Great lesson that teaches students how to analyze and evaluate pro and con arguments.

1. Using Drones for Military Strikes:
Reading, Discussing, and Writing Pro and Con Issues

2. Evaluating Pro and Con Arguments
Prepare to Review the
Issue and Write an
Argumentative Essay

3. Issue: Should the U.S. Use Drones to Strike
Suspected Terrorist Groups in Other Countries
Let’s Review the Issue
•
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), otherwise
known as drones, are remotely-controlled aircraft
which may be armed with missiles and bombs for
attack missions. Since the World Trade Center
attacks of Sep. 11, 2001 and the subsequent "War
on Terror," the United States has used drones to
kill suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Yemen, Somalia, and other countries.

4. The Pro Position
Proponents say that drones have decimated
terrorist networks abroad via precise strikes
with minimal civilian casualties. They
contend that drones are relatively
inexpensive weapons, are used under proper
government oversight, and that their use
helps prevent "boots on the ground" combat
and makes America safer.

5. The Con Position
Opponents say that drone strikes create more
terrorists than they kill. They contend that
drone strikes kill large numbers of civilians,
violate international law, lack sufficient
congressional oversight, violate the
sovereignty of other nations, and make the
horrors of war appear as innocuous as a
video game.

6. Are Drone Strikes Effective?
Let’s Think About the Issue
•Have drone strikes made the U.S. safer?
•Do drone strikes reduce the need for
combat troops?
•Who decides when to use drone strikes?
•Are drones more dangerous to civilians
than conventional warfare?

7. What Do You Think?
Use your red or green card to signify your response to this question.
Raise your red card if you disagree or your green card if you agree.
The U.S. military should use drones
to strike targets in other countries.

8. What Do You Think?
Raise Your Red or Green Card
The U.S. military should
not use drones to strike
targets in other countries.

9. Essential Questions to Guide our
Review of the Issue
• 1. What does the research data say about the
issue?
• 2. How do you know the research is reliable?
• 3. Are the arguments supported by logical
reasoning?
• 4. Is each argument supported by specific facts
and examples?
• 5. Which side of the issue is supported by a
preponderance of the evidence?

10. Evaluating Evidence
Now that we have shared opinions, let’s
examine the evidence. Analyze the pro
and con arguments on the following
frames and determine which position
presents the strongest case.

11. Read each argument closely to see if it passes
the smell test?
Take careful notes as you read
the following arguments.

12. Review the Evidence and Arguments
The Pro Position

13. PRO US Drone Strikes
Reason # 1
Drone strikes make the United States safer by
decimating terrorist networks across the
world. Drone attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Yemen, and Somalia have killed upwards of 3,500
militants, including dozens of high-level
commanders implicated in organizing plots
against the United States. According to President
Obama, "dozens of highly skilled al Qaeda
commanders, trainers, bomb makers and
operatives have been taken off the battlefield.

14. Plots have been disrupted that would have targeted
international aviation, US transit systems, European cities,
and our troops in Afghanistan. Simply put, these strikes
have saved lives.” David Rohde, a former New York
Times reporter held hostage by the Taliban in Pakistan for
several months in 2009, called the drones a "terrifying
presence" for militants. On Nov. 1, 2013 drone strikes
killed Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud.

15. Reason # 2
Drones limit the scope and scale of military action. Since
the 9/11 attacks, the main threats to US security are
decentralized terrorist networks operating in countries
around the world, not large countries fighting with
massive air, ground, and sea armies. Invading Pakistan,
Yemen, or Somalia to capture relatively small terrorist
groups would lead the United States to expensive
conflict, responsibility for destabilizing those
governments, large numbers of civilian casualties,
empowerment of enemies who view the United States as
an occupying imperialist power, US military deaths, and
other unintended consequences.

16. America's attempt to destroy al Qaeda and
the Taliban in Afghanistan by invading and
occupying the country resulted in a war that
has dragged on for over 12 years. Using
drone strikes against terrorists abroad
allows the United States to achieve its goals
at a fraction of the cost of an invasion in
money, manpower, and lives.

17. Reason # 3
Drone strikes are carried out with the
collaboration and encouragement of local
governments, and make those countries
safer. US drone strikes help countries fight terrorist
threats to their own domestic peace and stability,
including al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan, al
Shabaab in Somalia, al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula in Yemen, and al Qaeda in the Maghreb in
Algeria and Mali. Yemen’s President, Abdu Rabbu
Mansour Hadi, has openly praised drone strikes in his
country, stating that the "electronic brain’s precision
is unmatched by the human brain."

