Obama’s counterterrorism policy facing rising criticism

Ken Dilanian/ Associated Press

At the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, it was a cause for celebration: Meticulous intelligence analysis backed by Hellfire missiles had paid off, once again.

The CIA launched a drone strike last month on a Yemeni beach at three men it determined were Al-Qaida militants. One of them turned out to be Nasser al-Wahishi, about as important a figure as agency man-hunters could hope to eliminate. He had been both Al-Qaeda’s second in command and the leader of the group’s dangerous Yemeni affiliate.

American officials touted the death as a big victory. But did the demise of another senior extremist, the latest in a long line to be taken off the battlefield, make the United States and its allies any safer?

To many experts, including a growing number of former Obamaadministration national security advisers, that proposition is less convincing by the day.

With Al-Qaeda and ISIS enjoying safe havens across parts of Yemen,Syria and Iraq, and with terror attacks on the rise worldwide, doubts are growing about the effectiveness and sustainability of the administration’s “light footprint” strategy against global extremist movements. A template predicated on training local forces and bombing terrorists from the air is actually making the situation worse, some say. Many are arguing for deeper U.S. involvement, if not with regular ground troops, then at least with elite advisers and commandos taking more risks in more places.

“Drone strikes are not creating a safer, more stable world,” said David Sedney, who resigned in 2013 as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan and Pakistan. And neither is the limited bombing campaign the Pentagon is running against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Both are creating new enemies, he added, without a plan to defeat them.

The Pentagon Thursday announced that a June 16 airstrike had killed Tariq bin Tahar al-Awni al-Harzi, an ISIS leader who had facilitated suicide bombings. “His death will impact ISIS’ ability to integrate foreign terrorist fighters into the Syrian and Iraqi fight,” military spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said.

But for how long, critics are wondering, including former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Michael Flynn, who accuses the administration for which he once worked of “policy confusion.” Former army deputy chief Lt. Gen. Richard Zahner says the Obama administration’s policy of “benign neglect” toward strife-torn Yemenand Syria has ensured the existence of terrorist safe havens there for both Al-Qaeda and ISIS militants.

Even Michele Flournoy, the former undersecretary of defense for policy who was the president’s first choice to replace Chuck Hagelas defense secretary, wrote last month that the U.S. effort against ISIS is “faltering,” and urged a more robust approach.

“U.S. counterterrorism policy has caused some intense backlash and has had a lot of unintended consequences,” said Rosa Brooks, a former Obama administration Pentagon official.

Current officials dispute the criticism, but they declined to make anyone available to speak on the record. The administration’s position is that the failure of Al-Qaeda or ISIS to launch a coordinated attack on the U.S. homeland is the best evidence that the strategy is working.

A task force at the Henry L. Stimson Center took a different view in April, raising questions about the long-term effects of killing terrorists with drones. “We are concerned that the Obama administration’s heavy reliance on targeted killings as a pillar of U.S. counterterrorism strategy rests on questionable assumptions, and risks increasing instability and escalating conflicts,” concluded the task force, co-chaired by Brooks and retired Gen. John Abizaid.

The Wahishi operation underscored a little-understood trend of the drone war: Most “high value targets” have been killed in what are known as signature strikes, in which a missile is aimed at a group of militants whose identities aren’t confirmed until after they’re dead, U.S. officials have said.

The CIA didn’t know at first that Wahishi was among the men it had targeted, said three U.S. officials, none of whom would be quoted by name discussing a covert operation.

Administration officials had once signaled they would cut back on signature strikes, which pose a higher risk of killing the wrong people, including civilians. But the evacuation of the embassy in Yemen and the CIA’s absence in Syria mean such strikes will be more common, the U.S. officials said.

Many critics of Obama’s approach are calling for a deeper American involvement against ISIS. Many military analysts, for example, say U.S. special operations troops should be allowed to direct airstrikes and embed with local units on the Syrian and Iraqi battlefields, something they are not now doing. Others argue the U.S. should take military action to remove Syrian President Bashar Assad, a magnet for extremists who want to fight him.