Drones: war criminals or winged justice?

The problem with drones is that using them to kill people not on the battlefield per se doesn't fit neatly into our existing categories of "war" and "police work."

This may seem like a new problem, but it isn't. It's a problem that reappears every time the rules of the game(s) change.

Take the American Revolution. The Brits thought we were war criminals because we didn't always meet them on the field of battle--where their highly disciplined Redcoats could make up for the slow firing pattern of the flintlock musket by arranging to have one row firing while the next row was reloading, and the like.

So instead our soldiers would sometimes not meet them on the "field of battle" where the Redcoats had an advantage, but instead stow snipers in the trees along the routes back to the barracks or tents or whatever, and shoot them in the back as they passed by.

And many Southerners thought General Sherman was a war criminal because he attacked the South's ability to feed & otherwise supply its troops--in the process put many Southern civilians in starvation conditions.

To which accusation Sherman famously replied "War is hell." In the judgment of history, Sherman did the nation a favor because he cut off the South's army at the knees, shortening the war. And thus he even did the South a favor.

And the recent effort to grant women the ability to serve in combat featured the argument that women were already serving in combat--just not getting credit or advancement for it--because what and where is the battlefield today?

The "battlefield" is everywhere and everywhen anyone or any group waging war on our country and its people is preparing to attack us or actually attacking us.

War is no longer just between nation-states. With the Islamofascist movement, our enemy can be anywhere, with no fixed capitol to defend, no land to defend, which, if lost, means the enemy is defeated. 9/11 was planned in Hamburg Germany operationally, and in Afghanistan strategically, and carried out by Saudis for the most part.

Now when that planning is taking place in another country that controls all its territory, has diplomatic relations with us, and is board with our efforts to combat terrorists, then police work is usually the best way to nab them. That was the case with Germany--less so with Saudi Arabia for what should be obvious reasons.

However, Afghanistan was another case. The Taliban controlling it were no friends of us but they were just hosting the Islamofascists who attacked us--who, when defeated, just moved their base of operations elsewhere.

Then what? Our enemies are operating in countries that are either completely hostile to us or which are not in control of the territories where our Islamofascist enemies are operating.

That leaves us with three choices, basically:
1. Invade, in force, countries that aren't at war with us but in whose territory groups at war with America are operating.
2. Concentrate solely on defensive measures within our own territory and rely on other countries' police forces within their territory.
3. Carry out military incursions by special forces, drones and the like.

There's one other option: withdraw completely from all territory that Islamofascists want us out of, and/or convert en masse to Salafist Islam. I won't comment on this option further.

The people who call drone-based assassinations "war crimes" divide between those on the Left, who obviously want Option 2, and those on the Right, who divide between NeoCons who want Option 1 and Isolationists (like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul) who seem to waffle between Options 2 & 3 (though for many their real position appear to be simply opposing anything Obama does, even if he's doing exactly what their guy was doing just a few years ago).

The flaw in Option 2 is that Pakistan's police force mostly hates our guts and will do nothing to help us--in fact they'll mostly help our enemies; Iran's police force is actively helping terrorists who want to attack us and our allies; Somalia's police force doesn't control a lot of Somalia, and ditto for Yemen, and ditto for the Texas-sized north of Mali, and so forth.

So in the case of the places where Islamofascists who have declared war on us are mostly headquartered and operating training camps, Option 2 restricts us to police work within our borders. I doubt many Americans find that acceptable.

Nor do many Americans support going to a full war footing, with a draft and rationing and the whole WWII thing, which is what it would take to invade all the wild places where our enemies are--Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Mali, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and more, simultaneously (since otherwise they'd just go where we aren't).

The notion that the Islamofascist declaration of war on America--on every single American citizen and every bit of our territory and assets--is exactly the same as a criminal gang planning a bank robbery--is ludicrous.

The problem isn't the drones, but the simple-mindedness of ideologists who think "war" still means what it meant during WWII (which it didn't even then, in fact). Not just simple-mindedness, but also the tendency of lawyers to think everything is a legal issue, as in "to a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

We are in a war not of our choosing, with an amorphous, shifting, many-headed enemy that is supported by a number of countries but is not those countries, and which can't be defeated via military invasion of any one or two or three or four of those countries.

It's a war of shadows. Our drones operate out of sight. Our special forces work in the night. They sometimes kill civilians because civilians are ALWAYS killed in wars--the wonder is that we kill so few civilians, and so many fewer civilians then if we were carpet-bombing the areas in question, and so many fewer than when we started out with drones some years ago.

Sometimes drone pilots will loiter over an enemy force for hours, waiting until they can get a clear shot with no civilians nearby. Many drones fly slowly and quietly at pretty high altitudes, with much longer dwell time airborne than manned craft can sustain.

