The Drone Worth

The worth of drone base in a Country

Those inside and outside the US administration who have thought hardest about what is and is not being accomplished by a US military presence in Afghanistan keep coming back to a different reason. That we need that presence to provide enough security to operate unmanned aerial vehicles from Afghanistan and perhaps to do enough for other aspects of Afghan security so that the government of Afghanistan will permit the continued operation of the drone from Afghan soil, and we need the drones to keep whacking at terrorists next door in Pakistan.

One is to confuse availability of use with desirability of use. The drone strikes often have been considered the only game in town in term soft getting at undesirables in the wilds of Waziristan. But this in effect means that because the tool we happened to  have is a hammer and a very nifty hammer at that, not only do things start looking like nails, but we also feel an uncontrollable urge to keep pounding, whether or not pounding is apt to do us more good than harm. Another pattern is to confuse ends and means.

We are not using a particular lethal too to say, provide security and stability in a country. We are trying to provide enough security and stability in a country to be able to use the top, there was some similar ends/means confusion earlier in the war in discussion about the role of NATO. An instrument for doing something such as fighting a war but some of the discussion was about how the war ought to be fought to maintain the health of the alliance.

Finally there is a disproportionate focus on a trees rather than the forest. Extending an entire overseas military expedition for the sake of being able to use one weapon system in one particular area is an extraordinary deference to the tree while losing sight of the forest. Publically stated rationales for foreign wars often diverge at least partly from the real reasons in the minds of policy maker. But thinking about public reactions can be useful check on the direction of non public thinking and whether it is exhibiting to  much of the sorts of the fallacies mentioned above.