thank you very much it's always a pleasure to be here with you humanists even on a warm sunday morning so yes the topic for this morning is our new national security strategy as outlined by president barack obama in a major speech at the national war college on may twenty third just about a month ago a lot of people saw this as a game changer major speech announcing a new direction and are now twelve year old war on terror or a global war on terror as the bush ites used to like to refer to it a lot of commentators even on the left were very enthusiastic about it robert dreifus from nation magazine for example in his first take on it declared the war on terror is over and commentator after commentator had pretty much the same same reaction i have to admit that when i first listened to it live and watched it on watch the speech on t v i was pretty impressed and still impressed by some of the things that he said but overall my idea this morning is to dig into the speech because i got the transcript read it several times to see what he was really saying about what the future shape of this war on terror might be of course the war on terror we've as i just mentioned have been living with it for over twelve years now and this global war on terror has cost the united states nearly seven thousand lives tens of thousands who have been injured on the battlefield and probably will be dealing with those injuries physical mental and otherwise for the rest of their lives has cost the lives of who knows how many iraqis and afghans a million or more nobody counts anymore and it's cost over a trillion dollars of taxpayer money the war on terror has led to a massive erosion of civil liberties here in this country and although that's currently in the news he did not address that in the speech so i'm not going to be getting into these recent revelations by edward snowden about what the n s a is doing  or has been doing for twelve years it's not much different or for the last forty years we live in a surveillance state but the civil liberties situation during this war on terror has deteriorated immensely but again he didn't address that in this speech those revelations came afterward so i guess the next major speech will be the end of the global war on our personal communications something and finally to me the biggest damage of the global war on terror is that it led this country to indorse and engage in what's usually called preemptive war but let us make no mistake preemptive war is aggressive war the attack on iraq was a war of aggression tied to the global war on terror supposedly a war of aggression according to the new norm berg principles and the judges at the norm berg tribunals following world war two aggressive war is the highest war crime that any state can engage in as they said it norm berger it is from the war from a war of aggression that all other war crimes derive and this country through its congress and its president and its administration back in two thousand and one with the authorization for the use of military force and then the invasion of iraq engaged in aggressive war so would be good if after all these twelve years that we were going to change course from this damage all kinds of damage that we've seen in the past twelve years so was the speech a game changer what's in the speech what did he say what was the new vision let me quote some from the speech and like i said there's some good stuff in here quoting obama america is at a crossroads we must define the nature and scope of this struggle or else it will define us mindful of james madison's warning that quote no nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare and quote when i think we're seeing that come true quoting the president and we must define our effort not as a ballast global war on terror but rather as a series of persistent targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten america ok that sounds are right we want an end to the war we know it's damaging to our society to our civil liberties to our treasury and to the lives of our young people and i do want to say i felt this was a very important speech it's important for our president to stand up and say things like this to try to redirect how we think about this global war that we've been engaged in now for twelve years extremely important no one's doing it no one has been doing it and i think this is a president that is uncomfortable with intervention especially in the middle east where it has backfired time and time and time again and he was acknowledging that the endless war on terror is so i want to thank him for that because it does open a conversation that's going to lead to this morning's talk right we're all going to be thinking about these issues but the problem comes when you go through the details of what he's laying out for the new strategy and this is where it becomes a bit of a disappointment so basically through the speech he talked about what he refers to as targeted actions or targeted efforts this is the drone war that we've all heard so much about and it's what i'm going to really concentrate on a lot this morning because that has become the face of our global war on terror this country's remote control killing murder assassination at a distance so he talked about that quite a bit and was making an effort to try to justify the drone warfare to demonstrate that i is carefully controlled that oversight is keen on it and that they are careful to avoid as best they can civilian casualties and only go after the highest ranking members of  qaeda he also talked in the speech about the need for diplomacy and effective partnerships and how we've damaged our relationship with pakistan for example and that he wants to re improve that so  diplomatic efforts and he talked about of foreign aid and foreign policy and how rather than bombing people we really should be building schools and you know buying some goodwill around the country all of which i can agree with so here's his statement kind of summarizing what he's saying quoting the president targeted action against terrorists effective partnerships diplomatic engagement and assistance through such a comprehensive strategy we can significantly reduce the