This issue is not going to go away, nor should it:
A senior United Nations official said on Wednesday that the growing use of armed drones by the United States to kill terrorism suspects was undermining global constraints on the use of military force. He warned that the American example would lead to a chaotic world as the new weapons technology inevitably spread.
In a 29-page report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the official, Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions, called on the United States to exercise greater restraint in its use of drones in places like Pakistan and Yemen, outside the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The report — the most extensive effort by the United Nations to grapple with the legal implications of armed drones — also proposed a summit meeting of “key military powers” to clarify legal limits on such killings.
In an interview, Mr. Alston said the United States appeared to think that it was “facing a unique threat from transnational terrorist networks” that justified its effort to put forward legal justifications that would make the rules “as flexible as possible.”
But that example, he said, could quickly lead to a situation in which dozens of countries carry out “competing drone attacks” outside their borders against people “labeled as terrorists by one group or another.”
Basically, the United States has decided that it has an absolute right to impose the death sentence on anyone they suspect of being a terrorist, and anyone who happens to be near the alleged suspect. Or anyone who is mistaken for someone we suspect to be a terrorist. Or anyone near someone we have mistaken for someone we suspect to be a terrorist. Wired magazine had a piece a couple months back after Noah Schachtman spent some time in Pakistan, and basically, there simply appears to be no rules before firing away.
Which is why every couple of weeks you hear about another drone attack that allegedly killed Al Qaeda’s #3, and then a few weeks later we learn that no, that was actually a wedding party we vaporized. Whoops! Mistakes were made! There will be a full investigation! Hearts and minds!
NobodySpecial
Why don’t we just go traditional and hire ninjas?
flotsam
well if they were smart, the dead civilians, or collateral damages, wouldn’t have been standing near people that look like terrorists.
The Grand Panjandrum
I’ve just spent the last week backpacking around VT and NH and fishing along the way. Glad to see all is still right in the world. USA, fuck yeah!
John S.
Interesting choice of words, Cole.
I guess that explains Joe Biden’s claim on Charlie Rose last night that Israel has an “absolute right” to defend itself. So the US and Israel get to kill
anyoneany terrorist they want in the name of ‘self-defense’. But it’s a special privelege not bestowed upon any other country in the world.Why? Shut up, anti-semitic freedom hater!
mr. whipple
@The Grand Panjandrum:
How was the fishing?
MattF
It’s those ‘oopsie’ episodes that make one wonder what’s going on. I guess one lesson is that any department that labels itself ‘Intelligence’ should be regarded with, um, skepticism.
Flitterbic
The solution is simply to require drone operators to wear foam USA #1 fingers. They’ll never be able to hit the fire button and will instead perform drone aerial acrobatic shows spelling out USA #1 in the skies over Terrorburgh. Problem solved without loss of patriotism.
The Grand Panjandrum
@mr. whipple: Decent. Lot of smallmouth and trout right now. Batten Kill over by Manchester, VT was spectacular.
PeakVT
America, the greatest
democracyrogue nation ever.Also: good to see our intellegence agencies still haven’t learned the word “blowback”.
kindness
Who was it who said that fascism would come to America wrapped in the flag and thumping a bible? I could google it but I won’t.
bush43 took the first steps in that direction. Sadly, and here I agree with Glenn Greenwald, the Obama Administration not only did not do away with the worst provisions of the dubya regime (spying on citizens w/o warrants, holding people without charging them, killing people without a trial) but instead embraced them after campaigning against them.
Now I don’t think Obama is a fascist, don’t get me wrong. But how you act is important as it lays the parameters for those who follow & I’d have preferred that everyone agreed that bush43 was an abomination who should have gone to jail (& his little dog Cheney too, heck the whole Cheney family)
cleek
remember when unmanned aircraft were scary ?
good times
Adam C
@flotsam:
I blame the people who look similar to suspected terrorists for standing near other people.
tkogrumpy
@cleek: You fooled me I was sure you were linking to a youtube scene from Terminator.
jrg
…and this differs from every other modern war how?
A reasonable discussion can be had about whether or not we should be in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but there is simply no way we can avoid collateral damage while we’re there. Hell, we cannot completely eliminate collateral damage from police forces here in the U.S.
Even if we could, our enemies over there still would be claiming that killed extremists were actually innocent bystanders.
Zifnab
War. War never changes.
