It's no secret that the Middle East generally hates the United States. Yes, we started the incredibly-unnecessary Iraq War. Yes, the problems our women face that take up so much room in our political discussions, while relevant and requiring of action, are nothing compared to the problems Middle Eastern women face. Yes, the refugee crisis is reaching unprecedented levels as the Syrian city of Aleppo is being turned into a nightmarish hotbed of genocide. But, they don't only see us as war-starting idiots who don't appreciate the fact that our inner problems are that of a first-world country. They often see us as murderers.

Every now and then, the thought that might linger into the average American's head aligns into, "Why are there so many terrorists in the Middle East, and why do they specifically hate America so much?" While the question of why terrorism exists in the Middle East requires a book-length answer, the question as to why more and more people of the region are joining the ranks of terrorist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda can be reduced to a handful of general answers. Picture a Sunni family in Iraq, trying desperately to make it through the turmoil of the current situation. While ISIS continues to entice Middle Eastern men with king-like perks of becoming a member, most of them are defiant, refusing to join the evil terrorist organization that is ripping the region into shreds. The patriarch of this family may have a level of animosity toward the United States, as the War in Iraq greatly destabilized his home country. But, it's not strong enough for him to become a murderer.

Then, one morning, he is sitting in his kitchen, watching his television, when he hears a loud boom outside. It is strong enough to make his house shake, and the glass of water on his kitchen table to quiver, splashing onto the surrounding wood. Terrified, he peeks outside and sees that there has been an enormous explosion in his neighborhood, and dead bodies missing limbs are cluttering the dirt road. He walks outside and sees his next-door neighbor, lying dead with half of his body mangled into an unrecognizable bloody mess. He sees a young boy, no older than five, covered in enough blood to make him look like a slab of meat in a slaughterhouse, laying dead in his path. Finally, his eyes spot the dead body of a highly-ranked member of ISIS. He realizes that this was no terrorist attack. This was a drone strike conducted by the United States.

It is the job of the United States government to not only remove the threat of terrorist organizations, but absolutely destroy them. Yet, there is so much irony in the Obama Administration's tactics in doing this. Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani Nobel Prize-winning peace activist, when meeting with President Obama in 2013, told him that the drone strikes his administration uses are fueling terrorism in the Middle East because they create a hatred among civilians that inspires them to become terrorists. The Iraqi man in the above example is a general outline for the type of Middle Eastern man who joins the terrorist fight against the United States to exact revenge for civilian deaths caused by drone strikes. After the tragic November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, four former technicians of the United States air force who had worked with drones for years wrote a letter to President Obama, telling him that ISIS was using the civilian casualties of the drone strikes as a "recruitment tool."

These drone strikes are hardly a way of telling the civilians of the Middle East that the United States is on their side, as they are responsible for many more deaths of innocent civilians than terrorists. According to a report by the human rights group the Reprieve, as touched upon in an article by the Guardian, by November 24, 2014, drone strikes that were meant to kill 41 terrorists had resulted in the deaths of 1,147 people, many of whom were children.

Another unfortunate truth is that these drone strikes aren't always successful. For example, during the presidency of George W. Bush (so, it's not only Obama), two US attempts to kill the future leader of al Qaeda, Ayman Zawahiri, in 2006, were unsuccessful. Yet, they did kill 76 children and 29 adults.

There are many factors contributing to the reasons for why Middle Easterners join terrorist organizations. Frustration with the United States is one of them. The drone strikes that Obama uses so often are clearly adding more fuel to this frustration. If we, United States, want to stop the seemingly-endless growth of jihad in the Middle East, perhaps the usage of drone strikes should be met with more debate. Perhaps there are alternative routes that the United states can take in the attempt to kill jihadi leaders. I'm not an expert in military tactics, and I'm sure the process of taking out jihadi leaders is extremely complicated. I don't know what the alternatives are. But, one thing is for sure, and that is that drone strikes are severely damaging the image the United States has in the eyes of the Middle East, and causing the recruitment of new jihadi fighters to accelerate.