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.
