Pakistan Fumes: Predators Among Them

Every Breath You Take, Every Move You Make: They'll be watching you. And bombing you. An American predator drone of the type the CIA uses to launch missiles at suspected al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan. (Petty Officer 3rd Class Jeffrey S. Viano/U.S. Navy /Getty Images)

The Pakistan Times reports today that for the third time since the beginning of the Obama administration, an unmanned American Predator drone attacked Pakistani soil on Saturday morning, killing up to 33 people in south Waziristan, the tribal province and al-Qaeda haven.

The usual claims and counterclaims followed: "The foreign press as well as Pakistani officials," the Pakistan Times reported, "said those killed in the drone attack included the local Taliban militants and several fugitives. Credible sources, the residents and the sources in the political administration told an English newspaper that with exception to a couple of insurgents, all those falling prey to the US adventurism were the local innocent citizens."

The Bush administration never said where those drones were coming from. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday, Committee Chairman Diane Feinstein, who was questioning Adm. Dennis Blair on current threats to the United States, may have inadvertently revealed what was suspected all along: the Predators are taking off from a base inside Pakistan.

"I don't know whether you'd care to comment on this but [I] also noticed that Mr Holbrooke in Pakistan ran into considerable concern about the use of the Predator strikes in the FATA area of Pakistan." FATA is the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Pakistan, where the Pakistani government has virtually no authority. "And yet, as I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base," Feinstein said.

Not surprisingly, Blair did not care to comment. The more pertinent question is: Can drone attacks from the air do much more than kill the occasional Taliban or al-Qaeda operative? Is it worth the cost in collateral massacres of civilians and the ensuing anti-American fury stoked up across Pakistan? And how is this different from the Bush administration's eight years of futility on that front?

In fact, the Obama administration so far is endorsing more "war on terror" policies than it is rejecting. As The New York Times reports this morning, "In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone. The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the “state secrets” doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials."

The same policy of stubborn continuity applies in Pakistan. None of this should be a surprise: Obama never portrayed himself as less than a foreign policy hawk, particularly in Middle East matters. George W. Bush must be all bouncy with post-power pride.