exception top the way my colleague characterized the drones," Fair said. "Actually the drones are not killing innocent civilians."
Yeah, all those weddings and funerals are just brilliant cover operations to plan the next US backed and supplied 9/11 mission. And all the bodies of women, children and infants are just brilliantly executed special effects that bleed and decompose just like real dead people.
"Many of those reports are coming from deeply unreliable and dubious Pakistani press reports, which no one takes credibly on any other issue except for some reason on this issue."
You mean the unreliable Pakistani news agencies Reuters, API, BBC, CBC etc. Yeah, they have no axe to grind at all. Hey Professor Fair, I wonder how many of the reporters and cameramen killed by US drone fired missiles were actually deep cover 'terrorist' agents?
There is not enough credible information to determine if civilians were killed or not? We went to war against 2 soveriegn nations based on outright lies and professor dipshit is worried about credibilty? WTF?!?!?!
Sioux Rose
DEFINE: Excellent point!
With the US government run by the MIC (thank you Ike, for the warning) it needs war the way the vampire needs blood.
How about this professor's name, "FAIR." She's probably getting groomed for a job on the "fair and balanced news" network, Fox.
Actually most of those news agencies are probably citing the same report or the same source and repetition is not the same as independent confirmation. However, I agree 100% with Jim Shea above.
The point is she got airtime. A retraction is something that will never happen.
We don't see any of this action in the news. The Pentagon, with the help of high powered public relations contractors have filtered what you see and have sheilded us from it. The horrors of the murdering of civilians isn't felt here, so it's like it isn't happening. We are in a sterile bubble, so to speak, without any of the nastiness reaching into our homes.
The left talks of civilian deaths while the conservative PR firms put people like Professor Fair in front of the cameras to lie. The conservatives, the joe the plumber types, echo this lie and Professor Fair gets more TV time to propel the propagand even further.
We've had so much smoke blown up our asses we all look like walking chimneys.
No civilians being killed in Pakistan????? Weapons systems that only kill enemies and combatants????? Even if there were no information to the contrary, I would not believe such claims. Such perfection is simply impossible to attain and never has been attained. Civilian deaths ALWAYS result. The only question is the percentage
of civilian deaths. And my suspicion is that this percentage is well above the one-quarter quoted by the study. I would guess the number is, in fact, more like 75%.
Jim Shea
I'm a little surprised that no one so far noted (unless I missed it) that the person bringing up the killing of innocents and the resulting blow back is military, a Lieutenant Colonel at that while the shill is a civilian. (copied text: Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a 25 year army veteran and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency's Task Force STRATUS IVY) That sounds like a lot of direct credibility without needing to ask any news source.
This guy doesn't want the Predator program. The folks he works with don't want the program. They want "boots on the ground." And this professor is in fantasy land.
In either case, the claim that we know anything so definitely that we can put in place any kind of effective program, is doubtful at best. For years we are merely talking to ourselves as if we are all pundits ("Sunday morning gasbags" - Calvin Trillin)
Besides, "they" are still not coming over the hills at us in droves. I am surprised that "they" are not putting bombs in radio controlled models (drones) although if you look up UAVs and CAVs you will quickly find that dozens of countries and companies are developing lethal remote killing machines, aerial, ground and water and a great many are already deployed.
It is only a matter of time until blow back becomes easier to do to our own home ground, but only if we keep giving them such a heavy set of reasons for revenge.
"STRATUS IVY"
"FATA"
WTF?
Must be the same sort of person who counted every dead child as a VC Killed!
What would be the reaction of the drone 'piloteers' if one of their family members died each time a drone they sent killed an innocent?
This is the same train of thought of the so called terrorists. The United States, especially the military, will have no regrets or bad conscience over the killing of the innocents until it hits home.
It wasn't until last year, fully 40 years after My Lai, that Lt. Calley apologized for his murders, and his murders were so much more direct than the drones.
Somehow, someway, the military people who 'fly' these drones must be accountable for their actions.
And Calley's "apology" wasn't really an apology at all.
One day soon all things will finally be equal. For every car bombing in Karachi there will be one in Cincinnati on the same day.
Way to go US of Ahole.
Professor Fair is an intellectual with a prestigious post at a major university, and you are not, Scahill. She has experience with the RAND Corporation. She is on the tenure track or aiming for it. She must be right about the civilians, since her area of expertise is the Center for Peace and Security Studies.
She is a good example of a person whose job depends on overlooking actual events and presenting sunny hunny munny versions, regardless of whether civilians and soldiers are dying. These opportunists and careerists infest our "leading" universities. You would think that someone who claims that we are not killing civilians or that the free market will always correct itself without regulation would be fired for incompetence.
Joe
This report was absolutely pure unalterated propaganda,....Both spewing the same rhetoric..."FEAR"..Yet, not one of them said, "The ISI of Pakistan and the CIA of the United States put the Taliban in power in Afghanistan and have been working together for decades and even on the payments to 9/11 Mohammed Atta."
The Taliban became the enemy when they reneged on the OIL PIPELINE CONTRACT and gave it to Bridas Oil of Argentina instead of UNOCAL....Why else do you suppose Hamid Karzai, ex- Director in UNOCAL, was inserted as THE PUPPET PRIME MINISTER???
You have Rand Corporation the policy makers for DOD waging Wars for the Military Industrial Complex....."Through War comes Peace!" NO! "Through Wars, The Power Elite make lots and lots of money!"
Indeed, hrc, footage of Taliban ministers visiting Texas Governor George W. Bush is featured in the MM movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. W brokered the deal between Unocal and the Afghan Taliban in 1997. This was several years before the Taliban reneged and sought a deal with the Argentinian oil company.
Cue up the 9/11 attack.
This is how gangsters operate.
Our blood and treasure for oil. Amen.
Boy, what kind of rock did that creepy professor crawl out from under? She talks like a propaganda tape loop! Is this another case of CIA infiltrating faculty?
I'm reminded of the peculiar case of Lara M. Dadakah, an utterly unknown and undistinguished "graduate student" (or "former graduate student" turned intelligence analyst) who wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times extolling the virtues of increased civilian deaths in Afghanistan*.
The NYT blandly brushed off questions about who this Dadakah person is, and why she was given premium newspaper space to publish her revolting screed.
Professor Fair may be better-known than Dadakah, who as far as I know hasn't been heard from since her fifteen minutes of fame. But I suspect they both crawled out from under the same CIA rock.
* See: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/20-4
Thanks for the reminder of Dadakah. It is that same straight face and bland CIA delivery of lies in both cases. The follow-up crime is the way in which the media gives them "premium space" as you say, space that would never be given to a Goodman or a Scahill.
Joe
Professors will say the darndest things....(given enough...)
The people piloting the drones kill innocent people. It's the same with guns: The person pulling the trigger is the killer, not the gun. Sure, without guns or drones, no innocents would get killed in that manner. It appears the professor favors killing, so let her be the first one killed.
Casuistry. It is, after all, a Jesuit university.
Well, now we know. Professor Christine Fair and others are human anomalies. They have puppet heads with eyes that blink and mouths that talk and tapes are inserted in their necks by various corporations who assembled them. Their brains, with working eyes and ears attached are located in their large intestines. Their view of the world is decidedly, but comfortingly dark. Like their brains, the over-all environment is moist, warm and squishy, and only occasionally is convulsive.
And they are programmed not to know any better or worse than this.
Leave it to the Rand Corporation, for the latest in upscale human anomalies.
/cm