18. In a 2008 State Department cable made public by
Wikileaks, Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General
Ashfaq Kayani asked US officials for more drone
strikes, and in Apr. 2013 former Pakistani
president Pervez Musharraf acknowledged to CNN
that his government had secretly signed off on US
drone strikes. In Pakistan, where the vast majority
of drone strikes are carried out, drones have
contributed to a major decrease in violence. The 41
suicide attacks in Pakistan in 2011 were down from
49 in 2010 and a record high of 87 in 2009, which
coincided with an over ten-fold increase in the
number of drone strikes.

19. Reason #4
Drone strikes are subject to a strict review
process and congressional
oversight. President Obama, in his "Presidential Policy
Guidance" released on May 23, 2013, established five
criteria that must be met before lethal action may be
taken against a foreign target: "1) Near certainty that the
terrorist target is present; 2) Near certainty that non-
combatants will not be injured or killed; 3) An
assessment that capture is not feasible at the time of the
operation; 4) An assessment that the relevant
governmental authorities in the country where action is
contemplated cannot or will not effectively address the
threat to U.S. persons.

20. Reason #5
Drones kill fewer civilians, as a percentage of total
fatalities, than any other military weapon. The traditional
weapons of war - bombs, shells, mines, mortars - cause
more unintended ("collateral") damage to people and
property than drones, whose accuracy and technical
precision mostly limit casualties to combatants and
intended targets.

21. Although estimates vary because of the secretive
nature of the program, it is estimated that 174 to
1,047 civilians have been killed in Pakistan,
Yemen, and Somalia since the United States
began conducting drone strikes abroad following
the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks, roughly 8-17% of all
deaths from US drones. In comparison, in World
War II, civilian deaths, as a percentage of total
war fatalities, are estimated at 40 to 67%. In the
Korean, Vietnam, and Balkan Wars, the
percentages are approximately 70%, 31%, and
45% respectively.

22. Reason # 6
Drones make US military personnel safer.Drones
are launched from bases in allied countries and
are operated remotely by pilots in the United
States, minimizing the risk of injury and death that
would occur if ground soldiers and airplane pilots
were used instead. Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and
their affiliates often operate in distant and
environmentally unforgiving locations where it
would be extremely dangerous for the United
States to deploy teams of special forces to track
and capture terrorists.

23. Such pursuits may pose serious risks to US troops
including firefights with surrounding tribal communities,
anti-aircraft shelling, land mines, improvised explosive
devices (IEDs), suicide bombers, snipers, dangerous
weather conditions, harsh environments, etc. Drone
strikes eliminate all of those risks common to "boots on
the ground" missions.

24. Review the Evidence and Arguments
Con Arguments

25. Read each argument closely to see if it passes
the smell test?
Take careful notes as you read
the following arguments.

26. Reason # 1
Drone strikes create more terrorists than they
kill. People who see their loved ones injured or killed in
drone attacks become motivated to join actions against
the United States. According to author Jeremy Scahill,
the vast majority of militants operating in Yemen today
are "people who are aggrieved by attacks on their
homes that forced them to go out and fight." Support for
al Qaeda in Yemen is "indigenously spreading and
merging with the mounting rage of powerful tribes at US
counterterrorism policy" as the drone strikes have
"recruited thousands."

27. The number of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)
core members grew from 300 in 2009 (when US drone
strikes resumed after a seven-year hiatus) to 700 in 2012,
resulting in an exponential increase in the number of
terrorist attacks in the region. Both the "Underwear
Bomber," who tried to blow up an American airliner in
2009, and the "Times Square Bomber," who tried to set
off a car bomb in New York City in 2010, cited drone
strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia as motivators for
the plots.

28. Reason #2
Drone strikes target individuals who may not be terrorists
or enemy combatants. President Obama's policy of
"signature strikes" allows the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) and the military's Joint Special Operations Command
(JSOC) to target anyone who fits a specific terrorist profile
or engages in behavior the US government associates with
terrorists, regardless of whether or not they have been
conclusively identified by name as enemy combatants. At
the height of the drone program in Pakistan in 2009 and
2010, as many as half of the strikes were classified as
signature strikes. According to top-secret intelligence
reports reviewed by McClatchy Newspapers, drone
operators are not always certain of who they are killing
"despite the administration's guarantees of the accuracy
of the CIA's targeting intelligence."

