Former CIA man discusses Obama and his use of the ‘Predator Drone’

6th Nov 2009

FORMER CIA employee, pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney and Pro­fes­sor of Law at William Mitchel Col­lege of Law, John Rad­san, did two talks at the Uni­ver­sity of Birm­ing­ham last week. The accom­plished speaker vis­ited the Uni­ver­sity after Steve Hewitt, lec­turer from the Amer­i­can and Cana­dian Stud­ies depart­ment, had invited him after doing a talk for John over the summer.

Firstly, John took part in a round­table event with other speak­ers, debat­ing the suc­cess of Obama’s first 300 days in office. Then he did his own talk dis­cussing the United States use of the con­tro­ver­sial tech­nol­ogy known as the ‘Preda­tor Drone’.

The ‘Preda­tor Drone’ is a plane that is flown to sur­vey and kill sus­pected ter­ror­ists in for­eign coun­tries. How­ever, what makes it unique is the fact that the plane is unmanned. This means that the per­son inter­pret­ing the infor­ma­tion and decid­ing whether or not to bomb the sus­pected ter­ror­ist, is sat in an office thou­sands of miles away. This tech­nol­ogy has com­pletely rev­o­lu­tionised war­fare, and since the begin­ning of Obama’s pres­i­dency, the use of it has sky rocketed.

The ‘Preda­tor’ has made head­lines all over the world by tar­get­ting sus­pected Al-Qaeda ter­ror­ists in places such as Pak­istan and Yemen, how­ever in some cases, civil­ians have also been injured and some­times killed in the strikes. Pak­istan blasted US Sec­re­tary of State, Hillary Clin­ton, for using the Preda­tor as a means of ‘exe­cu­tion with­out trial’.

Other eth­i­cal issues have come under who decides to fire the mis­sile. Rad­san explained dur­ing his talk that the com­mand comes from the unelected and under­cover chief of the counter ter­ror­ism unit in the CIA, not the Pres­i­dent or Con­gress, there­fore stir­ring up issues of how demo­c­ra­tic the use of this new instru­ment of destruc­tion is.

The Human Rights Council’s inves­ti­ga­tor for the UN warned the US of its use of the weapon, as it vio­lates all sorts of inter­na­tional laws by bomb­ing coun­tries they are not at war with, such is the case with Pakistan.

How­ever, this new tech­nol­ogy means that the US can take out sus­pected ter­ror­ists with­out risk­ing their own cit­i­zens lives by not hav­ing to send in troops. It essen­tially means they can go to war with­out their army hav­ing to leave the coun­try. It is also said to be more accu­rate as the US can sur­vey them for as long as they feel nec­es­sary, which takes away the pres­sure to ‘kill or be killed’ as would be the case if they sent in troops.

Forty-three other coun­tries are quickly devel­op­ing their tech­nol­ogy. China already has its own drone.

John, who was the Assis­tant Gen­eral Coun­sel for the CIA for just over 2 and a half years, felt that stu­dents wanted to see the face of some­one who worked for the bureau­cracy and strip away some of the Hol­ly­wood glam­our of just another branch of government.

He also felt that more stu­dents needed to get involved in pol­i­tics to ensure that they were being truly rep­re­sented and to keep politi­cians ‘in line with what the pub­lic want’.