That’s what I do in my latest piece, now up at Antiwar.com. In this one I take on the barbaric drone war in Yemen.
As Swift admits, there was a large boost in recruiting a few years ago following a U.S. bombing in Yemen that killed 58 people, including three dozen women and children. He refers to the P.R. aftermath of this incident as “an unexpected propaganda coup,” as if no one could have predicted that the murder of dozens of women and children would have deleterious effects on curbing terrorist recruiting efforts.
But of course that’s what happens, and this case was no different. In the years since, and with U.S. drone strikes and bombing becoming more frequent, al-Qaeda’s numbers have more than tripled, according to the White House’s own terrorism advisers. Estimates put the number of fighters at the time somewhere between two or three hundred, but in just two and a half years, more than 1,000 have joined their ranks.
Read the full article here.
