Colin Powell Quotes
Drones are just another weapon, and they turn out to be a very effective weapon that puts no American troops at risk, and I don't see why we shouldn't use them against identified enemy targets.
Powell, Colin. Interview.
There was extensive hostility expressed by civilian populations in Pakistan and other countries where the United States made Drone strikes to take out terrorist leaders. However, there was much anti-American feeling in Pakistan before the Drone strikes.
Ironically, one of the major objections to drone strikes is that they have caused civilian casualties.
Although the Amerian Drone program did inadvertently kill untargeted or mistakenly targeted civilians at that time, the collateral damage rate was smaller than any other weapons system available to the American forces. War has always produced unintended collateral damage. The only way to stop the killing of innocent civilians then and now is to stop the war.
Hamas had fired thousands of rockets and other missiles at Israeli population centers—war crimes under the Geneva Conventions. Israel finally retaliated against Hamas facilities in Gaza. However, in an unprecedented effort to avoid civilian casualties, the Israeli Defense Forces warned the people by indicating which targets they were going to strike. They also dropped leaflets in Arabic telling the civilians that they are not the targets but to try and avoid harm to them and their families, they should evacuate the neighborhoods that would be under attack. Hamas had placed their missile launchers and other weapons in and near schools, hospitals, mosques and civilian housing risking their civilian population—see {640841}.
Executive Order 12333 prohibits political assassinations. The administration took the position that the prohibition did not apply to war where assassination (targeted killing) of enemy leaders is clearly permitted. The problem was that the George W. Bush Administration did not classify the “War on Terror” as a war. They didn’t want to treat captured jihadists as prisoners of war. The Obama administration also would not ask Congress for a Declaration of war, and this caused the moral, ethical, and legal ambiguity that has plagued targeted killings by drones or other means throughout the Afghan and Iraq Wars which were legally not wars.
This is always a problem in parts of the world where conflicts operate with many different parties and theater are personal grudges and scores to settle.
Colin Luther Powell is an American politician, diplomat and retired four-star general who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. Powell was the first African-American Secretary of State. Prior to the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, Powell and his successor, Condoleezza Rice, were the highest-ranking African Americans in the history of the federal executive branch (by virtue of the Secretary of State standing fourth in the presidential line of succession). Powell served as the 16th United States National Security Advisor from 1987 to 1989 and as the 12th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993.