29. The CIA and JSOC target "associated forces,"
"foreign fighters," "suspected extremists," and
"other militants," but do not publicly reveal
whether those killed are actively involved in
terrorism against the United States. In two sets of
classified documents obtained by NBC News
describing 114 drone strikes in Pakistan and
Afghanistan between Sep. 3, 2010 and Oct. 30,
2011, 26 strikes targeted "other militants,"
meaning that the CIA could not conclusively
determine the affiliation of those killed.

30. Reason #3
• Drone strikes kill large numbers of civilians and traumatize local
populations. According to a meta-study of drone strikes, between 8
to 17% of all people killed in drone strikes are civilians. Since the
United States began conducting drone strikes abroad following the
Sep. 11, 2001 attacks, it is estimated that between 174 and 1,047
civilians have been killed in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. According
to 130 interviews with victims and witnesses of drone strikes by
researchers from Stanford and New York University, people who live
in the affected areas experience harm "beyond death and physical
injury" and "hear drones hover 24 hours a day," and live with the fear
that a strike could occur at any moment of the day or night.

31. According to Clive Stafford Smith, Director of
human rights organization Reprieve, "an entire
region is being terrorized by the constant threat
of death from the skies. Their way of life is
collapsing: kids are too terrified to go to school,
adults are afraid to attend weddings, funerals,
business meetings, or anything that involves
gathering in groups." Yemeni tribal sheik Mullah
Zabara says "we consider the drones terrorism.
The drones are flying day and night, frightening
women and children, disturbing sleeping people.
This is terrorism.

32. The CIA and JSOC target "associated forces," "foreign
fighters," "suspected extremists," and "other militants," but
do not publicly reveal whether those killed are actively
involved in terrorism against the United States. In two sets of
classified documents obtained by NBC News describing 114
drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan between Sep. 3,
2010 and Oct. 30, 2011, 26 strikes targeted "other militants,"
meaning that the CIA could not conclusively determine the
affiliation of those killed.
Their way of life is collapsing: kids are too terrified to go
to school, adults are afraid to attend weddings, funerals,
business meetings, or anything that involves gathering in
groups." Yemeni tribal sheik Mullah Zabara says "we
consider the drones terrorism. The drones are flying day
and night, frightening women and children, disturbing
sleeping people. This is terrorism

33. Reason #4
Drone strikes are secretive, lack sufficient legal
oversight, and prevent citizens from holding their leaders
accountable. Drones are used in conflicts where war is
not openly declared and authorized by Congress, allowing
the executive branch to have nearly unlimited power over
secret wars across the world. Strikes by the CIA
(responsible for approximately 80% of all US drone strikes
worldwide) are classified under US law as Title 50 covert
actions, defined as "activities of the United States
Government... where it is intended that the role... will not
be apparent or acknowledged publicly."

34. As covert operations, the government cannot legally
provide any information about how the CIA conducts
targeted killings. The CIA has yet to officially
acknowledge its drone programs anywhere in the
world, let alone describe the rules and procedures for
compliance with US and international law. The
administration only gives drone program details to
members of Congress whom it deems "appropriate," and
it has sought to prevent judicial review of claims brought
in US courts by human rights groups seeking
accountability for potentially unlawful killings.

35. Reason # 5
Drone strikes allow the United States to become
emotionally disconnected from the horrors of
war. According to Keith Shurtleff, US army chaplain
and ethics instructor, as soldiers are "physically
and psychologically removed from the horrors of
battle and see the enemy not as humans but as
blips on a screen, there is a danger of losing the
deterrent to war that its horrors normally
provide." Without this deterrent, it becomes easier
for the United States to start new battles and
extend existing conflicts indefinitely.

36. Drone pilot Colonel D. Scott Brenton, in a July 29, 2012
interview with the New York Times, acknowledged the
disconnect of fighting a "telewar with a joystick and a
throttle" thousands of miles away from the battlefield,
then driving home to have dinner with his family. "I feel
no emotional attachment to the enemy," he said. "I have
a duty, and I execute the duty. No one in my immediate
environment is aware of anything that
occurred." According to Representative Lynn Woolsey
(D-CA), it's "such a trend to dehumanize warfare. It's
machines and computers doing the job... [but this] is not
video games, these are real people and it's real death
and we're making real enemies around the world by
continuing with the drone strikes."

37. Reason # 6
Drone strikes are extremely unpopular in the affected
countries. General Stanley McChrystal, former leader of
the US military in Afghanistan, says that the "resentment
created by American use of unmanned strikes... is much
greater than the average American appreciates. They are
hated on a visceral level, even by people who've never
seen one or seen the effects of one." 76% of residents in
the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of
northwestern Pakistan (where 96% of drone strikes in the
country are carried out) oppose American drone
strikes. 16% think these strikes accurately target
militants and 48% think they largely kill civilians.

