Over the past year and a half, the United States has stepped up drone strikes against militants in Pakistan — killing as many as a thousand people, by some estimates. Press accounts have largely credited the Central Intelligence Agency with running these missions. Government officials have refused to speak in public about drone attacks, just as they routinely rebuff any attempt to probe into the CIA’s operations. “I’m not going to comment on any particular tactic or technology,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told a group of Pakistani journalists.
But the U.S. Air Force also plays an important role in the drone missions over Pakistan, according to current and former American military officials, and judging from what I saw at that undisclosed location. The military supplies the aircraft. It monitors the flights in and out of Pakistan. And, on occasion, Air Force pilots remotely fly their own drone missions over Pakistan. On that digital map are the far end of the warehouse, there’s a note reminding troops exactly how much notice they must give before U.S. military planes enter Pakistani airspace.
And we're doing it without triggering a popular backlash in Pakistan against their government for going along with our missions.
I'll admit, I thought our strikes were just a temporary campaign to prevent our enemies from taking advantage of a presidential transition. I thought they'd taper off after President Obama was sworn in and settled in.
Heck, maybe it was intended as such, but the lack of blowback encouraged us to keep going with a program that worked to terrorize jihadi leaders in Pakistan.
