International law and drone strikes

Not an International Law specialist, but as an IR specialist generally I think the US claims for the legality of the drone program are incredibly tendentious, for the reasons you outline above. In particular, the fact that the US is making the definition of ‘enemy combatant’ contiguous with ‘military age male’ when assessing the effects of strikes undermines the 9/11 justification.

The problem with the law on acting in self-defence is that the US has already flaunted it with impunity vis a vis the invasion of Iraq (and arguable, Afghanistan). They will no doubt claim that the law on self-defence has moved on, since their claim that they could act in self defence pre-emptively has stood the test of international law – i.e. they got away with it.

That’s the trouble with international law – it’s not like domestic law. It’s much more fluid and underdeveloped and much much more dependent on the relative strengths of the participants, both militarily and politically. The new stuff especially comes out of customary law – i.e. state practice – i.e. do something enough as if you had the right to do it and if no one stops you – ta da! It’s more complicated than that of course, but that gives you a flavour.

Scott Horton who writes the excellent No Comment column at Harper’s specializes in international law with a focus on human rights law and law of armed conflict but he’s only written two posts on the topic since the recent revelations published in the NY times.

It’s a wonder Boston wasn’t crawling with SAS assassination squads in the 70s and 80s.

My impression was that Pakistan hadn’t actually banned the US from its airspace in response. Also, what groups are mounting military operations against Iran from within the US? Arguably Flame and Stuxnet are both within the lines of the usual spy v. spy dickery states come to expect from each other and don’t go to war over.

By the way, Holder gave a speech on the legality of the drones, and the Lawfare blog has a bunch of informative posts by actual lawyers and links to speechs by people who work important places about what they see as the legality of these strikes. Volok Conspiracy also covers the legal issues quite a bit?

Katherine: I don’t see how Afghanistan is stretching self-defense. Going to war because people you attacked have a safe haven abroad has long been done: Pershing in 1915 invades Mexico because Pancho Villa burned down a town in New Mexico. I agree with you that Iraq may have been illegal.

There’s been discussion on the Balkanization blog for several years on this:

http://balkin.blogspot.com/search?q=Drones

This book (based on a conference I had a very small part in) also addresses many of the issues at length, both moral and legal:

http://www.amazon.com/Targeted-Killings-Morality-Asymmetrical-World/dp/0199646481/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339158746&sr=1-1

As John briefly notes above, there are different sorts of law involved- it matters if the government involved agrees to the operations (as has often been the case), but that doesn’t mean that the law of armed conflict doesn’t apply. Most of the military lawyers (and a good deal of the civilians ones) I’ve talked to, though, think that the normal law of armed conflict rules are being followed. Whether they are right is something I don’t have an informed opinion about.

@ezra – Not sure any of that was Chris’ goal. The brief was originally – are these strikes legal or illegal? That’s a whole helluva lot different from ‘moral or immoral’ or even ‘likely to motivate non-blogosphere liberals politically.’

Presumably the prior Bush policy of extensive airstrikes is morally superior.

In the first paragraph, I mean the invasion of Iraq of course.

Argh, sincere apologies for dragging off topic with Iraq/Afghanistan diversion.

The difficulty with the claim that the American people support this is that there is a good deal of dissembling and secrecy surrounding these attacks. The rest of the world does not take US government claims that all military age males in the vicinity are combatants, for example, but the US media takes it for granted. This means the charade is for domestic consumption. My best guess is because many people aren’t so supportive that they don’t mind the risk of innocent causalities.

It might be better to say that when both major political parties and the bulk of the media treat drone strikes as a necessity, and most people don’t hear any arguments against them and what is actually being done is completely distorted, people won’t object. But that is a rather different thing than suggesting that this is happening because the American people want it to happen.

This Boston Review article, “What Would Augustine Do? — The President, Drones, and Just War Theory,” hems and haws and doesn’t really make any conclusions, but it highlights some of the questions, and it has several useful citations and links.

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.3/david_luban_obama_drones_just_war_theory.php

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Marc, given the history of the Kissinger-Pinochet axis, and the machinations leading to the death of Allende, I suspect that the trials were a) for show, and b) guaranteed the designated patsies a relatively short prison term in advance of proceedings. Cynical of me, I know….

@Watson,

My best guess is the US would complain, but probably not much.

Let me get this straight. If Cuba killed Carriles with a drone or other means, and in the process produced substantial “collateral damage”, you believe the US government would complain, but probably not much?

Seriously, what are you smoking?

Katherine, you are systemically conflating self-defense with preemption. The right of a state to retaliate via war has no endpoint: once hostilities have been initiated, the aggrieved state may demand any terms of surrender except territorial transfer. (But border disputes may be settled) The question of necessity applies only to preemption.

Orlando Letelier is not a good point. Remember peaceful dissent is not the same as killing people. Arguing that because the US prosecuted people criminally they took the stand that this murder was not okay does not mean that the death of bin Laden, with appropriately reversed parties, would be opposed.

One interesting historical precedent is the Lillehammer affair. An informant mistakenly fingered a waiter as the head of the terrorists responsible for the Munich Olympic massacre. Israel paid money in compensation, and Norway dropped the matter, even though Norway would have been willing to arrest anyone Mossad fingered.

@25: Under Nixon I’d agree. But Carter won the presidency in 1976, and given his politics there was no love lost between him and Pinochet.

Watson Ladd – we’ve got ourselves mixed up over terminology, the mix-up being my fault.

When I was talking about pre-emptive self-defence being the justification by the US for Iraq, and that justification being bogus, I meant where the act being pre-empted is not obviously imminent.

The issue of self-defence is still relevant in the case of Afghanistan, since it was not Afghanistan itself that attacked the US, and thus could not be retaliated against. I suppose some people were arguing that Afghanistan/the Taliban are synonymous with Al Qaeda/Bin Laden, but that is nonsense. The only justification for attacking Afghanistan, the state, was that the US needed to defend itself from further attacks from Al Qaeda. The case either way is arguable.

Anyway, this is a off topic distraction from the issue of drones.

“So, for example, both Cuba and Nicaragua in the past and maybe Iran today could invoke a similar doctrine with as much justification. Say it ain’t so?”

I see this sort of argument a lot in conversations about how international law applies to post-9/11 U.S. “wars,” but I’m not sure what it means. Assuming the U.S. was behind Stuxnet, etc., I would have thought Iran had a clear self-defense rationale for military retaliation. So Iran could launch drone strikes against the CIA or something without without violating international law.

But wouldn’t the U.S. just retaliate in turn? In other words, the fact that Iran’s initial attack was lawful self-defense under international law doesn’t deprive the U.S. of its legal right to defend itself. (Perhaps there is some doctrine of international law of which I’m unaware that dictates a different result?)

The U.S. government probably considers the threat of retaliation more significant as a restraint on Iran than international law. Because the U.S. doesn’t rely on international law norms against aggression to prevent aggression against it, the U.S. doesn’t have much incentive to see strong anti-aggression norms develop, and it doesn’t really care if rationales it uses to support the use of force could theoretically be asserted against it.

I believe the justification for the drone strikes from the left has less to do with “they were all terrorists” and more to do weighing the 1,000 lives lost in drone strikes against the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the inevitable US retaliation in the event of a successful terror attack.

Of course this justification depends on what you think the odds are of a successful large-scale terror attack in the absence of drone strikes. Or if in fact, whether the odds are less at all.

The drone program in Yemen is with the government’s consent.

I was wondering about this too. But doesn’t it matter that this consent is not publicly relied on, nor even publicly acknowledged? I thought this was maybe why CB was focusing on the “unable or unwilling” defense.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/america-india-pakistan-china-next-game

The last link I gave takes you to the second page of the article; the first page is worth reading as is the piece above.

