In a report about the Obama administration’s new strategy for a three-year campaign to defeat the Islamic State (9/7/14), the New York Times notes one important shift:
The military campaign Mr. Obama is preparing has no obvious precedent. Unlike American counterterrorism operations in Yemen and Pakistan, it is not expected to be limited to drone strikes against militant leaders.
That would seem to mean that the ongoing wars in Yemen and Pakistan are limited to attacks on “leaders.” Which at least one analyst, Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations, found to be misleading:
A totally false statement. Again, Less than 5% of US drone strikes in either country was against a “leader.” http://t.co/RYsFd2IKqw (2/2)
— Micah Zenko (@MicahZenko) September 8, 2014
Zenko was linking to a blog post (9/5/14) he wrote last week on this very topic:
The overwhelming majority of reported deaths are of suspected militant or terrorist foot soldiers, rather than someone in the leadership role. According to the three best public estimates, somewhere between 2.2 percent and 5 percent of targeted killing victims are leaders.
It is not that hard to come up with examples of US attacks that were not designed to strike at leaders. The use of “signature strikes”–attacks launched based on movements or behaviors the United States thought looked like the sort of thing a militant might do–was well-documented in Pakistan until widespread criticism reportedly forced US officials to curtail that policy (AP, 7/25/13).
Whether or not they meant to refer to current US drone attacks exclusively, it is misleading for the Times to talk about US war policies this way.
(h/t @johnknefel)
All the news that arrives on a press release.
Bravo Peter! Courageous reporting as always.