chances of large scale attacks on the homeland and mitigate threats to americans overseas they take away from this is that this is really what we've been doing for the past twelve years outside of the massive invasions of afghanistan and iraq certainly since the iraq invasion fell apart and drone warfare was being used became the weapon of choice this is what we've been doing sending drones around the world to kill identified terrorists and we'll talk about that and a little bit more certainly diplomacy is remained as part of what america does looking for effective partnerships in fighting terrorism and foreign assistance we've been doing all these things so where's the game change this is what we've been doing and of most concern is the continuation no matter how well he tries to justify it intel is hell careful and safe and effective it is the drone war continues and as i said that is the face of our war on terror right now he says quoting again it is in this context that the united states has taken lethal targeted action against al qaeda and its associated forces including with remotely piloted aircraft commonly referred to as drones as was true in previous armed conflicts this new technology raises profound questions about who is targeted and why about civilian casualties and the risks of creating new enemies about the legality of such strikes under and international law about accountability and more reality and quote well that's what i want to talk about the legality and morality and who is dying and who is being targeted and these  strikes and finally let me start on this part in other quote from his speech despite our strong preference for the detention and prosecution of terrorists s custody and putting them through our judicial system i'm afraid with this set up i'm going to spill water on so let's let's talk about this strong preference for detention and prosecution so let's roll the calendar back to early two thousand  this is the history of the first drone strike outside of afghanistan this is when the drone war on terror began was two thousand and four drones were being used in afghanistan in the course of that war but then it got expand the united states war in afghanistan had been raging for about two and a half years the iraq invasion had already fallen apart after less than a year and a full blown insurgency was bombing its way across that already devastated country the c had already been operating on manned aerial vehicles drones if you prefer i do in afghanistan as part of the war effort there was keen to use the technology inside of pakistan of course right on the border with afghanistan especially in those regions that directly bordered afghanistan the only problem was that pakistan wouldn't allow it that country's leadership had no desire to see the armed conflict that was devastating its neighbors its neighbor brought across the border to pakistani territory now there's a particular reason why the cia wanted to expand its use of drones in order to target assassinate al qaeda and other militants a blistering report by the program of capture detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists and their sympathizers was the cia's inspector general blowing the cover on our strong preference for detention and capture a report showing a light on these so called black sites where the cia routinely engaged in torture and abuse of its detainees the reaction at home was startling and the cia was looking for a way out of the detention and interrogation business too messy what do you do with them once you capture they decided that simply killing suspects secretly would be far easier and much less messy politically that's our preferred commitment to detention and capture what can for leverage with the pakistani government and in particular was pakistan's own version  cia the directorate for inner intelligence services or i s i as it's known in that country the cia turned its attention to a pakistani pakistani taliban leader named mohammed mr mohamm a burden to pakistan's government and to the i s i in particular he was extremely popular among the population especially in the border territories in pakistan a restive and dangerous area of the country and he was most troubling of all for pakistan leading a success at leading successful military attacks against the pakistan national army his goal was to create an islamic state in pakistan had nothing to do with afghanistan so now mohammed was clearly an enemy of the pakistani state but he had no designs on attacking the united states or its forces in afghanistan and the u s intelligence services did not consider him to be their problem as it turned out though nec mohammad did turn out to be the cia's bargaining chip the cia station use pakistan's airspace for more such missions going on into the future a deal was struck pakistan would allow the drones to fly and kill in the tribal areas in the western part of the nation in cia would keep the program absolutely secret never to utter a word about it pakistan for its part would deny any knowledge of the program or at times take credit for an assassination themselves on june eighteenth two thousand and four almost nine years ago to the day as nec mohammad sat in a mud hut in south waziristan a missile fired from a cia drone killed him along with several others who were present there in that hut including two teenage boys that was the start of the drone war on terror june eighteenth two thousand and four we killed a pakistani terrorist who had designs on the pakistani state had nothing at all to do with the united states or our security as of that moment the united states was engaged in a secret of global war of assassination so let's take a moment to think about drones and what they are because we hear the term a lot in our news but i don't think people really have a full understanding of what we're talking about the term drone is really a misnomer to begin with strictly speaking aircraft that can fly autonomously that is without a human in control what we're talking about in this case are unmanned aerial vehicles or you avi's that are remotely piloted and for the purposes of this talk th the correct term is unmanned combat aerial vehicles or if you want to listen to retired air force colonel sally mcbride who testified at senate hearings on the drone program in april the probert proper term is remotely piloted aircraft according to colonel macdre mcbride who is engaged in drone targeting programs when she worked for africa use of the term drones plays right into al qaeda as propaganda campaign so we shouldn't call them drones not if we don't want the terrorists to win i'm going to call them drones it's a lot easier to say drone technology has been deployed in around seventy five countries so far you know that seventy five countries have drones almost all of which are the unarmed surveillance variety currently only the united states in england which is system drone strikes in afghanistan and pakistan are using armed dr israel which has developed its own armed drones used them during its assault on gaza in late two thousand and eight two thousand and nine at sea only other known use of combat drones outside of the united states government but as the united states paves the way for ever increasing use of drones as an instrument of war it is easy to see a looming arms race in this field especially with seventy five countries already having the technology in the case of the united states there are two main models of drone that are being used for the global assassination program called the reaper and the predator these are really nice names for a predator drone is about twenty seven feet long wingspan of thirty three feet makes it about the size of  cessna airplane usually armed with two hellfire missiles which have warheads with about twenty pounds of explosives and i'm the much preferred and more active reaper drone by contrast is nearly twice as long with a wingspan twice the size carry not only hellfire missiles but also five hundred pound bombs and that's a lot of fire power i've actually been in the vicinity of five hundred pound bombs being dropped when i was in el salvador during the  during the course of their civil war and we go down to be with displaced people down there and the bombing was going on right over the hill it's a power and i've seen what it does on the ground so if you're at a football stadium and then you're in the end zone and they drop a five hundred pound bomb on the fifty yard line you're probably going to die so these aren't the smart targeted weapons that we're being told that they are drones can stay airborne for up to twenty four hours and have a range of hundreds of miles predator drone costs twenty million dollars the reaper goes for thirty fifty four  million dollars each pentagon currently has about seven thousand drones of all types including surveillance drones and this year's budget includes five billion dollars for additional drone research deployment and procurement five billion so i don't see a big rollback in the drone program and the president's speech on may twenty third certainly didn't imply that at all the drones are remotely piloted a two person teams consisting of a pilot and right now the pilot usually is an actual trained pilot and a senior operator whose job it is to manipulate the cameras and heat sensors and other sensors that are on the drones how they see what they're looking at from afar the control centers for drones don't have to be anywhere near the scene of the action indeed many of the flights are controlled from hundreds and thousands of miles away there are dozens of drone command centers worldwide with dozens more planned for the near future and some of the command centers that we know about are in langley virginia where the cia is headquartered and where the cia operates two command centers and at the creature  air force bases near las vegas nevada there are also command and control centers in california arizona new mexico north and south dakota missouri ohio new york and no doubt elsewhere in the continental united states the air force alone currently has more than thirteen hundred drone pilots thirteen hundred and they claim to be short staffed by some three hundred pilots see this is a program you read about once in a while in the newspaper and you have no idea of the extent of it and that's why i wanted to take the opportunity of the president's speech to explain drones to and explain the other side of drones the part that we never get to see according to a report in the new york times last summer quote the pentagon projects that the air force will need more than two thousand drone pilots for combat air patrols operating twenty four hours a day worldwide and  thousand pilots operating twenty four hours a day worldwide that's our drone program that's a new york times report by the way profiles a drone pilot who works out of the hancock field air national guard base in the suburbs of syracuse new york from his computer console in the suburbs of colonel stott scott brenton tracks and kills human beings in afghanistan when his workday is done according to the times story brenton quote steps out of a dark room a video screens his adrenaline still surging after squeezing the trigger and commutes home past fast food restaurants and convenience stores to help the kids with the homework and quote it's become a commuter job twenty four hours a day as far as we know the united states is actively using armed drones in afghanistan where as i said the first combat drones were deployed for that invasion and where they will continue to be used after the so called withdrawal of u s troops next year obama did refer to this in his speech and implied that we'll be using them less once he brings to troops all next year from afghanistan but they will continue to be used in afghanistan in the foreseeable future are also using drones in pakistan as we know which is by far seeing the highest level of activity logically so because it borders afghanistan and also in yemen and somalia we don't know where else they might have been used because not all the drone strikes are in outs we were told that they consult with congress on each drone strike but we the people never hear about it there have been reports for example of possible drone strikes and fill in the philippines where there's also an islamic insurgency on some of the islands but we don't know at this