Drone Strikes and the Global War on Terror
There is not global consensus that drone strikes have worked or are working. So regardless of whether the Pakistan Taliban are sincere about peace or not, the real issue to consider from a smart foreign policy perspective is that a large percentage of people in Pakistan don't want to hear about the US bombing their country and killing their people. The radicalization you mention is very much driven by US led Western policies that antagonize rather than win over publics. It seems like much of the mainstream is giving accepting the premise that increased militarization and drone strikes are the cure to global terrorism. Well it sure has worked so far hasn't it? We add Libya and Syria to the list of failed states. Nigeria is waiting in the wings. And our imagination does not have to run too wild to consider Pakistan as a failed state in waiting.
Another separate issue is that never once in the article was it mentioned that these are basically extrajudicial killing and why this might be problematic, if we claim to abide by international law.
Short of the moral and ethical problems with drone strikes, they reflect a interventionist approach that disregards national sovereignty and pisses a lot of nationals off. More to the point, the strikes are not effective in addressing the root cause of the problem which is...POVERTY and a general lack of trust in Western actions, motivations and institutional power structures that dominate the globe.
My reading of your article only strengthens my belief that the problem is not with terrorism, or Islamic extremism, its with the West's relationship with the rest of the world and the resulting divides that have emerged from its century plus of monopolizing the power structures of the still emerging and maturing global economy.
The problem is not the terrorists, it the emerging group of global elites who have continued to amass more power and wealth, while there fellow country folk are faced with decreasing living standards amidst unprecedented austerity measures. Mainstream media and academic institutions are so dominated by economic imperatives of the power elite that they become corrupted by these groups so that they are not able to truly be objective.
A central part of this problem is the perennial struggle to empower and cultivate a culture of experts and reports who can ask critical questions about the policies of the status quo and how they relate to the future well being the nation of which they're supposed to serve - to speak truth to power. And now with the global economy, its no longer about the country, but how humanity is ruled by a global economy that is controlled by a relative hand-fill of billionaires.
The kind of corruption I am talking about, because its so subtle and hard to definite, may be in reality, a fact of life. Yet its affecting our ability to think clearly about how to make effective foreign policy decisions to ensure a viable democratic community of nations to rule the world and to ensure effective leadership of that process. We are at a time when this modern and still emerging global society is at a very vulnerable point in its development and needs strong willed, critical thinkers in power, now more than ever.
Part of the problem is that we have a legacy of journalism that on the whole has supported the establishment approach to seeing things. Under the public eye, there is an awareness of limits to how far a reporter can go in challenging the imperatives and will of the powerful in asking the tough questions about accountability and legitimacy of those in power.
Mainstream political, academic and media leaders have convinced themselves that they must not be seen departing too far from established NeoCon thinking - with the exception of the libertarian oddball Ron Paul of course. Obama by not challenging the Bush Doctrine and instead incorporating some of its key tenets into his policies, has enabled the crowning of failed NeoCon policies into the foreign policy status quo. The mostly absurd "War on Terror" became elevated to the point of legitimacy in that process. Policies that might have been seen as a paranoid, arrogant and ineffective in another age, are now seen as necessary and based on sound, well informed and wise foreign policy thinking.
Really the period of US history where some kind of more rational thinking could actually be seen as defining our international relations with the rest of the world was rather brief, from the fall of Communism to 9/11. This brief period - between the pivot from Communism to Islamo-fascism as the primary threat to our existence and way of life - was defined by a amazingly impotent effort to implement the so-called "peace dividend." It of course was impotent not by accident, but because too many powerful people in the emerging modern global society, saw too much to lose in their financial portfolios.
A global order based on the peaceful resolution of problems, rather than through continued militarization and fearmongering, was just too radical in too many ways for those who were most comfortable with a zero sum global game that defined reality in simplistic, good and bad, black and white terms. Hence as good team players in their game, we could not be the spoilers. Thus efforts create serious democratic and peace efforts in the world had to be discredited just like they were in the Cold War. To consider that some of the terrorists might be driven by legitimate concerns revolving around the evolution of the global economic system, particularly in relation to how its affecting their cultures and societies, is to invite serious questions about our patriotism and devotion to Western/American values. It was and is nothing less than political blasphemy against the American civil religion.
So to this day, we are still in the reality of the "War on Terror." What this means is that critical thinkers are still like outliers in the USA political, military, media establishment. There is a lingering fear deep down within all important decision makers and communicators that by suggesting something too far out of the conventional playbook, we risk being kicked out of that exclusive group or pool of people that that are relied upon as the "experts" whose job it is to tell the US public what is realistic, true and wise when it comes to national policies.
If we see radical islam for what it is, which is a symptom of failed Western dominated nation-state policies, we take a huge risk in reducing the chance we will be considered as serious and well respected sources of information. Thus what keeps the belief that drone strikes will be effective in solving the problem of terrorism is not the facts on the ground in these countries, but rather a very simplistic notion of how the world and people work that is obvious absurd.
We are afraid to call out the elephant in the room for fear that we will lose our legitimacy in a corrupt system. That's why its hard not to mock the establishment, even though its obvious so many of these influential people, genuinely believe in what they do, work quite hard at it and seem to accomplish high levels of official recognition, accreditation and awards for their lifetime achievements.
Yet at the end of the day it all boils down to a global sense of fair play. Who honestly would think that we as US citizens would be OK with some other nation's notion of bombing our territory even if we could not control that region? So why would we think it would be OK with Pakistanis, if we were in their situation as human beings?
As long as people are distracted by reporting that helps develop a false and superficial mainstream consensus about the world, overlooking the root causes of radical Islam or any radical movement, the problem of radicalization will only grow worse. Each response by the West in the form of military actions and uncritical support for Israel, will only lead to a further polarization that fuels further resentment and rage from extremist groups within the global Islamic community.