@8: I was thinking about the same case. Since it was prosecuted as a crime, however, I sort of doubt the idea that the US approved of it.

I’d been deliberately avoiding even looking at this thread because I knew the kind of utter shite it was going to attract, and inane statements like this just confirm that I was right.

Here’s apparently how the administration may perceive drone strikes:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/08/daniel-klaidman-on-the-mind-of-a-drone-strike-operator.html

There is some very bizarre psychology going on there, since everything known about the targets is of course through intelligence, which may be faulty, etc. They may give the illusion of picking out specific irregular combatants, which then gives the illusion that it is ‘concern for terrorists’ which spawns objections, rather than concern for civilians.

So Geo is claiming that no one is under imminent threat from the Haqqani network, al Qaeda, and Lakshar-e-Taibi? Or is it just American citizens who are not under imminent attack unlike secularists, feminists, diplomats, aid workers, and magistrates in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India?

hartal: There is a difference between coordinated international police action and military intervention. The former is supposed to be applied to international criminal activity by non-state actors. When only police forces are used, states coordinate among themselves; when military forces are used, they are coordinated by the Security Council.

I suspect you’re going to answer, in one fashion or another, that it’s a lawless world. Indeed it is, and that’s not entirely the fault of the overwhelmingly dominant (for the last sixty-five years) military and economic superpower. But it’s a good deal our fault.

@45: There was an assassination of a Chilean dissident in 1976, in the US, by agents of the Pinochet regime. The Carter administration, which came into power in the 1976 election, hated the Pinochet regime and prosecuted the people in question. The fact that a prior administration liked Pinochet doesn’t change this. And, as noted here, it’s not likely that any US administration would be enthusiastic about having foreign governments killing people here. (They’d have been a lot more likely to, say, deport the person in question.)

When you (Chris) say the strikes need to pass the regular tests of discriminating between combatants and non-combatants and not causing disproportionate “collateral damage”. you mean they need to do that to be legal, right?

Because actually, the US doesn’t need to care if they are legal or not.

See “Iraq War, The”.

Chris – is the argument then that, once a Caroline self-defence justification has been made out, the war that’s been embarked on as a result is ipso facto defensive and can continue indefinitely without any further need for justification? That would be an incredibly strained reading of the law. The Caroline case was all about resorting to war in a situation characterised by surprise and unforeseen necessity; once those conditions have ceased to exist, you’re surely in a different situation as far as justifying military force is concerned.

I think there’s some very profitable equivocation going on between “self-defence” (as in, somebody’s attacking us, we’ve got to do something, waging war is something) and Caroline “self-defence” (as in, somebody’s attacking us, waging war is the *only* thing we can do because of reasons A, B and C).

Geo @59. Your statements are correct with a very important exception. The US Government cannot legaly abdicate any power or right spelled out in the US Constitution.

“Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the Constitution supersedes international treaties ratified by the United States Senate. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_v._Covert

As pertaining to drones and war, the laws judging the legality of US actions in war derive first from the US Constitution and then any ratified international treaties.

James: That precedent looks completely inapplicable to me. What it says is that the rights of citizens, as spelled out in the Constitution, can’t be overridden by the Senate in agreeing to a treaty. But a treaty in which the Senate commits itself to limitations on its warmaking prerogatives in exchange for similar limitations by other states is another matter altogether. No citizen’s rights are involved.

Again, the very nature of a treaty — any treaty — is an agreement by a state to be bound by certain rules and procedures, and in this sense to accept a limit on its sovereign prerogatives.

CB @43
small correction: Brennan is adviser for counterterrorism, not natl sec adviser.

James @60: unfortunately the Wikipedia article on Reid v Covert is not good. I’m not saying it’s wrong, it’s just so cryptic and badly written that it’s not very helpful.

Bruce @63: The whole idea of a law of war, of a U.N. governing international relations, or a constitution for a republic, rest on long experience with the consequences of unconstrained, and expedient power, which discards reason as inexpedient.

We’re inviting anarchy and the dislocation of all international relations, in the wake of declining U.S. power, chucking all the soft power claims, even as the hard power behind them erodes like a sand castle facing an incoming tide.

This should be tattoed on the foreheads of all those smug “realists” at the Times, New Republic, Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, etc, etc.

We’re inviting anarchy and the dislocation of all international relations, in the wake of declining U.S. power, chucking all the soft power claims, even as the hard power behind them erodes like a sand castle facing an incoming tide.

Well, think about it this way: when you feel you’re declining but still stronger than everybody else, this might be exactly the right time to attack. A chance, maybe the last chance, to change the dynamics.

Data Tutashkhia @ 67: “. . . this might be exactly the right time to attack. A chance, maybe the last chance, to change the dynamics.”

I don’t doubt that some people might “think” along the lines Data suggests, but, to me, that sounds vaguely like the debased authortarian “reasoning”, which drove Japan to attack Pearl Harbor. As a strategy, it doesn’t make any sense, whatsoever.

I read David Kaiser’s new post, immediately after making my comment. He says much better much of what I was trying to get at.
http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2012/06/international-anarchy.html

john b @ #20: Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust is a “fellow” only in the academic sense of the term.

Imagine, to take a closer parallel, that the Cuban government had sent an airplane to bomb Orlando Bosch’s house in Miami in the mid-1960s. I doubt the U.S. government would have let the matter drop.

And it seems easy to justify the murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt under the criteria the Obama administration has set out for its killings. The southern cone dictatorships had a well worked-out doctrine to the effect that all lefties were communists, and all communists were mortal threats.

This is too obvious to belabor, but the question, Hartal, is how “in fact” is arrived at — especially when you’re killing an individual. It gets murkier when the process of deciding is secret.

There are two different points, here, Hartal, which you are failing to distinguish.

(1) Whether you and I can agree on the relative threats of different people or organizations, based on what we know and can find out. Possibly we can. But that’s irrelevant.

(2) The conditions under which you give governments the power to kill people in secrecy and without judicial review.

And re “monstrous forces,” take a look at the writings of Fred Schwarz on communism (http://www.schwarzreport.org/index.php/resources/you-can-trust-the-communists-to-be-communists/chapter-5-techniques-for-seizing-power), or J. Edgar Hoover’s _Masters of Deceit_. Schwarz was, if memory serves, influential in Latin America. He makes a strong argument that communism is inherently violent, even when it uses non-violent tactics, and that it is playing for the largest stakes imaginable. You and I may agree in finding him unpersuasive, but it’s not a silly or crazy argument: it has a clear logic and ample documentation. It persuaded a great many people. So you can’t duck the problem by saying that you happen not to agree with it.

Hartal @76: I really get the sense that people know very little what they are talking about.

I really get the sense that you have very little idea what the rule of law is. Lynching a guilty person is no less a crime than lynching an innocent one. Beating a guilty person in police custody is no less a crime than beating an innocent one. Giving false evidence against a guilty person is no less a crime than against an innocent one. Killing guilty people without due process is no less a crime than killing innocent ones.

Sorry, could you explain?

Colin Danby worries that Obama would leave us speechless in the face of extra-judicial killings of non-violent communist or leftist dissidents seeking refuge or asylum in the US. Geo has offered his analogies to lynching and custodial beatings; gordon exhumes the body of Trayvon Martin to discuss military actions thousands of miles away against terrorist networks.
I, for one, am not very impressed with these points. Perhaps others are. People will draw their own conclusions.

I believe Hartal’s point is that the Haqqani network and Lakshar-e-Taibi operate closer to an armed guerrilla group than a criminal conspiracy. I would add that guerrillas, terrorists and criminals sometimes aren’t easily distinguishable. I’d point to Colombia and Mexico for examples. In the former you have FARC, a revolutionary group that engages in terrorism and funds it’s long-running guerrilla war with drug trafficking. In the latter you have Los Zetas, a drug smuggling cartel that uses brutal violence and terrorism and is so well armed and organized that the army has to come in to relieve overwhelmed police.

