Drones and Targeted Killings

[Jam Stunna]

As the War on Terror drags on, there has been debate about the legality and usefulness of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and many other topics that concern the public.

However, there has been very little public debate about the use of drones in the War on Terror to carry out targeted killings, from a legal or moral standpoint. Conservative columnist George Will recently published an column defending the practice:

Today’s war is additionally complicated by the fact that, as Yoo says, America’s enemy “resembles a network, not a nation.” Its commanders and fighters do not wear uniforms; they hide among civilian populations and are not parts of a transparent command-and-control apparatus. Drones enable the U.S. military — which, regarding drones, includes the CIA; an important distinction has been blurred — to wield a technology especially potent against al-Qaeda’s organization and tactics. All its leaders are, effectively, military, not civilian. Killing them serves the military purposes of demoralizing the enemy, preventing planning, sowing confusion and draining the reservoir of experience.

Will's column draws heavily on a legal opinion offered by John Yoo, the famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) author of several Bush era legal opinions that governed how the former administration prosecuted the War on Terror. It's long, but it's definitely worth reading.

Naturally, there has been a response to Will's column. Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic has written an article critical of Will's and Yoo's legal reasoning.

These are all important aspects of the debate, and they should be considered. Yet neither article really gets at the morality of using unmanned weapons platforms to kill people, the disputed reports concerning civilian casualties, or how those casualties are even calculated:

The president’s directive reinforced the need for caution, counterterrorism officials said, but did not significantly change the program. In part, that is because “the protection of innocent life was always a critical consideration,” said Michael V. Hayden, the last C.I.A. director under President George W. Bush.

It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.

This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the “single digits” — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.

Not to mention the other effects of living under constant threat of being blown up.

Both the legal and ethical implications of drone warfare, "targeted killings" and civilian effects need to be talked about, but they aren't. The drone war is a critical part of the War on Terror, perhaps the most important part now that Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, yet the public debate about it seems non-existent. I think the tone of this post reveals my feelings on the matter, but I'm more interested to hear what others think about this. Do the ends justify the means? Are drones messy, but still preferable to the other options? Let's talk about this.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

I find this particularly noteworthy as I've read an article about Obama ordering drone strikes against Yemen only hours after his re-election. Regardless of that though, I think this method should be drawn a lot more attention and be fought against. It really symbolifies the hypocricy behind Obama's so-called attempts at achieving peace in the middle east as he does essentially nothing else than faking statistics for his own benefit. If one looks at the amount of people killed by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Yemen, the amount of people killed in palestine/gaza by US-supported israelian forces, and countless other incidents with US support I think it's fair to say that Obama is the biggest terrorist of this century by far [and he gets the nobel price for peace...]. I think this method of tallying "civilian causalties" of military attacks tells us a lot more about his desperation to sustain his peace-keeper image than about anything else.

Are drones preferable to other options? Hard to say. War is always wrong and there's no right in the wrong for me. So while one might consider targeted killings a "plus" it's still a plus that's surrounded by minus. And with Obama's method of tallying civilian causalties in mind, I have my sincere doubts that drone attacks and targeted killings will decrease the number of innocent people killed anyway so it all looks more like a big distraction maneuver from all the dirty war crimes Obama commited.

inb4conspiracytheorist

 

[FirestormNeos]

I hate war. Everything about it sucks. The troops getting thrown in is sad. The civilians being caught in the crossfire is abominable. The racism that occurs (for example, when this war started, we got very bitter about folks who biologically originate from the middle east) is stupid.

Drones sorta remedy one of those problems if used exclusively (as in, phases out human soldiers completely), while also intensifying another (crap aim = casualties as far as the CNN cameras can see).

Taggin' this discussion "Catch 22," and baggin' it.