International law lags behind international war. That's the problem with drones.
International law defines war as armed conflict between nations. The rest is crime.
Only now we're in a protracted armed conflict with an amorphous non-state entity, some of it directed by Al-Qaeda, some operating independently (recruited by the Internet or by radical clerics), some operating semi-independently.
By international law all these people are simply criminals.
They aren't. Nor are they some country's soldiers. That makes them "unlawful combatants." As such they are not covered by the Geneva Convention, which regulates armed conflict between countries. That doesn't mean we can do whatever we feel like to them, but appeals to the Geneva Convention are irrelevant.
They aren't members of any country's military, but they operate within counties, some of which knowingly harbor them, others of which don't willingly harbor them, but also don't actually control territory in which they operate. And of course some of these terrorists operate in failed states or quasi-failed states.
In countries we have extradition treaties with, which have effective police forces, and which actively cooperate with the USA in anti-terrorist operations, we can pursue terrorists operating there using internal security operations, including police forces.
But there are other countries where only some or even none of those conditions apply. If terrorists believe they can operate there with impunity, of course they will.
Now under current international law, under such circumstances many legal-minded people believe our hands are tied--that even if we know where particular terrorists are in such countries, we mustn't do anything about it.
Additionally, some of these countries actually want us to kill them, because the terrorists threaten those countries' governments as well. Yemen is an example of this.
I believe we have every right to defend ourselves, and that this defense is neither purely military nor purely police-based. It's a bit of both.
And this is where UAVs come in. With proper intelligence they allow us to wage what might be called "warlets" inside other countries where it's appropriate. In these circumstances it would be extremely impractical to try to kill the terrorists with ground forces, or to depend on the country's police to catch them.
Our quasi-war with these quasi-organizations requires us to use things like UAVs. As Sandra Day O'Connor said, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact."
Those who oppose UAVs are people who are still fighting Hitler. For them, anything that doesn't protect the rights of every human being on Earth should not be done, even if not doing so allows a terrorist to kill many people--possibly including Americans, where there is no other practical way to stop them. And anything that doesn't put every individual human's rights far, far above our collective rights to self-defense means we're a police state exactly like Nazi Germany.
Like far right wingers, such people live in a black & white world, with Good and Evil and nothing in between.
It's really funny seeing such people try to deal with President Obama, since he's sending in the UAVs in force to kill our enemies. The far lefties who voted for him are appalled, while the right wingers who fervently believe he's "soft on terror" because he's a Democrat simply cannot mentally accommodate the fact that the President is more warlike in reality than President Bush II was (especially if you agree with me that we invdaded Iraq instead of doing the job right in Afghanistan.)
We should include pirates as unlawful combatants, and kill them on sight using UAVs off the coast of Somalia among other places. However, we should only do this if we also prevent foreign trawlers from fishing in Somali waters.
Operating lawfully is a Good Thing. But the law must be interpreted in a way that maps to current reality. And we mustn't let history cripple our understanding of the present. Remember, history in fact never repeats itself exactly. Every new situation is just that--new.
2 comments:
I see no problem sticking a missile up Bin Laden’s ass.
But I see some problems with this widespread policy of firing missiles willy-nilly, as it seems to be the case.
There’s no judicial process, the whole thing is decided by some CIA bureaucrats that have a vested interest in killing people – their “scorecards” and promotions are tied to killing terrorists, aren’t they? Since there’s nobody reliable on the ground to check which is which, you may as well end up killing innocent civilians. Actually, the deck is stacked so that you *will* kill innocent civilians and label them “terrorists” after the fact. You know, every Vietnamese the US killed in Vietnam was a Vietcong, right?
Even if you do kill some actual terrorists here and there, there are other questions
1)The moral question of how many civilians killed are worth one dead terrorist;
2)Are the “terrorists” really in a position to do harm to the US? Maybe he’s a poor slob that is holding a AK47 and yelling “death to America” so he can get a hot meal a day; there must be some “proportionality principle”, like the police cannot shoot someone because he/she spat on the sidewalk, even if it’s a crime/misdemeanor;
3)What is the net result? Doesn’t it fuel more terrorism? If I were mildly pro-US and one of its drones killed a family member of mine, I would join arms with the Taliban. How many terrorists each attack *create*? I would say it, on average, they create more that it destroys;
Americans like to feel they are “doing something” but it does not justify doing dumb things for the sake of it.
Every single war has killed civilians and left their loved ones longing for revenge.
Most soldiers in most wars were just following orders, and in other circumstances could have been the other side's friends.
There was an incident in WWI when soldiers on the German and Allied side sang Christmas carols together from their respective trenches on Christmas eve, then went back to war the next day.
The presumption that we're just firing missles off "willy nilly" is in part the product of our enemies' propaganda machine. It's easy to put up a video on YouTube that shows a dead blown-up child, then say "America did it." The most civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan--by far--are caused by the Taliban/Al Qaeda. What about all the relatives of those murdered and maimed people who want revenge on them?
We try to limit civilian deaths, while the Islamofascists kill them on purpose.
And our ability to limit civilian deaths has been refined considerably, in part due to better technology, in part due to better intelligence.
The vast majority of Afghans don't want any foreigners occupying their country, but they loathe the Taliban--especially the many Afghans who aren't Pashtun (the Taliban are essentially a Pashtun militia bent on conquering the rest of the country)--and their biggest beef is with the Karzai government, not drone deaths. The Karzai government is profoundly corrupt. That's the real problem there.
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