Marc @54 For a possibly dispiriting walk through the weeds of the US intelligence apparatus in the 70’s see Gaeton Fonzi’s, The Last Investigation. A vivid demonstration of how UN-monolithic “the US Gov’t” can be. Chapter 40 is devoted to Letelier.

hartal:

do you really think people here have as much as read Ahmed Rashid, Tariq Ali, Pervez Hoodbhoy or the on-line newspaper Dawn?

Umm, people here have not read Tariq Ali? (Anyway, I was wondering: don’t you tend to be fairly way-left when it’s not a question of India-Pakistan relations? Not trying to be ad hominem, just wondering. Come from those parts myself.)

[aeiou] When the renegade left opposes drones, perhaps but perhaps not as part of its endless search for outlaws states and revolutionary movements to support, I am reminded of ‘Can There Be a Decent Left?’ by Michael Walzer (2002) in Dissent, who makes these pertinent points:
• For many on the Left, war, if it was fought at all, has to be fought without endangering civilians: “The last point was intended to make fighting impossible”.

• There are no arguments that seriously describe how any war could be fought without putting civilians at risk, or to ask what degree of risk might be permissible, or to specify the risks that soldiers should accept.

• The truth is that most leftists were committed to opposing the war, and they were prepared to oppose it without regard to its causes or character, and without any visible concern about preventing future terrorist attacks.

• The Left denies one of the most basic and best understood moral distinctions: between premeditated murder and unintended killing. The denial is not accidental, as if people just forgot or didn’t know the everyday moral world.

• One cause of these views is powerlessness and alienation: leftists have no power and most don’t expect to exercise power, ever.

• The Left refuses to identify with their fellow citizens, regarding any hint of patriotic feeling as politically incorrect. Their proposals seem to have been developed with no concern for effectiveness and no sense of urgency.

• They talk and write as if they could not imagine themselves responsible for the lives of their fellow-citizens.

• Their alienation is radical. How else is there the unwillingness of people who, after all, live here, and whose children and grandchildren live here, to join in a serious debate about how to protect the country against future terrorist attacks?

The anthropologist Talal Asad makes an argument, in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, that the difference between terrorism and what states routinely do in “just war” depends on the claim that in the latter civilians are not *deliberately* targeted. But in fact civilians are routinely and deliberately targeted by states in modern warfare (and he gives several examples), which is regarded as being ok in international law so long as doing so is “absolutely necessary,” “proportionate” and in pursuit of an important strategic objective. But this is virtually true by definition in modern warfare. And any case where violence against civilians exceeds, in retrospect, necessity and proportionality, can always be attributed to bad apples among the lower ranks or innocent error at the level of commanders. He furthermore suggests that what is labeled “terrorism” can also just as easily be seen as meeting these criteria. In practice the distinction between terrorism and just war comes down, in practice, to a distinction between states and non-state actors, with the strategic objectives of the former treated as legitimate by definition, and the latter never so. Whether his argument is convincing will come down to the details of the examples he cites, and not merely the form of the argument that I have outlined (which, without the examples, may come across as a sophistical). The journal has made the article available for free download here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09557570902956580

Darragh McDowell @ 6:

I think you will find several non-crazy people have noted that IRA men who disagreed with Adams and McGuinness tended to run into things very much more lethal than British roadblocks. The Loughgall martyrs, for a start. Some would regard that as a form of drone-free targeted assassination (with unintentional civilian casualties). Compare and contrast with current drone warfare …

But even those who argue that Sinn Fein/PIRA have become a wholly-owned subsidiary of MI5 would hesitate to claim they were so in the 70s or 80s. Surely the reason there were no SAS killings in Boston was that, to be effective, they would have to have targeted US civilians who supported the IRA: and though the US government and people are fairly relaxed about Americans killing foreigners, they very strongly disapprove of the reverse.

LFC @100: I suspect Ben meant: “No American politician will ever be held to account for terrorizing civilians.” Wouldn’t you agree?

Watson Ladd 06.09.12 at 3:58 pm

«The Falklands are inhabited by British subjects: their dispossession would be illegitimate no matter how justified Argentina was in seeking British surrender. »

They may choose between remaining there as British citizen in Argentina, adopt argentinean citizenship, o going back to UK, or anywhere else on Earth. Why should it be different than with British residents in India? Or Hong Kong?

geo @101
LFC …: I suspect Ben meant: “No American politician will ever be held to account for terrorizing civilians.” Wouldn’t you agree?

It’s obvious that no US President is going to be tried for anything before an intl tribunal given the current setup of, and distribution of power within, the intl system. I don’t think that Obama deserves to be tried, though I disagree with some of his actions, eg extensive use of drones.

novakant 06.09.12 at 7:22 pm

International law is a hypocritical travesty at best, a convenient tool for imperialistic power politics at worst.

So was ordinary law not so long ago. And it would not surprise me that it’s still the present in a lot of place on earth.

Antoni Jaume @103

It is news to me that either India or Hong Kong ever had populations that considered themselves 100% British, or that either were invaded, or that such invasions would have been justified if the populations had been 100% British. Please clarify.

leederick, surely you can see it is perverse to expect soldiers to not kill civilians when those civilians can kill them for firing at soldiers they are nearby! Article 3, clause 1 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.” Protocol I, article 37 prohibits perfidy, defined as “Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence”

I didn’t make up these rules: persons who appear to be civilians who then take advantage of their status to attack soldiers are guilty of war crimes. Your argument seems to be that this ignores the right to kill in defense of others. But if you want to fight to defend the soldiers, why not join them?

“I didn’t make up these rules: persons who appear to be civilians who then take advantage of their status to attack soldiers are guilty of war crimes. Your argument seems to be that this ignores the right to kill in defense of others.”

It isn’t. There’s a clear difference between soldiers who dress in civilian clothes in order to commit perdify, and actual civilians who kill in self defence. Article 37 bans the first but not the second.

Stephen 06.09.12 at 7:36 pm
Antoni Jaume @103

«It is news to me that either India or Hong Kong ever had populations that considered themselves 100% British, or that either were invaded, or that such invasions would have been justified if the populations had been 100% British. Please clarify.»

Some of the inhabitants of the Raj were British that installed there, some possibly for longer than in the Falklands, then the UK had to relinquish the Raj it did not take their opinion as binding. And the same was certainly true in Hong Kong. As for the invasion, well they had had not expelled all the previous inhabitants, so they were already there. Which in my opinion means the British had more legitimacy to remain. It is not as in the Diego Garcia case.

Theophylact: indeed, hence my rather contrived phrasing.

Watson: it’s unlikely that there are any British subjects on the Falkland Islands. With a civilian population of 3,000 people predominantly born on the islands, the chances that any of them were born before 1949 in India, Pakistan or Ireland and subsequently failed to acquire either British citizenship, citizenship of their country of birth, or citizenship of any other country, are somewhat remote. There are, on the other hand, about 4,000 British citizens (Falklanders, expats and military personnel).

Details, details, Andrew. Even if what you say were beyond dispute — which it isn’t — I don’t think it would be of much use in defending the indefensible. And make no mistake, that’s the task you’ve set yourself here. We’re being governed by psychopaths who think that bombing wedding parties by remote control from halfway around the world is a) effective, and b) legally defensible. The rest is just the lipstick on the pig.

Andrew F: You haven’t addressed the question of how one can be (legally) at war with a non-state organization. The short answer is: one can’t. But the main problem with your answer is that you ignore the obligations of the United States under the UN Charter. That is what the US government did in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, beyond token, unpersuasive (to the rest of the world) rationalizations. This is a large part of why the UN is ineffective and international law is, as observed above, a bad joke.

Rambo III is one of the most hilarious versions of this; recommended to all comers.

In today’s issue of the Los Angeles Times you’ll find a story about Sgt. 1st Class Walter Taylor, who is faced with a trial for killing a civilian motorist after a bomb explosion hit his patrol.
1) Given that there seems to be no way to legally apprehend an Al Qaida member in Pakistan, what are the options? It may be that drone strikes cause fewer civilian casualties than ground troops, cerainly less than occupation or large scale bombing campaigns.
2) The US certainly doesn’t believe that soldiers can indiscriminately kill civilians.

I’ve been thinking about this problem since the earlier thread. The most legal, moral answer to the possibility of Al Qaida terrorist attacks seems to be to do nothing but wait for them and try to minimize the damage. I’m not a good enough person to be comfortable with that option.

“By that reasoning anyone in the world who is deemed by a couple of intelligence analysts (in secrecy) to be connected or affiliated is a legitimate target for killing, along with anyone near them.”
Yet before we get to your slippery slope argument, let’s be clear: What the groups NATO is targeting have done is not secret and whom President Obama is targeting is not secret. These attacks were not commenced due to an arbitrary executive decision; it was the consequence of horrific actions taken by these groups, and the long-standing failure to rein them in.

Panetta has openly said that the drone attacks are aimed at al Qaeda and the Haqqani offshoot of the Taliban groups that the ISI has supported and that the Pakistani government has proven unwilling to counter. More action should be taken against Lakshar-e-Taibi; it seems that at present only the leader has been targeted for rightful assassination. Leaders, by the way, have been successfully assassinated. I still remember Tariq Ali immediately trying to deflect attention away from the ISI after the Mumbai massacre by suggesting that India look to its own Muslims. What a terrible thing to say.

These groups have attacked the civilian government of Afghanistan and killed secularists, feminists, magistrates, journalists, and aid workers.

If the Pakistani civilian government and ISI had acted appropriately both in terms of police action and political strategy, this would not be happening. Obama is absolutely correct about this. US imperialism built up their capacities over decades; finally Obama is cleaning up the mess that US imperialism created. It can be hoped that the financial pressure that he is putting on Pakistan will lead to proper action by the civilian government and the ISI, so that there will be no need for drone attacks. If people are outraged by the drone attacks, why is their attention not directed at the duplicity of the civilian Pakistani government and secret services? It’s within their power to stop them.

“leederick, the question comes down to privileged vs. unprivileged combatant.”

No, it doesn’t, there are two questions. The first question is whether someone is a combatant and has committed a warlike act as opposed to ordinary self defence. The second is whether if they they are a combatant they are privileged or unprivileged.

The first question is easy to answer in some cases. If there’s a military convoy not engaged in any offense action which you spray with machine gun fire – that’s pretty clearly a warlike act. But if you don’t personally instigate any offensive action, but instead respond after you are put at risk by the actions of others, things are murkier.

hartal @127
Yes, but as you know this whole issue cannot be separated from Pakistan’s longstanding and continuing mistrust and fear (perhaps somewhat irrational, but it exists nonetheless) of India. A main reason the ISI continues to tolerate and/or support certain militant groups using the Afghanistan/Pakistan border regions as a base is that ISI thinks it needs these groups to further its (perceived) interests in Afghanistan esp. after 2014. Panetta’s recent call for India to take a more active role in Afghanistan (eg in training Afghan police), plus his continued expressions of impatience (coupled with veiled threats) re Pakistan’s lack of action on the ‘safe havens’, suggest that the US does not think that the Pakistan govt and ISI will change their approach. Thus while it may be true that “if the Pakistani civilian government and ISI had acted appropriately both in terms of police action and political strategy, this [drone attacks] would not be happening,” the reason they haven’t “acted appropriately” has to do in significant part with the India-Pakistan rut that they seem unable to break out of or think beyond, occasional friendly gestures betw the two countries notwithstanding. This is why concerted efforts to improve India-Pakistan relations and solve the Kashmir issue should have been an integral part of the US/NATO strategy for an acceptable outcome in Afghanistan.

Changing the Kashmiri dynamics which have changed since Pakistan’s failed response to the earthquake in 2005 won’t stop rogue elements from seeking strategic depth in Afghanistan through the Taliban, a strategy which has led only to the Taliban having strategic depth in Pakistan. And that is the point. The Pakistani government and military have proven themselves quite capable of reining in the Haqqani network and its brother in arms Lakshar-e-Taibi. From a review of Rashid’s recent book: “It is all very well for the jehadis to hide out in enclaves in the wilds of Waziristan and mount guerrilla operations against innocent civilians and guilty military targets, but as the swift Pakistani reaction (documented by Rashid) showed when the jihadis reached Swat or Buner, a hundred kilometres from Islamabad as the missile flies, or tried insurrection from within the Lal Masjid in the heart of Islamabad, the Pakistani state came into its own to protect the essential interests of the classes who have captured the Pakistani state as soon as these came under dire threat. ”
That is the point. So now pressure is being put on Pakistan to do what has proven capable of doing. Afghanistan must be given the freedom to develop its own diversity in unity. A sovereign Afghanistan will seek stronger diplomatic and economic relations with India.

@132 Well, this thread seems to have established that the drone strikes are illegal. Most posters on the thread argue that the US is doing the indefensible. I’m wondering what other options there are. If drone strikes in Pakistan are illegal, then all use of force would be. So, assuming the US has a legitimate interest in not having terrorist strikes, what should it do instead? What would be an effective alternative?

You could argue that the US is overly afraid of attacks and that Americans should suck it up and live with risk. I’m sympathetic to that argument, to a point.

I suspect that illegal drone attacks are the least evil use of force option available at this time. I think at this time the Gore idea of treating the problem as a law enforcement issue is unworkable because of past US idiocy. I don’t think the US can negotiate its way out of the conflicts either.

So, I have two reasons for asking. First, as an American, I should probably try to influence the nation to stop drone attacks, so it would be better to have an argument to do so.

Second, I enjoy thinking about moral issues and strategy, and doing so more fun in a conversation.

Those “groups” are something like heads of the Hydra. They exist for a reason. Sure, shooting missiles from drones (or whatever) into villages associated with this particular group is a strong disincentive for people to be a part of it. But they get pissed off even more, and, while this particular group may indeed disappear, instead a couple of new, and nastier, groups will emerge. And you’ll end up remembering your old good Haqqani network with nostalgia.

Colin, in World War II several Axis leaders were targeted for assassination. Yamamoto got shot down over Papua New Guinea, Heydrich got blow up, etc. All of these were targeting individuals, as obviously is every time a group is targeted.

And guess what: It doesn’t matter. Individuals who are members of al-Queda are killable because they are members, just like anyone who signs up for the army can be targeted by an enemy army. I think we are all aware that eliminating al-Queda means killing individuals.

El Salvadorian rebels knew they could be killed by the state forces, and likewise dealt death to all in the army they opposed. The issue is with the civilians who were killed.

john b, I wasn’t aware that the UK had finally become a republic with citizens instead of a monarchy with subjects.

Hartal, the ‘Haqqani network’ is not going to be destroyed by US drone attacks or any other Obama policy. Afghanistan is not going to ‘develop its own diversity in unity’ and ‘seek stronger diplomatic and economic relations with India’. Ahmed Rashid and Tariq Ali are not the only commentators on the region.
It’s clear that targeted killings have proven to be a quite effective tactic against Al Qaeda, but with domestic groups that have actual support bases it is nearly useless. When the great US/ ‘Haqqani network’ peace deal comes, I look forward to you arguing why the US Midwest is now once again in mortal danger.

No I wasn’t suggesting Rashid and Ali are on the same page.
But, and I”m sorry if this question is ignorant, your response seems to imply that (1) Obama is putting pressure on the Pakistani military to destroy the ‘Haqqani network’, which would then allow (2) ‘closer diplomatic and economic ties with India’ and possibly (3) ‘talks with those Taliban who are willing to live in a multicultural country’.
Why would Pakistan do this? And is this a realistic endpoint? Also, do you see the military action in SWAT as a success?

Sorry that is not interesting enough to you. Yes Archbishop Romero did not deserve to die, and the same can’t be said of the leaders of the H network and LeT. It’s an unbelievable insult to the memory of Romero for you to suggest that the line between him and Hafiz Mohammed Saeed is indiscernible. Such a line is easily drawn through rational public discussion, and is immediately obvious to any rational leftist. Which implies one of two things.
As for the question of why Pakistan would live with a neighboring state that is not in a vassal status–it will be forced to do so through military and economic pressure.

hartal, various individuals are being killed by the drones, presumably under secret US Presidential order (I’d guess the General’s etc have some influence here – but if it’s secret there’s not a lot of way of telling who and how). I haven’t followed the issue closely, but your statement that “Such a line is easily drawn through rational public discussion, and is immediately obvious to any rational leftist” is evidently untrue when, so far as I am aware, there is no public discussion to speak of about whom the Presidential drone targets ought to be.

Hartal @146: Archbishop Romero did not deserve to die, and the same can’t be said of the leaders of the H network and LeT

Can’t you get it through your head that it is not your right, or the President’s, to act on judgments like this without due process?

“insult to the memory of Romero for you to suggest that the line between him and Hafiz Mohammed Saeed is indiscernible”

I’ve made no statement of that kind nor anything logically entailing it. FWIW I knew Ignacio Martin-Baro, one of the Jesuits killed in 1989, and several other victims of political killings in Central America, to which I devoted a decade of work. I rather doubt any of them would be happy about having their memories enlisted by you in support of state killing without due process.

It’s obvious that the assassination list features the leaders of the al Qaeda, the H network and and LeT. And it’s probable that some of the intelligence has come from some within the ISI. Which may mean that the US does not have good intelligence on the Afghani groups that are hitting NATO convoys and carrying out horrific suicide bombings. There is a reason to fear that signature strikes could go terribly wrong.
Yet it’s absurd that we demand that the US military can only take action against admitted terrorists on the condition that they take them alive and allow them their day in court.
It is also my belief that those invoking international law for the protection of the H network and LeT are here only seeking an excuse to save their tax dollars by a hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan because they could care less about the destruction and reaction that the forces that US imperialism created with the ISI visits and would continue to visit on innocent people throughout the region.
It’s the US responsibility to do what it can to destroy what it paid to create and what its aid was used to strengthen.
So far, the civilian government and military in Pakistan have been too willing to outsource the counter-insurgency to the US. Obama himself wants out. All the attention is on the drones, not on the immense and unprecedented financial pressure that Obama is putting on Pakistan to take action itself.

“It’s obvious that the assassination list features the leaders of the al Qaeda, the H network and and LeT.”

Even on a generous interpretation of the term “leaders”, that can’t amount to more than a few dozen people.

And it’s already on the public record that
(i) targets include people of unknown identity whose behavior, as observed from drones, is considered an indicator of terrorist activity.
(ii) ex post, any male of military age killed by a drone is considered to have been a legitimate target

So, why don’t you try again with your specification of who may be on the kill list.

Can you define “observed to carry out terrorist actions for said groups”? How does it differ, for example, from “observed to give material support to terrorism”?

This is a genuine question, not rhetorical. I have a reasonably clear idea, thanks to US legal cases, of what kinds of actions might be regarded as legal proof of “material support for terrorism”. Clearly “observed to carry out terrorist actions” has a lower standard of proof. I assume that the required actions constitute more than “material support”, but I have no idea where the line is drawn. Do you?

As an example, suppose someone is seen driving a car in which a listed target is a passenger, and then seen driving the same car alone. Can they be targeted under current rules? I don’t know. Do you? Do you think they should be?

Hartal, there’s no point in picking easy cases (OBL, heavily armed and about to launch an attack in person), and saying they are included. The question at issue is where the line is drawn between targets and non-targets.

To repeat my question: What about the case where the vehicle isn’t loaded with weapons, and the driver is returning having dropped off the “known terrorist”? Do you know whether s/he is a legitimate target? Only a target if male and of military age? If you know, I’d be grateful for an answer and supporting evidence. If you don’t know, do you think killing such a person is appropriate, or are you prepared to trust those in charge on such matters?

vehicle loaded with weapons … in possession of weapons

In those parts a vehicle loaded with weapons is no more sinister than a vehicle loaded with cheese.

OK, that’s clear enough, hartal. You’re prepared to trust Obama, and presumably his successors[1], to choose who to kill and when to kill them. You don’t need to know what criteria they will use – it’s sufficient that you believe that the President will act in the interests of protecting the US from terrorism.

And in particular, if the ISI, or the secret police force of some Arab dictatorship fingers someone as a terrorist, it’s OK to kill them and anyone of military age who comes into contact with them. This presumably applies to anyone who deals with these indirectly identified terrorists, up to a degree of remoteness wisely determined by the President.

By the way, why the exclusive focus on Pakistan? The US is using strike drones in at least six countries, and has undertaken abductions from many more, including democratic allies. The existing rules appear to allow an almost unlimited extension of the use of drones, potentially covering any case where a national government is unwilling to hand over someone the US regards as a terrorist.

fn1. Or do you have a proposed rule under which Democrats have a veto?

If I remember the Cole and Lobel book correctly, the majority of those suffering infinite detention at Guantanamo were indeed innocent, and turned in to American authorities for bounties. They were then deprived due process and many of them were tortured. The intelligence relied on for the kill list probably originates with the ISI (not people looking for a payout) and is then evaluated by the Pentagon and the State Department. The intelligence is then confirmed by visual evidence. The UN has made clear that the vast majority of civilian deaths has not resulted from US drones or NATO actions; and now that the US has pledged not to hit any civilian residence, the chances of the killing of innocents has been reduced.
What’s surprising is that neither John nor Chris even consider the number of horrific deaths that would result from the actions of the terrorists whom they will not allow Obama to kill.
I find Chris’ question immature as it would be so easy to flip: how happy are you with the terrorist killings in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India you would allow by depriving Obama from killing the leaders of and jehadis associated with such monstrous groups as LeT, the H network and al Qaeda?
Again Obama has made it clear that he will desist from the drone attacks once the Pakistani military generalizes the resolve it showed in Swat; and again he is putting unprecedented pressure on the Pakistani govt to do so. Do the Obama critics here think that is a bad thing too?

“Again Obama has made it clear that he will desist from the drone attacks once the Pakistani military generalizes the resolve it showed in Swat;”

Can you give a cite for this? And how does it square with the expansion of drone attacks in many other countries?

hartal writes @165: neither John nor Chris even consider the number of horrific deaths that would result from the actions of the terrorists whom they will not allow Obama to kill.

Ok, let’s consider that. What do you think that number is, and why?

john b, I wasn’t aware that the UK had finally become a republic with citizens instead of a monarchy with subjects.

I’m not sure what your point here might be, but UK nationals have been citizens rather than subjects since 1949. The UK became a democracy when male and female voting ages were equalised in the late 1920s; I believe the same “not unjustly disenfranchising a large proportion of nominal citizens” criterion was reached by the USA in the mid-1960s.

“The intelligence relied on for the kill list probably originates with the ISI (not people looking for a payout)”

Adding on to Katherine’s link, if you go through The Bureau of Investigative Journalisms database on the drone war, it can help clarify the extent to which the ISI is colluding and the military/state endorsing the targeted killing campaign, for example:

“Ob266 – March 13 2012
Two senior commanders of a Taliban faction were among up to eight people killed in a CIA strike on South Waziristan. The men – part of a group commanded by Maulvi Nazir – died in an attack on their vehicle….Although Nazir’s group fights in the insurgency in Afghanistan, it has maintained a six year ceasefire with Pakistan’s forces inside Waziristan, making it highly unlikely that Islamabad would have endorsed the strike.”

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/01/11/obama-2012-strikes/

John B – actually there aren’t any British subjects left. The British Nationality Act 1981 that did away with ‘subject’ status, replacing it with (I think) seven gradations of British citizen, the lowest of which essentially entitled you to a piece of paper with “British citizen (entitled to a piece of paper with ‘British citizen’ printed on it)” printed on it. Falkland Islanders were one of the groups in that lowermost category until the unpleasantness the following year, after which it was discovered that they should have been in a much higher bracket all along.

All of which made it rather annoying when Charter 88 came along seven years later and started demanding citizenship instead of subjecthood.

Also, what evidence is there that the “immense” financial pressure is working?

Hartal @158: I understand that the Nation, geo, Danby and others would like American troops to apprehend those in the vehicle and make sure that they all enjoy due process in a proper trial.

Can’t speak for the others, but this is my idea of due process, from #148, just a few comments above yours: “go to the Security Council with evidence that jihadi activity in Pakistan is a threat to US security and request that the SC direct Pakistan to suppress that activity, or else face international sanctions, possibly amounting to military intervention.” The drone strikes violate due process in many ways: they flout the authority of the Security Council, which is standard great-power practice and which has made the world a far more dangerous place ; but beyond that, they flout the authority of the courts, specifically the special FISA court, that is supposed to approve targeted assassinations. Not a word so far, you notice, about the rights of the jihadis.

And of course, even if all proper authorizations were obtained and the drone strikes were legal, there is the matter of collateral damage.

JQ @166: With all due disrespect to the “decent left,” I think this comment is a bit hard on them.

Hartal, that is so lame that I’m not going to bother answering. Others may wish to.

Apologies to the 600 million. They have an eloquent spokesman in Hartal!

Jesus. IRA arms smugglers in the US were the focus of ceaseless FBI attention. As regards Norad and Sinn Féin fundraising, that went on in Northern Ireland as indeed it did in London as well.

Stephen: yes, of course that’s what the UK should have done. What would have happened? A veto by the US. But in that case, the world (above all, the US population, which has much more control over the US government than the rest of the world does, though that’s not saying much) would be unmistakably put on notice that the US is not willing to abide by international law.

Something or someone, sooner or later, has to force the great powers to abide by international law or we’re in for a colossally destructive, conceivably terminal war. I understand that you, hartal, and many other people of good will believe that attacking immediate, or intermediate, sources of danger to American citizens is too important a matter to wait until the governments of the great powers can be brought to heel by their populations and a measure of law-enforcement authority can be restored to the United Nations. But I think that unless we address the lawlessness of the great powers, both internationally and domestically, we’ll stumble from one crisis to another until we stumble into a civilization-imperilling war.

Hi Chris,

This is a bit complicated so you might want to check out this article or this article or my blog generally (I often write about self-defense, IHL, and drones).

In brief, however, there are a number of moving pieces. First, there are two bodies of international law governing use of force: 1. jus ad bellum; 2. jus in bello/IHRL. Jus ad bellum governs the lawfulness of a state’s resort to force–this is what Jack is talking about when he’s referring to self-defense or state consent; notably, the other lawful justification for resort to force is when it is authorized under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter by the Security Council.

Jus in bello governs the conduct of hostilities during an armed conflict; it is governed by IHL or the law of armed conflict. It is only triggered when an armed conflict exists–that is, a state may only be subject to the obligations of IHL or vested with IHL’s authority to use force if an armed conflict is ongoing. Whether an armed conflict between a state and a non-state actor is ongoing depends on the intensity of the hostilities and the organization of the non-state actor. If an armed conflict does not exist (because, for instance, the non-state actor is disorganized or the hostilities between the state and non-state actor resemble more a riot or banditry), then any force is subject to International Human Rights Law.

Does anyone know of any work in media studies that compares how Pakistani television encourages a feeling of sharp pain when the country is attacked from the outside but (at least according to Pervez Hoodbhoy) remains almost indifferent when militants slaughter ordinary people, policemen and soldiers? What is the nature of the media in Pakistan? I don’t think this topic is taken up in either Ahmed Rashid’s recent book (I read Descent into Chaos years ago) or Stephen Cohen’s recent ed. book.
The drone attacks seem to have picked up when NATO had been successfully negotiating alternate supply routes to Afghanistan through the Central Asian Republics and thus no longer needed to open up movement through Pakistan again (why else would Panetta speak panegyrically about drones from a military institute in Delhi?) Negotiations with Pakistan seem to have broken down.

Adrian @ 185
Nobody doubts that some elements of the US security forces did what they could to stop IRA arms being sent from the US to Ireland. Nobody on the receiving end doubts that, nevertheless, a substantial amount was not stopped and did kill a fair few people, mostly innocent, in the UK. Likewise, nobody doubts substantial sums of money from the US reached the IRA, not for benevolent purposes.

Now go through that substituting Pakistan for US, and so forth. Jesus, indeed.

Hartal, theres a chapter on the Afghan media in the new book ‘Under the Drones’. I havent got that far yet but it might be useful, if only for the bibliography.
Also, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn live in and write on Afghanistan and the borderlands (I think they set up the Afghan wire service) and speak Dari and Pashtu, so they might be some use if you were interested. I’m sure they would respond to an email looking for info

Geo, how can NATO not have the right to strike al Q and the H network which after all proudly blew up the US embassy in Kabul. Does Obama not have the responsibility to protect NATO troops? Does he not have the right to chase down those who organize suicide bombings to wherever they will retreat?
Obama should not have the right to put anyone on the kill list who is not leading or working in an organization that he has been given the authorization to strike.
The Yemeni and Somali govt may not have the capacity to strike al Q and Pakistan does not have sovereign control over FATA and has proven unwilling to act (it has struck other groups in FATA who may pose a greater internal threat). In fact it seems that the Pakistan military has not wanted to risk the repercussions of striking the H network and has actively cooperated with the US in striking it.

As someone mentioned above, there are serious criticisms in terms of the quality of intelligence on which the President orders drone attacks, the killing of innocents, and the possible counter-productiveness of drone strikes in terms of the strength of the terrorist organization.

There is also the possibility that the drone attacks have so incapacitated leadership that al Q is having trouble organizing big impactful coordinated strikes and that the killing of many more innocents has been prevented by the killing of those in leadership role in al Q, the H network and LeT. It’s also possible that Obama has no other option in the
NATO fight with the H network. Perhaps we cannot take Panetta at his word, but no one has argued that.

Whether or not geo is correct to attribute some (transcendent?) ‘good will’ to the inventively credulous, Andrew F and the rest are certainly putting on a spectacular reality-defying display here.

Apparently AF’s latest suggestion (@188) is that since we don’t have a clue what is really going on, for all we know there might be some secret justification for the US sending out their flying killer robots to rain death on an assortment of distant countries. And ‘for all we know there might be’ obviously licenses the presumption that ‘there is’. FFS.

I agree that we don’t have a clue what these people are up to (these people being JSOC – an unholy merger of the CIA’s covert action capability with special forces units; see link below).

But we do know something about the GWoT, starting (for it hardly seems a good idea to simply ignore this out of fear of name-calling) with the 9-11 commission being ‘set up to fail’ for whatever reason, and continuing through a succession of bald lies about Iraq along with the fixing of intelligence around policy. FFS.

We know that dissenters from GWoT mythology have been hounded and victimised (and one must assume that other potential dissenters and whistleblowers have noticed this too).

We know that there has been extensive use of provocateurs and useful idiots in the attempt to find a continued threat in the US homeland, and btw I would add there has not been a single clear, credible case of a viable post-9-11 terrorist plot linked to ‘al-Qaeda’ or followers of UBL or whatever they are supposed to be.

We know about the recursive process of torturing people until they (a) confess to being terrorists and (b) provide some names of other ‘terrorists’. We have good reason to think that documents have been fabricated and planted in Iraq.

It is clear enough that the whole edifice has the support of a wide constituency of the most powerful who welcome the free hand it provides for domestic repression and foreign adventurism and who, we might observe if we had an ounce of sense, will thus back up whatever propaganda is put out without being troubled by such jejune concerns as truth, justice or body counts.

We know that embedded journalists cannot report impartially, while the unembedded kind get shot (by accident or while being ‘rescued’ if they are white and Western, in some cases quite openly if not). We have good evidence that official US accounts of civilian casualties are routinely understated to the point of fraud, and that any adult male is likely to be classified as an ‘enemy combatant’ or whatever this week’s weaselly formula may be. We know that NATO spokespersons make ludicrous and obviously untrue statements about their attitude to civilian casualties (‘we will never knowingly risk a civilian life’ – Col. Mark Wenham, speaking for ISAF).

We are in a position to observe that most of the stories put out are totally uncheckable by any but a very few individuals whose identities are secret, especially the more dramatic episodes like the killing of UBL which left not a trace. We know that there is a history of false claims being made to justify military action (Taliban refusal to apprehend 9-11 perpetrator; Iraqi WMD; Saddam terror sponsorship; a genocidal Gaddafi, complete with rape squads, solely responsible for the ceasefire failing almost as soon as NATO announced it would never work; a Libyan opposition unaided by NATO; in the case of Gulf 1, I’d personally add to the false incubator-smashing story the green light given to Saddam). We know in particular that there have been a succession of spurious connections made (Taliban-‘AQ’, Saddam-‘AQ’, Uncle Tom Cobbley-‘AQ’), in order to eke out the warmongering power of the 9-11 legend.

Further, the known history of the CIA in particular, and in general US military action both covert and acknowledged, includes a steady stream of very nasty and dirty tricks (‘trump cards’ as Godson senior would call them) across the globe, involving massive civilian casualties and even (if declassified documents are anything to go by) stuff like Operation Northwoods which was apparently signed off and ready to go until JFK vetoed it. We also know that such tricks are (of course) concealed, denied and lied about unless and until, and only to the extent that, they happen to be rumbled, or (more often) everyone involved is dead or long-retired and the whole thing can be treated as happening in some mythical ‘bad old days’.

We know too (assuming we have been paying attention – and if we haven’t, then what, we might ask, the fuck are we doing advertising our dismal opinions) that the US and in particular the CIA has a history of playing games in the strategically important ME-NAfrica-CAsia region. We’ve seen it allying itself with various arabs and Islamists and then abruptly switching or vice versa, or contrariwise, or not, until no-one has a clue what is going on (Saddam, Gadaffi, UBL and the rest of ‘the database’ or ‘al-Qaeda’, protection-racket occupation of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait). On a smaller scale, too, various other kinds of skullduggery such as using madrassas in the ‘stans as ops bases since the 90s.

And of course none of this was honestly reported to the US citizenry, because (a) it was obviously too sneaky to be made public, and (b) they wouldn’t understand. And of course this meant that all kinds of cover stories and explanations had to be made up and publicised with every appearance of truthfulness. To be clear: telling convincing lies to the general public is standard practice where this kind of thing is concerned, and the CIA are expert at it, and regard it as wholly justified because whatever rampage they may be on is always aimed at the summum bonum, the National Security Interest of the United States of America. Even if they can’t quite remember the exact connection, they wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t – and in any case, protecting the freedom of action, reputation and budget of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America is itself a vital component of the National Interest.

So the straw-clutchers and benders-over -backwards will excuse me if I decline to sup from the firehose of bullshit they seem to guzzle on with such relish, and conclude that there is little reason to take at face value any official account about the GWoT.

Even accepting only the most blindingly obvious half or quarter of the points made above is enough to establish that tales from the GWoT are untrustworthy, which is my point – so wholesale rejections only please; no sniping around the edges.

And even if for some reason you suppose Obama to be especially squeamish about satisfying the various pro-conflict constituencies he is nominally in command of, there is little reason to suppose that he isn’t helpfully provided with deniability by being kept off (i.e. not gratuitously added to) various ‘need-to-know’ lists, and there is every reason to suppose that those like the CIA who are in a position to tell him whatever they like, will tell him whatever they like.)

Since I think we may expect the mighty US propaganda machine to make the best case for its actions, there is also little reason to suppose they are keeping back some killer facts which would cast their actions in a better light. So, for the avoidance of doubt, Andrew F’s appeal to unspecified, merely possible justifications is not only nowhere near good enough, but almost certainly incorrect, every bit as much as impressionistic waffle about ‘terrorists’ and similar labels, or for that matter manifestly made-up things like Hartal’s supposed ‘authorisation’ under international law to ‘strike at al-Qaeda’.

I’m reluctant to start fielding more of Hartal’s bandying about of cartoonish branding concepts like ‘AQ’ and ‘the H network’ when he has ignored the previous challenge to substantiate his fantasy about ‘authorisation to strike AQ’. But mention of the US embassy in Kabul being bombed by pissed off locals is pretty rich as a casus belli – this is ten years in, and what the fuck are the US doing there anyway? You cannot bomb the crap out of somewhere, invade, occupy, go round killing people left right and centre and then when someone has the temerity to fight back with hand-held weapons and, er, suicide vests, claim that fact as justification for more of the same (and possibly even – it’s not made clear – as retrospective justification for what’s gone before). Well, you can, clearly, but if there were such as thing as the rule of international law, you wouldn’t be able to get away with it.

FFS. Total lack of connection with the actual meaning of what is being said. Bombers..hunting down…cannot allow… Repetition of rote formulas, parroting of the most tenuous arguments, and ultimately all based on unquestioning trust of professional liars and cheats of exactly the same kind that have been doing unspeakably horrible shit of exactly the same kind, in exactly the same way, for the past half century and more.

BTW some information about the legal position: see https://crookedtimber.org/2011/09/08/the-war-on-terror-an-old-psychohistorical-fable/#comment-377106 for the CFR’s own assessment of how tenuous the US’s own domestic ‘authorization for the use of military force’ is, and the need to make a break from the fons et origo of the GWoT, 9-11, and provide a more free-floating authorisation for whatever these fucking lunatics choose to do next.)

Porous borders are clearly not a lie: tens of thousands of armed individuals have entered Afghanistan from the US , for example.

@201
tens of thousands of armed individuals have entered Afghanistan from the US, for example

which obviously occurred for no reason other than the desire of “these fucking lunatics” (TW) to kill people.

“But mention of the US embassy in Kabul being bombed by pissed off locals is pretty rich as a casus belli – this is ten years in, and what the fuck are the US doing there anyway?”

Locals! Good point, LET! Tim seems to think that ISI war by proxy in Afghanistan and ISI support of LeT are CIA/BJP fabrications. Maybe he may still believe that the Mumbai massacre was carried out by India’s oppressed Muslims. Tariq Ali raised the possibility after all. Perhaps Tim is confident that everything will be alright if everyone just leaves Pakistan alone to achieve whatever strategic depth it wants in Afghanistan. In Tim’s histrionic anti-imperialist monomania: only an imperialist running dog would say that the world has had enough of Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Mullah Omar–brave fighters for the freedom of the Pashtun people and Afghanistan too. Their atrocities must be CIA lies too–right, Tim. Or like the Wicked Witch (it couldn’t be the West of course but of the East) will they dissolve once NATO, the only source of evil in the world today, leaves? Tim shouts: only a mental drone of the CIA would believe otherwise.

