Study Claims Tribesmen See Drones As Liberators

From Antiwar.com Blog:

9:14 PM (1 hour ago)Study Claims Tribesmen “See Drones as Liberators”from Antiwar.com Blog by Jason DitzWhen Professor Brian Williams said he went into his study of Pakistani tribesmen’s attitudes toward US drone strikes with an “open mind,” it seems like it may have been a little too open to sloganeering and a little too closed to existing data.




Starting with claims that al-Qaeda “took over” the region, Williams concludes that the tribesmen “see the drones as their liberators” despite the massive civilian death toll from the strikes.



Which seems incredible on the surface of it, but is even more so when compared to a US-funded poll from just two weeks ago which showed not only a dramatic majority opposed to the attacks but a solid majority believing the drone strikes justified attacks against the US military.



The fact that the two studies show such starkly different things is perhaps an interesting study in the unreliability of data from such remote areas in and of itself, but there are certain basic understandings about human nature that must underpin such studies, and if data points to a patently absurd conclusion it might warrant a second glance.