Brian Cloughley is a former military officer who writes on international affairs

In May he wrote an article about the use of drones starting with an analogous situation ..........

"Let us imagine that Spain invaded Mexico in similar fashion to the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 because Madrid suffered a terrorist atrocity that was planned by a Saudi Arabian fanatic living in Chihuahua.

Spanish troops poured into the country, and Spanish generals and mercenaries were to all intents running the place although generously subsidizing a corrupt national government whose president was in power through gross electoral fraud.

A militant resistance movement developed and a lucrative drug industry prospered mightily. There was much illegal movement of criminals and insurgents across the US-Mexico border.

And Spain, objecting to transit of militant Mexicans fighting against Spanish occupation of their country, obtained information that some guerrilla fighters might - might - be in a house in the little town of Van Horn in Culbertson County, Texas.

So one morning a video game player in Madrid pressed a button and a Spanish drone roaming round in US airspace fired missiles on Van Horn that killed two Mexican militants as well as a dozen US citizens, including two women and three children who were minding their own innocent business in their house on Hackberry Street………………..


Obama has ordered over 100 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan since becoming president. It is claimed that if some civilians are killed, there aren't many of them. As if the murder of some kids and their mothers is quite OK, providing the drones kill the 'bad guys' too.

US drone strikes, although undoubtedly technically amazing, are not only illegal but asinine and entirely counterproductive. They cause, in CIA terms, 'blowback.' They are what the Brits would call an "own goal."

The CIA have bamboozled Obama into believing their drone killings will work, in that they will eradicate anti-American militants. In Vietnam, all these years ago, we used to call it "termination with extreme prejudice". It didn't work then, and it isn't working now.
The calculating experts, the dedicated dorks, the disastrous dweebs of the CIA imagine they can deal death with precision. They are confident their technology will result in victory.

But they don't recognize the human factor. It's called resentment. It results in hatred.

While the drones and their video controllers seek people here and there and try to kill them - and even sometimes succeed in blowing a militant to smithereens - the effect of their blitz is to attract ever more recruits to the legions of anti-American terrorists.
Obama joked that "You never see it coming."

But what the drone-masters haven't seen coming is the blowback."

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