Sheila
There is an interesting, albeit not very profound, discussion of this in the May issue of DISCOVER magazine. I am a pacifist and against all killing, but I find interesting the discussion of whether or not drones would be more discretionary than people in their killing, though at the end of it all I agree with Zifnab: “War never changes.” As long as we result to it, we are abnegating our responsibility as the one animal capable of reflection, and we give validity to the idea that violence is an efficacious way to “resolving” conflicts, when, in reality, the use of violence simply encourages more violence. For thoughtful, forward-minded creatures, the ends should determine the means, not vice versa, because this is the way the cosmos works.
Stefan
Here’s an issue I haven’t seen addressed much: the drones are operated largely by the CIA, and thus by men who are not in a uniformed military. Doesn’t that make the drone operators and all who support them “illegal combatants” or “unlawful combatants” by the US definition? After all, they are conducting warfare while not dressed in uniform or abiding by any military rules or regulations. And since they are often piloting the drones from civilian areas far behind the front lines (sometimes even in the US), doesn’t that make the sites where they operate from (again, even in the US) legitimate military targets for the enemy to strike back against?
Alex S.
Well, this is the barbarism of war. Every war turns generals and commanders into judges of life and death.
tim
This is the mode in which I most respect The Cole.
Irony Abounds
Sorry John, but I think you are a bit off base here, at least in tone. Studies have shown that the drones kill far fewer civilians than have been claimed, and I doubt the alternative, sending in large numbers of troops to get these people will some result in less collateral damage. I understand the point that because the truth is distorted by those in Pakistan it does have the potential of creating more terrorists than are killed, but then again, large scale invasions won’t? What is your solution John? Just don’t kill them. Let them live amongst the general population as a safe haven? I have heard the arguments against use of drones, but what is the alternative?
LikeableInMyOwnWay
This sounds like something Israel might do. Oh, but it’s us.
The Israel-US axis is now the most bellicose and dangerous alliance on earth. Armed to the teeth and equipped with a God Given Right(tm) to set the world right as we see fit, we are on the road to perdition as far as I am concerned.
El Cid
If I were in Afghanistan, I’d request that we not have a wedding party to celebrate, because that pretty much appears to be an unfailing magnet for a drone strike.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@El Cid:
I like the idea that we are bringing “freedom” to Afghanistan by making it lethal for Afghanis to gather in groups larger than three people.
Not illegal. Lethal. Freedom isn’t free, as they say.
liberty60
@jrg:
The trouble with using new and novel techniques of warfare, is that everyone begins to use them.
So what prevents, say, China from launching a drone attack against Tibeten “terrorists” in San Diego? Or Iran from dropping a bomb on “terrorists” in Manhattan?
Someone somewhere is going to conclude that the 9-11 attacks were nothing more than a drone attacks against the financiers of Zionism.
What people want to wish away, is that we are waging war against an enemy within a sovereign nation without a declaration of war, without a goal or end game or strategy other than killing people we think might possibly someday be dangerous to us.
I find it odd that it is the military that is being the most cautious of this, having recognized that this isn’t one problem we can kill our way out of. It is the CIA and civilian agencies that haven’t figured that out yet.
daveinboca
basically, there simply appears to be no rules before firing away. Typical Juan/John Cole BS!
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Right there, the root of the problem.
By walking away from formal declarations of war since WWII, we’ve abandoned the closest thing we had to a legitimate process and replaced it with an accountability-free, rubber stamp for a unitary executive’s war powers. I can’t imagine how it could get more dangerous, unless we eliminated even the pro forma votes in congress designed mainly to shield everyone in the government from taking responsibility for anything.
BombIranForChrist
Anyone know why we are still in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Me neither.
But I am sure that in Obama’s 532nd dimensional chess game, it’s all fine, so GO OBAMA! At least he’s not Bush (sort of).
Jager
What if Mexico bought a few drones and used them to track Sheriff Joe and his stormtroopers in Maricopa County Az?
El Cid
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
See this.
pandera
Liberty60 got it exactly right – there can never be, will never be a victory in this war. It either goes on forever – with every innocent killed recruiting more people who justifiably hate us to fight against us who we then can point to and say, “see the job’s not done yet” or we slink away. It’s a nightmare. Here’s something about Sully’s take on drones –
goatchowder
Does anyone have any idea how easy it is to create a drone? An amateur radio-controlled airplane enthusiast could do it.
