This wasn't such a crazy idea. Drones and other intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets have the potential to be powerful tools in human rights monitoring. The ability to watch troops or mobs or refugees move in real time, to see weapons being stockpiled or mass graves being filled, might help us take timely and appropriate action to stop a genocide before it gets off the ground.
There was one enormous problem with my NSS colleague's request, though: Neither of us had the authority to order Centcom to immediately shift a potentially vital asset from wherever it was currently being used to the skies over Kyrgyzstan.
"It's an interesting idea," I told him. "Has the president discussed it with [Defense] Secretary Gates?"
"We don't have time to spin up a whole bureaucratic process," he responded irritably. "The president doesn't want another Rwanda. This is a top priority of his. I need you to just communicate this to Centcom and get this moving."
This, I explained, wasn't going to work. The chain of command doesn't go from a director at the NSS to an advisor to the defense undersecretary for policy to Centcom -- and the military doesn't put drones into foreign airspace without a great deal of planning, a lot of legal advice, and the right people signing off on the whole idea.
My friend was incredulous. "We're talking about, like, one drone. You're telling me you can't just call some colonel at Centcom and make this happen?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Why the hell not? You guys" -- meaning the Pentagon writ large -- "are always stonewalling us on everything. I'm calling you from the White House. The president wants to prevent genocide in Kyrgyzstan. Whatever happened to civilian control of the military?"
"You," I told him, "are the wrong civilian."
This was a minor issue, in many ways, but the exchange was far from unusual. My White House colleague -- a smart, energetic, dedicated guy -- went away furious, convinced that "the Pentagon" was refusing to take atrocity-prevention issues seriously (an attitude that soured many later interagency discussions about Sudan, Libya, and more).
SUBJECTS:
