US Diplomat: Each US Drone Attack Creates '40 to 60' New Enemies

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013


"My former colleagues are probably going to get upset with me," says former diplomat who calls out US government for failed strategy in Yemen.

The U.S. military, according to one former diplomat with a frontrow seat to its drone policy in Yemen, is creating new terrorists in that country at breakneck speed.

In an article published at TomDispatch earlier this week, the site's editor Tom Engelhardt gave the recent and ongoing counterterrorism strategy of the U.S. military an unkind moniker by calling it a perpetual "blowback machine."

In the post-9/11 world, according to Engelhardt, "wherever U.S. military power has been applied," the consistent outcome of armed intervention—from the illegal invasion of Iraq to the NATO-backed overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya, and the ongoing U.S. drone campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere —has been to "destabilize whole regions."

But—despite being one of the most informed and sharply critical voices on the failure of the U.S. drone war—you don't have to take Engelhardt's word for it.