The technology is so simple and readily available. Could do a lot of automation too with an Atmel AVR, and any number of different kinds of radio and datacomm technologies. The physics of getting enough lift to haul a decent-sized bomb is a bit more daunting, but not impossible.
I saw a guy a couple years ago who had built a drone successfully and posted complete instructions (no I am *NOT* going to link it, I don’t want to encourage this kind of insanity).
The only thing saving us from some very nasty widespread destruction is the fact that terrorists tend to be idiots (like the car-bomb moron in NYC who didn’t even know to whack the safety valve off of a propane tank). Law enforcement seems to be keeping on top of tracking down and stopping the more competent ones, but still.
I’m not sure that we’re doing ourselves a favor by legitimizing and expanding the use of drones.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@Jager:
Sherrif Joe already has a tank. Not kidding. I assume that he’d drone up and take on the new adversaries. Joe knows that freedom isn’t free.
mcmillan
@Stefan: Actually it looks like that issue is causing problems in how they’re trying to prosecute some of the people we’ve picked up.
As for John’s original point, I’d agree with the people who are saying that there’s nothing intrinsically worse about using drones compared to actually sending in troops to do the same thing. But in practice it seems the standard to justify a drone attack is a lot different than what it takes to send people in person. I think there’s probably also a different mentality when people are more directly involved.
Dr. Morpheus
What is the better alternative?
Troops? Against a criminal organization instead of a state actor?
Isn’t the argument that Al Quada is a criminal organization and should be handled as such an argument against sending in troops?
Congress, who are the only ones who can declare war, cannot (as far as I understand it) do so against a non-state actor.
The police, FBI, or any other law enforcement agency cannot operate in any of the territories where the people we are fighting against are hiding out. Both legally and practically since the Taliban/Al Quada/Afghan irregulars, etc. are all very heavily armed.
So what’s the solution? I understand the problem with the use of drones and I’m not exactly supportive of the idea, but what’s the alternative?
liberty60
@Dr. Morpheus:
And why is this? Why did the Founders restrict the power of the Commander in Chief in this way?
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the war against Al-Quaida is not novel or new; Jefferson battled pirates, and all manner of European kings sent their armies in pursuit of bandits, semi-organized gangs, and foreign raiders.
The Founders understood human nature pretty well- they knew how tempting it is to have a standing army at your whim and disposal, how easily it becomes the preferred tool of first resort.
They were also veterans of a bloody and terrible war, and understood that war is the most serious and profound thing a nation can do, and wanted to make damn sure that we as a nation thought long and hard about the consequences, before we send our sons off to die.
We are not “defending” ourselves in Afghanistan; no one even makes that argument.
Instead, we are eliminating POTENTIAL threats, on the grounds that Abdul Bin So-n-so from Waziristan might launch another terror attack on us.
Or preach a sermon urging others to.
Or teach someone how to.
Or marry a woman who will give birth to a boy who will volunteer to lead a suicide mission in 2035 during Superbowl LXXV.
We are behaving with ever more desperation, resorting to increasingly autocratic and brutal methods while losing sight of any real goal.
Our only goal seems to be inflicting pain and suffering on anyone who isn’t waving an American flag and screaming “Jesus Akbar”.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Can anyone explain to me the difference between this policy and, say, Castro exploding car bombs in Miami in attempts to take out Cuban dissidents, with collateral casualties?
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
Yes. The Castro attacks did not actually happen.
Irony Abounds
@Dr. Morpheus:
That’s the $1M question, and one I have yet to see answered. It is difficult enough to fight a conventional war without collateral damage. Here, whether or not it should be defined as a war, we have to deal with foes who do their damnedest to mix with civilians for protection. Doing nothing doesn’t really seem to be the answer, so what is?
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Irony Abounds:
I think it’s a nail/hammer problem.
When all solutions are hammers, all the problems start to look like nails.
The idea that “terrorism” can be fought as a war of attrition is about as ludicrous as anything I can think of. I believe that is where the problem lies, it’s the wrong paradigm.
It would be like announcing a war on cockroaches, and then constantly announcing that we have killed the Number 3 Cockroach.
Martian Buddy
@NobodySpecial:
Won’t work–they can just hire Somali pirates in retaliation.
IronyAbounds
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Not quite sure that letting the cockroaches run wild is the best solution either.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@IronyAbounds:
That response takes “missing the point” to a whole new, heretofore undiscovered level, I must say.
Good fucking god.