THE DRONES OF WAR

The U.S. is actually involved in a world war against terrorists, but since there are few 'boots on the ground" there is little notice.  The effort has been going on in Africa for many years,   Our principal military base is in a small country in Africa called Djibouti.  Though our main effort has concentrated particularly on Somalia from Ethiopia and within Yemen,* the war effort is greater than that.  Apparently in 2014, we are getting ready to build a new drone base in Niger to provide reconnaissance support for the French in Mali and it is admitted that this base could also be used for attack drones.**  As the war effort in Afghanistan winds down, the war in Africa is still heating up.

The use of drone attacks has been controversial in that they have been used to kill American citizen terrorists in Yemen and there has been significant "collateral" deaths and injuries of citizens.  It is said that these drone attacks are leading to recruitment of people by the terrorist groups.  As I have said elsewhere, however, would American helicopter gunships or boots on the ground be received better and wouldn't there be collateral deaths and injuries as well?***

In the past, airpower was not decisive in wars and many boots on the ground were needed to finish off an enemy.  In some cases even hundreds of thousands of troops were not successful, as in Vietnam.

The drone attacks on terrorist groups may be having a significant effect in that on 9/11/2013, there were no terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions (There was no inflammatory video against Islam either to stir up the extremists.).  This does not mean that there may not be planning underway by terrorist groups to do something spectacular in 2016 to disrupt the American presidential election just as the American Embassy hostages captured by Iran disrupted the 1980 Presidential election and led to the overthrow of President Carter by Ronald Reagan.  Curiously, shortly after that election, the Iranians released the hostages.  I've never understood why the Iranians preferred Reagan over Carter.

I don't know that Boko Haran in Nigeria is a terrorist group, but seems to be more of a political insurgency bent on taking over the country and converting it to an Islamic sharia law state, isolated from the West.  Thus is Boko Haram a terrorist group or is what is happening in Nigeria a civil war?  Think of Syria?  Are the rebels terrorist groups or is it a civil war going on to displace the current President Assam?  Some of the Syrian rebels are Islamic extremists, maybe with ties to Al Qaeda.  Though their former leader of Boko Haram says some weird things. In a 2009 BBC interview, Mohammed Yusuf, then leader of the group, stated his belief that the fact of a spherical Earth is contrary to Islamic teaching and should be rejected^[50], along with Darwinian evolution and the fact of rain originating from water evaporated by the sun.^[51] Before his death, Yusuf reiterated the group's objective of changing the current education system and rejecting democracy.^[52] Nigerian academic Hussain Zakaria told BBC News that the controversial cleric had a graduate education and spoke proficient English.****  But is this any more weird than some American politicians claiming that women do not get pregnant from rape or if they do, it is God's will.  And I suspect that being against Darwinian evolution is as much accepted by many American Christians as it is by some Islamic groups.

* http://www.wired.com/2012/08/somalia-drones/all/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Yemen
** http://tune.pk/video/2704833/us-to-build-new-drone-bases-in-africa
***
****http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram