To the Editor: Re “Questions on Drone Strike Find Only Silence” (front page, Nov. 23): Faisal bin Ali Jaber, a Yemeni, says he doesn’t question the drone program but rather wants acknowledgment and an apology for the deaths of his nephew and brother-in-law. That is why he traveled all the way to Washington. Indeed, that…
The way proponents talk about them, you’d think Zeus gifted drones straight from his backpack. Alternatively, you might also believe that drones herald the age of robotic, soulless warfare and are evil in their very nature. We’re watching the renewed drone debate this week, much of which is focused on whether drones are legal and…
Letter to the Editor by Sarah Holewinski Thomas E. Ricks was exactly right in his Oct. 27 Sunday Opinion column, “Can the military learn from its mistakes?”: Military introspection is falling short. I see this starkly in the issue of civilian harm in combat. Anger at civilian casualties in Afghanistan caused U.S. commanders to make…
Arifa had lost nearly everything when Marla Ruzicka walked through the door and into her life. The American intervention in Afghanistan had started just weeks before. A US bomb missed its target by three miles and landed instead on Arifa’s home, leaving her a widow at the age of 30. She buried her husband, eldest…
The president’s pick for CIA director — John Brennan — is one of a handful of U.S. officials who understands America’s covert drone campaign inside and out. Nearly everyone else is in the dark about the whos, wheres and whys of the program, including most members of Congress. But Brennan is also one of the…
President Obama is quite literally writing his legacy on the use of force during his second term. According to media reports, the administration is codifying the hows and whys of its drone policy in a handbook. The assumption is that the United States will put into doctrine what it has already created in practice: new rules…
The Afghanistan and Iraq wars taught the United States painful lessons about the need to limit harm to civilians and compensate victims for their suffering. Now Washington must turn that ad hoc progress into a permanent policy, followed not only by its military but also by those of its partners as well. Read the article in…
In his July 7 op-ed, “Libya becomes a democracy,” Libyan Ambassador Ali Suleiman Aujali promised that “Libyans will never forget America’s leadership and commitment to protect civilians during the revolution,” but civilians need more than just memories of protection. The new Libyan government should make the explicit commitment to protect its own citizens going forward.…
This post originally appeared in the Huffington Post. Qaddafi is gone and NATO’s command center in Naples is closed, but on the legacy of the intervention in Libya, the debate has just begun. Allegations of civilians harmed are haunting NATO as nations opposed to the intervention—namely Russia, China and South Africa—point fingers about civilian casualties…