38. Only 17% of Pakistanis back American drone strikes
against leaders of extremist groups, even if they are
conducted in conjunction with the Pakistani
government. On three separate occasions, Pakistan's
Parliament has voted to condemn the attacks and end the
country's cooperation with the CIA, and leaders in the
FATA voted on Nov. 4, 2013 to block NATO supply lines
unless the United States stops its drone strikes. On Dec.
16, 2013, Yemen's parliament passed a motion calling for
the United States to end its drone program in the country
after a wedding convoy of 11 to 15 people were killed by a
US drone strike.

39. Converse with Your Peers
Meet in small groups to discuss the
pros and cons of this issue and take a
group position on the problem. Select a
group chairperson to lead the group and
report back to the class.
Discuss the following essential Questions.

40. Consider the following essential questions.
Review the Issue
• 1. What does the research data say about the
issue?
• 2. How do you know the research is reliable?
• 3. Are the arguments supported by logical
reasoning?
• 4. Is each argument supported by specific facts
and examples?
• 5. Which side of the issue is supported by a the
preponderance of the evidence?

41. Are Drone Strikes Effective?
Discuss the following issues.
•Have drone strikes made the U.S. safer?
•Do drone strikes reduce the need for
combat troops?
•Who decides when to use drone strikes?
•Are drones more dangerous to civilians
than conventional warfare?

42. Research and Statistics
• Compare the research and statistics for
both the pro and con positions
• Discuss which position presents the
strongest research and most reliable
sources

43. Continue Your Group Deliberations
• Have group members use their notes to
discuss and analyze each major argument and
supporting evidence.
• Each group member should take the leadership
and lead the discussion on one or more of the
pro and con arguments.

44. Weigh the Evidence
Have your group create a plus and minus chart.
Place the best, most logical arguments for the pro
position on one side and the best arguments against
the pro position on the other side.
Use this process to help your group reach a decision.

45. Report Back to the Class
Present your findings to the
class. Which side of the issue
does your group support?
Why?

46. Write an Essay
Organize your ideas and prepare to write an
essay about the pros and cons of using
drones to strike military targets. Evaluate the
arguments and evidence on both sides of the
issue. Weigh the pros and cons and decide
which position is supported by the most
persuasive evidence.

47. Develop a Writing Plan
•Determine what your main point will be, and write a
topic sentence that provides focus for your essay.
•Choose several main ideas that support your topic
sentence.
•Sort your information into supporting details with
facts and examples.
•Be sure to address both the pro and con positions
47

48. Use the following
essay format to
write your paper.
48

49. 49
Essay
Outline
Introduction
What is my topic
sentence?
Body-Main Ideas
With supporting
details
Conclusion
How can I summarize
my paragraph?
How can I rephrase
my topic sentence?

50. Essays Require
Three Main
Sections

51. Begin Your Essay With
a Carefully Crafted
Introduction

52. Get the Reader’s Attention and State Your Thesis

53. The Key Elements of a
Strong Introduction

54. Check Out This Sample Introduction

55. Details Must Support
the Main Ideas
Provide specific
facts, examples,
and reasons for
each main idea
in the body of
your essay

56. Create an Outline
Topic Sentence___________________________________
_______________________________________________
A. Main Idea_____________________________________
_______________________________________________
Details/Evidence__________________________________
_______________________________________________
Details/Evidence__________________________________
_______________________________________________
B. Main Idea_____________________________________
_______________________________________________
Details/Evidence__________________________________
________________________________________________
56

57. Prepare to Write
•Use your outline and write
an essay on your topic.
•As you write your rough
draft, it will be very
important to use special
words that enable you to
transition smoothly from one
idea to the next.
57

58. Transition Words
As you view these words,
select the words that help you
make transitions smoothly
from one idea to the next.
• as a result
• such as
• for example
• nevertheless
• for that reason
• finally
• at this time
• therefore
• furthermore
• in addition
• in conclusion
• as well as
58

59. Conclusion
Write a conclusion
for your essay
reviewing your main
points and
discussing why this
issue is so important
for our future.

60. Write a Strong Conclusion for Your Essay

62. Let’s Review a Good Conclusion

63. Review, Edit, and Rewrite
1. Re-read your essay several
times.
2. How can you improve your
sentences to communicate more
clearly?
3. Are your main ideas supported
by examples and details?
4. Exchange papers with another
student and read each other’s
essay out loud.
5. Make final corrections and write
the final draft of your polished
essay. 63

64. 64
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All Rights Reserved
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from the author