point the a c l u has tried for years to get information about the drone program all without success using the freedom of information act the government has been arguing in court that it cannot confirm or deny that a drone program even exists citing the old standby of national security this is  standard thing to deny freedom of information act requests we can't confirm or deny it's national security we can't respond courts defer to the government but recently and this was before o speech in may but i believe it was april a federal court ruled that the government can no longer use that excuse for refusing to release the information the aide to the a c l u since the president himself has referred to the program in public and now has done so again and i want to mention i think one of the this is a good point to throw this and i think one of the reasons that obama gave the speech when he did it is because you and i have been speaking out about drones and about guantanamo that's mostly what he talked about it was public pressure on these about these programs that got him to speak out a little bit more we didn't get what we wanted we need a lot more transparency from this president who promised the most transparent administration ever whether it's on drones or guantanamo or on n s a spying and as we can see by the speech responses do come to an engage public that will question the policies those sypher asleep right now keeping track of drone strikes the frequency and location number of victims has been left to really a few private groups that have dedicated themselves to trying to figure out just how extensive the program is we don't get this information from our government we don't get it from our congress we get it from nonprofit journalistic endeavors  best one is probably the bureau of investigative journalism a london based journalism nonprofit organization located at the city university in london what they do is all these groups are trying to do is they track newspaper accounts especially pakistan newspapers news reporting in afghanistan yemen somalia to the extent that they can they go out and try to interview witnesses they cross tabulate all this stuff and try to come up with figures for low estimates high estimate who's being killed so the it's some of the numbers are truly startling and i don't want to throw a lot of numbers at you on a sunday morning but let me go back to obama's speech with another quick quote to introduce this quote there is a wide gap between u s assessments of such casualties and non governmental reports a wide gap no kidding nevertheless it is a hard fact that u s strikes have resulted in civilian casualties a risk that exists in all wars it's the first time that this administration has admitted that civilians have died in the drone strike casually as recently as last year john brennan who in currently at the cia he was the national security advisor he was the guy who was the major proponent of expanding the drone war he was saying up through last year that no civilians had died that none had died i'll return to this but basically the reason he could say that is because they consider any male over the age of fourteen to be a possible militant so if you kill a group of teenagers you've killed six militants you haven't killed six teenagers that's how they could say that so it's significant that the president would admit that so overall there have been in yemen somalia and pakistan and overwhelmingly the numbers are all in pakistan close to three hundred seventy drone strikes total a total of four thousand people have been killed that's the high number high estimate the low estimate is somewhere around three thousand so we're talking about a lot of people have died of those four thousand that have been presumed to be killed or identified nine hundred civilians have been identified by the researchers so that's almost one fourth of the victims are civilians and again that's because these are not all that accurate they have a big blast area and we're going to hear some more about why they're being killed and of those nine hundred civilians that were killed two hundred of them were children clearly not militants there's also been an estimated seven hundred injuries again mostly lifelong disabling injuries in total the numbers add up to a record tremendous amount of death and destruction tremendous number of people maimed many of them no doubt maimed for life and keep in mind that this is mostly a secret record third it out only by the dedication of some hard working forensic journalists we certainly haven't gotten these numbers from the pentagon the cia or the white house who  even given the president's revealing speech aren't talking numbers so let's take one of the president's questions is this really legal have all these strikes and all this death come about in a legal manner in keeping with the oft repeated mantra of the united states that we are a country ruled by law and not by individuals but it's my let's start with what might be the first logical and perhaps simplest question to ask how could this policy of targeted killing possibly being keeping with a presidential ban on assassinations that dates back to jimmy  carter and it actually dates back to gerald ford i'm sorry he issued the first presidential ban on assassinations when the church committee back in the one nine hundred seventy s learned that the cia was going around the world  sassinating people and it caused quite an uproar and so there have been a series of presidential directives and add reigning in and out of control cia global assassination program so as i said it was first passed by gerald ford and reconfirmed and tightened up by every president since bill clinton put al qaeda in as an exception in the late one nine hundred ninety s when osama bin laden was starting to come on to people's radar screens but he centrally there's still a presidential directive banning assassination used to say political assassination it got changed to just assassination but it did get expanded under bill clinton and a little bit under george bush with his start of the global war on terror but mainly there has been a ban on  assassination as a method of action around the world so