We all know that we got Osama bin Laden in Paki- stan two years ago. But what people don’t talk about is how we failed up until that day in 2011.

For example, according to The Nation, in Feb. 2002, an unmanned CIA Predator drone shot at a site in Pakistan suspected to harbor bin Laden. It was the first-ever in- dependent attack by a US drone. Soon after the attack, accounts from locals revealed the actual victims of the strike: civilians collecting scrap metal.

This first strike started a pattern that has continued for the last 11 years. The US sends in a drone to strike suspected terrorist cells, we get it wrong and innocent people die.

This is not likely to end anytime soon; according to The New York Times, a drone base just opened in Niger, ensuring drone presence in Africa for the foreseeable future. And the military loves the ability to train a drone pilot in a shorter amount of time than a real pilot and keep them safely behind a joystick at mission control.

Drones are bad. I don’t want to sugarcoat it. Accord- ing to Pakistani estimates, casualties from drone strikes may be as high as 98 percent civilian – and remember that the US also conducts drone activities in Yemen, So- malia and, now, out of Niger. While these numbers may be overstated, even a conservative estimate of 75 per- cent is an astounding number of civilians killed.

Innocent people do not deserve to die because the government thinks that they might live near a terror- ist. The entire strategy behind terrorism is to kill civil- ians to create fear in another country, society or group. But if our “war on terror” involves the same killing of noncombatants, are we really better than the terrorists we fight?

Obviously, the argument remains that drones kill ter- rorists, so it’s worth it. But drones are also counterpro-

ductive. When an American drone kills civilians, the family and friends of those civilians aren’t likely to hold hands and sing Kumbaya if and when American troops come through the area; they’re much more likely to be easy recruits for al Qaeda and the Taliban.

And according to the Globe and Mail, drones create these effects even without killing anyone. How would you feel if China had flying cameras with rocket launch- ers attached in our skies all the time?

However, that isn’t the worst part. According to The New York Times, for several years President Obama has used the 2001 law authorizing military force against al Qaeda to theoretically justify drone attacks against any-

one, including US citizens on US soil. This means that if you were suspected of being a ter-

rorist by the US government, you could be fired upon by a drone over your house. Forget “right to a speedy trial in front of a jury of his peers” – you are now dead to the US government.

This is an offense to the Constitution and to every cit- izen’s due process rights. Every single US citizen de- serves to face his or her accuser and be assumed inno- cent until proven guilty. I can only hope that President Obama rethinks the way his administration conducts counterterrorism operations and forgoes the drone option.