Tim, hasn’t the justification for the US war against AQ been stated throughout the thread? AQ launched an attack which triggered the right of the US to engage in war in self-defense. This was a justification widely acknowledged by the int’l community, and moreover one agreed to by most of the int’l community.

That conflict is ongoing.

From my perspective, I still have not read a strong argument that US strikes in Pakistan/Yemen/Somalia are illegal. A proportionality argument could, possibly, be raised against certain individual incidents, but even if such arguments were, they would not invalidate the entire campaign.

As to the secrecy of targeting decisions, this isn’t a new feature of modern warfare. International law doesn’t require each and every strike in a war to be submitted to an indepedent tribunal for justification after the fact – much less justification before the fact.

If there were some persuasive evidence that the war has been expanded beyond AQ and those affiliated with it, I think there’d be a stronger prudential case for concern. But there is no such evidence. Quite the contrary, the US has focused its efforts on these organizations even when its attention might better be placed on other national security challenges.

Andrew F.: for the umpteenth time, Al Qaeda committed a crime, not an act of war. States commit acts of war; individuals or organizations commit crimes. Crimes are properly dealt with by police action, internationally coordinated if necessary. Acts of war are properly dealt with — ie, by states that (unlike the US) care about international law — by recourse to the Security Council (continuing recourse, not obtaining a blank check).

1) My 210 is directed to TW.
2) geo: the conventional approaches to defining an ‘act of war’ may leave something to be desired. One handbook of int’l law defines war as a condition of armed hostility betw states, placing civil wars under the category of ‘non-international armed conflict’. Only by what might be regarded as these verbal ploys can one arrive at the conclusion that non-state organizations can never commit ‘acts of war’.

geo,
You speak as if there is no difference between strikes against al-Qaeda or Haqqani’s forces and the invasion and occupation of Iraq or waterboarding, under international law.
But while the latter represents an assault on international law, the former is at least more ambiguous. Why are you so sure that Security Council resolutions that govern the operations of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan–for example resolution 917 adopted in March 2010 – do not permit targeted killings provided they are used against individuals who are directly involved in combat?

Hartal: Why are you so sure that Security Council resolutions that govern the operations of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan—for example resolution 917 adopted in March 2010 – do not permit targeted killings provided they are used against individuals who are directly involved in combat?

Resolution 1917 makes no mention of force except for: 1) condemning the Taliban for IEDs and violence against civilians; and 2) calling on the invading forces to continue (sic) their efforts to avoid and investigate civilian casualties. In any case, your question is an odd one. Why should the burden of proof be on opponents, rather than on a global superpower that has a habit of using force illegally and wants to use it again in a specific situation? Shouldn’t it, out of a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, seek explicit authorization for morally controversial tactics, either from international authority or from its own courts?

I’d almost left this thread for good, but Tim W’s comment #199 makes me glad I stuck around. I second geo #202.

Yes, I am concerned about the killing of civilians and the calling of anyone who happens to be killed “individuals who are direct servants of Imperialism”–whether they be feminists, secularists, aid workers, or diplomats.
I am very concerned about it. I also liked the Buddhist statues blown up those who would like to take power again. I would not want to go through surgery without anesthesia. Or hand over a country the size of France to those who would allow every and any Islamic terrorist organization to operate freely.

Geo, why do you suppose int’l law requires that the acts of AQ on 9/11 be considered crimes not triggering the right of self-defense? The UNSC called them threats to int’l peace and security, and explicitly affirmed the right of the US to self-defense, in res 1368 immediately following the attacks. NATO, among other organizations, also recognized the attacks as rising to the level of an armed conflict, not simply a crime. That doesn’t mean that they can’t also be considered crimes, as in fact they are. But that an act is a crime does not insulate the criminal, or organization responsible for the criminal acts, from a military response if self-defense justifies it.

The fact that AQ is not recognized as a govt, either de facto or de jure, does not insulate them from a military response. The right of self-defense applies regardless of the status of the organization from which the threat emanates.

The invocation of international law is even worse here—they don’t care about young women forced into marriage to cousins from back in the “pind.” Nor do they care about Shia, Hindus, and Christians killed by Pak-gov’t funded militants in Pakistan.

We’re not especially good at preventing these sorts of things from happening by military intervention.

It’s like, you realize your bike chain is damaging the gears, so you grab a wrench and disassemble the frame and squirt all the parts down with WD-40.

Someone notices you and asks, “why are you doing that?” After lying a few times just trying to get them off your back, you say, “I’m addressing some serious problems with what the chain is doing to the topshift gear. See this, where it has been grinding? Not only is that horrible ongoing damage, it’s evidence that at any time this chain could snap, sending the rider into a catastrophic midstreet collision.”

The person has been listening, a bit impatiently. “But if you really are interested in fixing the chain problem, this seems like an awful way to go about it. Not to mention the WD-40 in this quantity must have been very expensive, and all it’s likely to do is rot the tires and plastic brake grips, increasing your risk.”

“Urgent times call for urgent measures. You don’t seem very worried about the chain snapping. I suppose you’d rather see the accident happen.”

“No, that’s not it. Uh, I don’t even know how to ask this any other way. Why is this the solution you’re pursuing? Most of it seems barely relevant to the problems you claim to want to address. So… why dissemble the whole thing into hundreds of pieces? And… for the love of Moloch, why did you soak it all in WD-40?”

“Shock and awe. “

Andrew: int’l law is a self-help system, particularly in national security matters

I think you’re entirely wrong about this. I don’t think you quite realize that war was outlawed by the United Nations Charter. Disputes between nations were thenceforth to be settled by the UN, with the use of force arbitrated by the Security Council. It was quite a solemn enactment: the acknowledgment by a chastened world that the last global war had killed off a distressingly large proportion of the species, and that, in view of recent advances in weaponry, the next one might very well finish the job. It was universally recognized that old doctrines of national interest and national sovereignty were obviously inadequate and had to go, at least when it came to interstate conflict.

Of course the great powers very soon made clear that they had no intention of abiding by the spirit of this new dispensation, so it is now nearly a dead letter. But since the US still claims to be a law-abiding nation — in fact, the very incarnation of respect for law — it seems worthwhile pointing out its hypocrisy whenever the subject comes up. It also seems worthwhile reminding the populations of the world — the ones in danger of being incinerated if our reversion to great-power hegemony and international anarchy has the anticipated result — that their interest lies in holding their governments to a restraining legal regime already in place, which is after all easier than trying to get those governments to agree to one de novo.

Geo, when the UNSC is silent, a nation need not refrain from acting in self-defense. The UNSC has recognized the right of the US to self-defense in the matter at various points, has not condemned the US for engaging in self-defense, and has not otherwise acted. In international law, IF the UNSC acts, AND IF that action is sufficient to the needs of a nation’s self-defense, THEN the nation has a legal obligation to stand down. That has not been the case here.

Instead there has been a continuing conflict, in which the UNSC has not intervened, and as such US actions within the law of armed conflict are legal.

Niall McAuley

“But in international law, hanging by the neck until dead is still the precedent for starting wars of aggression, and that’s still the sentence awaiting George W.”

Awaiting also, I suppose, if even posthumously at least one of national leaders in the Korean, multiple Vietnamese, and Indo-Pakistani and Israeli-Arab and Libyan-Chad and Somali-Ethiopian and Eritern-Ethiopian and Sino-Indian and Sino-Tibetan and Armenian-Azerbaijani and Georgian-Russian and Falklands and Congolese wars, I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few. Not to mention Mr G Adams.

I do appreciate that none of these involved the infinitely evil Republican Party.

Look, either your precedent has been completely abandoned long ago or both parties in these wars were conducting wars of self-defence. Which?