And of course unlike the Islamofascist enemies, we don't target civilians as they do--and they murder vastly greater numbers of civilians that we do in drone strikes and special forces operations. But every time a drone strikes, the enemy publishes grisly photographs of dead babies on the Net, which they claim we killed instead of them. Sometimes--most times--they're lying, but Arab Joe Lunchboxes have zero training in critical thinking and mostly have been indoctrinated from birth to hate us.

So drones and special forces incursions in areas where police forces won't or can't collaborate with us are the least bad of our options.

Don't let anyone deny this without describing what they think we should do instead. I submit that most of what they propose is patently silly--and anachronistic as well.

Calling drone strikes "war crimes" is the same as the Revolutionary Era Brits calling us war criminals for shooting their soldiers--and those red and white uniforms were a great aid for targeting--from concealed positions by sharpshooters.

Nothing the folks whining about "war crimes" have to propose would even start to be effective, showing that they live in a world bounded by their limited imaginations.

The "war crime" would be our nation's government not acting to protect us--protect us from people who are not at war with our armed forces--they're at war with every single one of us.

"The biggest threat to world security is a nuclear Iran"

That's what Mitt Romney just said in the third presidential debate.

Um, Iran isn't nuclear. So "is" "nuclear" and "Iran" don't go together. Obviously Iran is working hard--really hard--on developing nuclear capability.

But Pakistan is nuclear today--not just nuclear energy, but nuclear weaponry. It is also, unlike Iran, politically unstable, with a substantial part of its governing structures hating America, and a majority of its populace hating America. And it has a large, active, radical Islamist element--elements, actually--and even non-radical (by their standards) Pakistanis are, in a majority, radical by Western standards.

Iran is a potential danger, and that danger must not be overlooked. But to put that above the real and present threat of nuclear Pakistan is ridiculous.

Drone-o-phobia

The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by Fareed Zakaria titled "Why Pakistan keeps exporting jihad." Numerous comments ensued--many of them talking about drones killing village-fulls of innocent civilians as a universal truth.

My comment:

Who says our drones are killing vast numbers of civilians?

Islamist radicals and their friends.

Well, they always tell the strict truth, don't they?

And it's not like they have a motive--such as the fact that we're killing off their leadership and they can't go outside without looking up half the time, even though they know they'll never see or hear the drone that's hunting them.

That couldn't possibly be a motive.

And besides, only a complete fool who hates his own country and is unable to analyze the validity of an information source would fall for such obviously self-serving claims...

The real problem is that the ubiquity of videocameras (including those in cell phones) enable people to put horrifying images on the Net and go viral with them, producing knee-jerk reactions in the gullible--without the context that would explain them. Not to mention the ease with which fakery can be slipped into the same gullible people's minds.

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That garnered the following comment on my comment:

tarquinis1 wrote:

ehkzu wrote: Who says our drones are killing vast numbers of civilians?
Islamist radicals and their friends.
Well, they always tell the strict truth, don't they?

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Well ok ehkzu, since you obviously are a Zionist, let's put the shoe on the other foot.

If some country were were via Hellfire strikes killing Zionist leaders in Israel, and via invasions dispossessing millions of Jews from Israel, would you find that acceptable? Or, would that be a cause for which you may take some very serious action?

My point being, double standards will not wash for long in the modern world. The ultimate in hypocrisy will not work for long. For just one example:

Iran is a signatory to the NPT, is the single most inspected nation in the entire world adherent to it, has zero nuclear weapons, and we have no significant EVIDENCE (outside of baseless political allegations) that they are in violation of the treaty, which clearly gives them the full legal rights to develop civilian nuclear power.

Whereas, Israel as a nation that refuses to sign the NPT treaty, possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons, with the most advanced delivery systems, and a world class anti-missile defense defense network, well that is just fine.

No double standard here, no blatant hypocrisy here. After all, the Jews are exempt from international law that would bind any other nation. God says so, at least according to your own writers.

We have killed hundreds of thousands of Muslim peoples in Iraq and Afghanistan. I do not find it surprising that some may well be radicalized by these facts.

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To which I then replied:

Thanks to targuins1 (3 & 5 entries below this) for providing a flawless example of what I was talking about in the entry just before his, and then following it up with yet more proof of how ideologues’ thought processes wind up deriving reality from their ideas, instead of the other way around.

First he leaps to the conclusion that I’m a Zionist—even though my entry said nothing about Israel, I don’t identify myself as a Zionist in my comment, and anyone who reads my blog would see that Israeli issues amount to less than 1% of what I deal with there.

For both Zionists and anti-Zionists, the land occupied by Israel and Palestine is the center of the universe, and these people’s problems are by far the most important problems on Earth.

Talk about self-absorbed. A billion humans live in a state of starvation around the world; we’re rapidly destroying the ecosphere; Palestinian suffering would look like paradise to many people in the eastern Congo and the Darfur and Bangladesh and Burma and many other places. And since I’m rational I know that all religions are twaddle, so the competing religious claims of Jews and Christians and Muslims mean nothing to me theologically.

