Drones are too slow to kill terrorists

For all the flawed thinking reflected in President Obama’s speech and the strategy it described, he made one powerful point: Our fundamental goal must be to “dismantle terrorist networks.” However, his insight was watered down by a seeming lack of urgency in pursuing this goal and an apparent willingness to scale down our efforts in the war on terror while relying more on allies. Truly, allies are good to have, and they should be cultivated and motivated. But not with the idea that this somehow allows the United States to do less. For it will take all the best efforts of a global counterterrorism coalition operating in high gear to disrupt and destroy the rising dark networks spawned by al Qaeda.

And it should be realized that time is on the terrorists’ side. The longer they stay on their feet and fighting, the closer they come to acquiring true weapons of mass destruction. Radiological, chemical, or biological attack capabilities in the hands of a dispersed network would upend any notion of world order, because a network is simply not susceptible to the kind of retaliatory punitive threats that nations are. The prospect of mutual assured destruction may keep the thousands of Russian and American nuclear warheads safely locked away forever, but an al Qaeda network with just a few nukes would enjoy enormous coercive power over the world’s nations.

The irony of the situation is that President Obama has identified the right goal — focusing on enemy networks — but he has chosen almost all the wrong means by which to seek their disruption. Drones are too slow-acting, strategically, and create their own “drag” in the form of outrage at collateral damage.