Show me someone who publicly insists that the United States has an effective counterterrorism strategy, and I’ll show you someone who draws a paycheck from the U.S. government.

“This week we have seen success across a broad spectrum,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters on June 16, commenting on the death of Yemeni al Qaeda leader Nasir al-Wuhayshi, reportedly killed as a result of a U.S. drone strike. “Any time a terrorist is removed from the battlefield, is killed or captured, I think the net gain outweighs any potential loss.”

Loyalty to your employer is a fine thing, especially in a press spokesman, but outside the ranks of officials in President Barack Obama’s administration, experts are far more dubious about the heavy U.S. reliance on air power and targeted strikes. “The tactical, whack-a-mole approach is not having the desired effect,” my Foreign Policy colleague Micah Zenko told the New York Times. “Not having the desired effect” was a polite circumlocution: As Zenko recently noted for FP, State Department figures show a substantial recent uptick in global terrorism. In 2014, terrorist attacks increased 39 percent over the previous year, while the number of fatalities caused by terrorist attacks went up 83 percent.

In Yemen, which the administration inexplicably continues to tout as a counterterrorism “success,” U.S. policy in in shambles. “If you’re looking for logic here, you’re not going to find much,” Stephen Seche, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, told the New York Times. In mid-June, the Washington Post reported that “[al]-Qaeda affiliates are significantly expanding their footholds” in both Yemen and Syria. And the Islamic State also continues to gain ground in both countries. Meanwhile, in Libya, it’s “utter chaos,” former U.N. advisor Dirk Vandewalle told the Times: The Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked groups are vying for power, and a recent U.S. drone strike against al Qaeda operative Mokhtar Belmokhtar “shows that we’re still relying on ad hoc measures.” In Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan, it’s the same story. The United States continues to rely heavily on airstrikes and targeted killings, while terrorist groups continue to cause mayhem and gain adherents.

Even some of those who do get paid by Uncle Sam have grown more openly skeptical of U.S. counterterrorism policy. Capt. Robert Newson, a Navy SEAL who served as director of the Joint Interagency Task Force-Counter Terrorism, told an interviewer at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center that “drone strikes, manned airstrikes, and special operations raids … buy space and time. But by themselves they are only a delaying action, and everywhere I have been, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, every military person up and down the chain of command acknowledges this. This ‘CT concept’ — the solution that some people champion where the main or whole effort is drone strikes and special operations raids — is a fantasy.”

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