But to an anti-Zionist, anyone who disagrees with him must be a Zionist, because that’s all there is in their miniature cosmos. Claustrophobic much?

As for his “shoe on the other foot” argument that’s only valid if all killing is morally equivalent. It’s not. We didn’t declare war on the Islamic fascist movement. They declared war on us—on every single American and American ally and anyone else who happens to be standing near one of us, even if they’re devout Muslims, even if we’re in a mosque praying. No exploitation of Arabs by American CEOs justifies targeting noncombatants. We don’t. They do. This is total war by their rules, and we’re killing every leader who sticks his head up. Deal with it.

As for Iran—its fake-elected “president” has repeatedly threatened to erase Israel, and backed it up with mass rallies where adherents scream Death to Israel, Death to America repeatedly, along with an endless propaganda campaign blaming everything but hangnails on Israel. I choose to take him seriously. Any nation that frequently threatens a war of aggression against another country is in a different category than other nations when it comes to nukes. As for its being inspected—that’s not what the UN inspectors say. Perhaps targuin1 has been receiving divine revelations like Ahmadinejad gets.

So yes it’s fine with me that Israel has nukes (where tarquin1’s numbers come from are also, doubtless, divine revelation—Israel sure isn’t talking). Not because I’m ga-ga about Israel, but because it has a democratic government that’s able to demonstrate reasoning powers, while the vastly larger Iran is ruled by revanchists and fruitcakes.

Our war on Iraq was unjustified. I sure didn’t vote for the guy who did that. But I did vote for the guy who’s trying to pick up the pieces. Our war on Aghanistan was abundantly justified, however, and the people who enabled Al-Qaeda to attack us are exactly the ones trying to reconquer the place.

That said, the “facts” radicalizing weak-minded Muslims are called “The Narrative” by Islamic fascists, and it’s 95% baldfaced lies coupled with massive distortions of the Q’uran. There is 5% truth in there but it’s dwarfed by the nonsense.

And drone attacks are a perfect example of that. And tarquin1’s total denial that Islamic fascists could by lying about the nature of such attacks shows that he’s drunk so much of the Kool-Aid that he’s a lost cause. They have motive, means and opportunity. The only way they wouldn’t would be if they believed in telling the truth to unbelievers. And if you believe that I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

It's not a clash of civilizations

For there to be a clash of civilizations, there have to be at least two civilizations. There aren't. We have a civilization. They have a tribe. The difference is that civilizations live by principles. Tribes live by loyalty. A civilization can criticize its own people. I can shout "Obama sucks" or "Christ was a jerk" from the rooftops and nothing will happen to me (outside the deep South that is).

But if I shout "Muhammed was a clown" in the Middle East I'll be killed--probably on the spot.

The Taliban bombed a women's market in Peshawar, Pakistan, murdering 114 poor women and children. And many if not most Pakistanis--even middle class ones--blamed it on the Jews, or the Indians, or the Americans, as part of a Western plot to destroy Pakistan in particular and Islam in general. They refuse to believe that a fellow Muslim could be so evil. And until they do, they're a tribe fighting our civilization.


We all remember what happened when an obscure Danish newspaper published a group of cartoons depicting/satirizing Islam/Muhammed, of which the one shown here is about as harsh as it gets (Danish imams poured gasoline on the fire when they went to the Middle East armed with the Danish cartoons--plus some far worse ones they cooked up themselves and added to the Danish ones).

There were violent riots throughout Muslim countries. Millions took to the streets. People died in the riots. The cartoonists and their publishers had to go into hiding after getting credible death threats in Denmark.

On the other hand, after the October bombing of that women's market? Nada. If a drone kills three civilians and a Taliban general, there are demonstrations and pop songs written against America.

Pakistani pop music is full of denuciations and videos that are anti-American, anti-drone, anti-India, anti-Mossad. Not one word mentioning the Taliban. Of course anyone who did so would be murdered by the Taliban.

So our drone attacks are met with fury over American interference in Pakistani sovereignty, while the Talibans' murdering civilians and, for example, destroying 200 girls' schools are all blamed on outsiders--us, Jews, India.

So yes, the drone attacks make Pakistanis furious. I'd rather they didn't. But as long as we target them carefully, they may represent our best option among a bunch of options that are all bad, but among which we must choose.

Last note on this: frequently the criticisms of what we do there take the form of pointing out that whatever choice has been made will have terrible consequences.

The problem is that every single option we have--including precipitous withdrawl--has terrible consequences. So such criticisms are shallow and unproductive. The question is always, which terrible consequence is the least terrible.

But that's rarely asked.

If you want to read someone who doesn't agree with Obama about Middle East policy, yet who isn't a ranting idiot, check out NYTimes centrist columnist Tom Friedman. A debate between him and the president would be far more illuminating than the potshots the Republican leadership keeps taking.