that doesn't quite wash the other place that authority is claimed legal authority is claimed is under the authorization for the use of military force the a u n now if this is what congress passed authorizing the invasion of afghanistan just shortly after the terrible events of september eleventh two thousand and one that authority twelve years later is still being used by president obama today for the drone program and for everything else that's going on in the war on terror passed on september fourteenth two thousand and one the authorization to use military force gave the president authority to use quote all necessary and appropriate force against persons he determines planned authorized committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on september eleventh two thousand and one that seems pretty restrictive to a certain group of people and certainly not four thousand victims in somalia yemen and pakistan and finally since the clinton administration presidents have claimed inherent authority to use lethal force to kill an individual enemy of the united states in self defense this is an argument that clinton made in response to simon bin laden coming on that's on the scene it's already derives a claim under article two section two of the constitution that's the article in the constitution that simply says the president shall be the commander in chief of the armed forces so this is their authority the authorization for the use of military force and article two section two of the constitution command the president as commander in chief that's what they claim let's take a look at international law even though countless administrations have demonstrated their real indifference to international law under article fifty one of the united nations charter a state is allowed to defend itself against an imminent or continuing threat of attack it is allowed to do that so the targeted killing of a terrorist who  in the midst of carrying out an attack on our soil or against our citizens might be considered legal under international law but as i noted the u s does have a rather say effort or position regarding international law let me jump ahead a little bit here so in the speech the president went to great lengths to explain targeted killing targeted killing carefully selected targets militant leaders terrorist leaders the leadership targeted targeted target you hear the word time and time again and this is what they've been pretty much saying for the past several years an imminent and ongoing threat carefully selected signed off at the highest levels of the government and that makes it ok but when you think about the number of victims of drone strikes and ask yourself if those numbers could comport with the idea of carefully selected targets only those who pose an imminent and immediate threat to the security and safety the united states and citizens with three thousand to four thousand people how could that possibly be that all four thousand these people presented and imminent and immediate and ongoing threat to the safety of the united states in april the mcclatchy news service a document was leaked to them outlining what was called signature strikes and i'm going to go into those in a minute but on this imminence thing they had an interesting quote in the article they quoted morris davis who's a professor of law at howard university and more significantly he was a former u s air force lawyer who served as the chief prosecutor of the guantanamo bay terrorism trials he said i'm thankful that my doctors don't use their admin as don't use the administration's definition of imminence when looking at imminent death a head cold could be enough to pull the plug these are not imminent threats to our country and again  this is what obama spent a lot of time in his speech talking about and just trying to justify the imminent and ongoing nature so if we accept the idea that four thousand people could not possibly have been engaged in an act that served as an imminent threat to the united states and we have to ask question well just who is being killed in these strikes and the answer that question i'm sad to say is that no one knows and when i say no one knows i have to include the administration they do not know who they are killing they don't know because despite all the talk of imminent threats high level leaders and lists of known terrorists the fact is that people are being killed because they fit a certain profile this is what was revealed in the documents leaked to it's called signature strikes the administration has not publicly admitted this and the president did not refer to signature strikes in his speech nor has any member of his administration but the documents mcclatchy got prove that this is what they're doing but those documents and numerous other newspaper reports citing insiders and others with specific knowledge of the program tell us that so called signature strikes are an integral part of the dr program most importantly the mcclatchy news report was based on leaked administration documents that prove that signature strikes are taking place signature strikes are carried out against those who observed by drone operators and on the cameras being gauged in certain signature activities and behaviors so for example an e mail fourteen or fifteen years older or apparently fourteen or fifteen years old or who is carrying a gun would be considered a militant and a viable target in pakistan nearly every male carries a gun in yemen the average male owns three guns so they're all viable targets or another signature is if you're walking in a group or you're near a known terrorist camp all these are signatures that make you a valid legal target to die because you pose an imminent and ongoing threat to the safety of the united states by the same token large gatherings of men perhaps arm per hour not perhaps not meet the signatures threshold for killing it's because a signature strikes at the administration could make the incredible claim last year that no civilians have been killed they all met the signature all four thousand that have died met the signature outline so in this manner the u s has come to kill young teenage boys who are out gathering firewood and blew up a large meeting of village elders killing nearly fifty people in that strike and these are just some of the ones that have been documented most of all we really don't know who's being killed so that's the current state of the war on terror reckless and relentless killing of thousands of people because they look like terrorists because they look like terrorists they weren't on any list of high ranking terrorists they weren't engaged in activities that presented imminent danger to the people of the united states they just had the misfortune to be born in the wrong country at the wrong point in history so it can't be legal this activity can't be legal and the morality of it that the president wanted to question doesn't hold much water either the but let me get to one last critical factor about this and as this is especially about the question of the morality of this program that even the president brought up in his national security speech to me the fact that signature strikes exist and are being used is a clear answer that question as i said that can't be a moral action to kill somebody because they fit a certain very broad profile but there's a couple more factors about this drone program and this is something that's never talked about in the media and this comes this information comes from a really excellent report done by  university based organizations one the international human rights and conflict resolution clinic at stanford law school and the university and the global justice clinic at the new york university's school of law they combined forces and they sent teams of lawyers and interviewers to pakistan to talk to the people who were living under the dr warfare and they issued a report called living under drones it's online it's at living under drones dot org i suggest you read it i really encourage you to read it basically what they found out is that in addition to the four thousand deaths caused by these drones it has affected the entire population just imagine you can hear these drones when they're flying overhead and these people are living now in a society where the threat of imminent death is always right over your head and it is affected their entire society no one knows when or where a drone strike will come everyone men women children everyone there lives in debt daily fear of the drones and it's distorted their lives and their society huge numbers of parents no longer send their children to school because of the drone program funerals and weddings have been curtailed because they would be a large gathering and become a signature stri so they rarely even take place anymore these great things that make up a society as the living under drones program report tells as our country's strong policy in pakistan constitutes a campaign of prolonged and unrelenting terror on the people of pakistan is that what we want is that our war on terror is by terrorizing another population and by calling for an end to the global war on terror which i applaud the president for doing but again calling for continued use of these awful weapons killing anonymous people anonymously from thousands of miles away i think that answers any question about the morality of this program guantanamo and the news firestorm about the n s a s spying this does result many times in changes from the government so first of all we just need to keep that discussion going we need to keep that protest going but there is also an opportunity for some concrete action the president referred in his main speech big national security speech of talking with congress about altering the now twelve year old authorization for use of military force a legal authority under which this program is carried out i would propose to you that our goal should be not to alter the a u n mouth to rescind it repeal it that was twelve years ago it gives authorization for a global war it's time to get rid of it and barbara lee has introduced a bill into congress to do just that h r one nine eight barbara lee's bill may not be the one that goes forward but this is going to be a conversation in congress it's going to be a critical conversation in congress and we have to get beyond that get behind that and repeal the authorization for the use of military force while we're at it i think we should also repeal the patriot act and deal with this n spy our country's decade plus war on terror the long wars the bush is used to call it or whatever you want to call it has wreaked havoc death and destruction on far too many innocent people i believe it's also wreaking havoc and destruction on our own society you can't just engage in this kind of behavior and keep a legal humane democratic society that's destroying our society the quality of our own lives our civil liberties our nominal democracy and the worst price to pay it is a blight on our humanity it's time to end this war thank you very much can even though it's a nominal to not democracy reign in and restrain our government from a global assassination program i don't care if the genie is out of the bottle we know it's out of the bottle that's no excuse you're absolutely right about the civil liberties part of it you know this so called response to terrorist threats that the phrase that the government puts out if you see something say something well if you see something say something unless it's war crimes as in the case of bradley manning or unless it has to do is smacks of civil liberties violations as like with edward snowden but those are the people that we want saying something and every time somebody heroic and as brave as bradley manning or edward snowden steps forward we need to help amplify their voices because that kind of light and transparency that there are terrorists who are plotting to do destructive acts against this country and our citizens is real this is what police work is for this is what the intelligence services are for but drones combat drones and the program has been described by people in this administration by the president in his recent national security strategy speech these are weapons of aggression weapons of aggressive war and they should be banned just as the judges and norm berg said that aggressive war is the highest war crime of all