Patrick Cronin over at Facebook points to a new review essay from Edward Luttwak in the latest Times Literary Supplement, but unfortunately not up online. (I subscribe but apparently Patrick gets this stuff a lot faster than I do.) However, Patrick posted a couple of paragraphs. Luttwak reviews David Kilcullen’s widely noticed book among several others, and apparently argues (from the bits I’ve seen) that counter-insurgency warfare (clear and hold, etc.) in Afghanistan is a mistake, and argues instead for raiding strategies using small teams of Special Forces, special ops, Predators and drones, and so on. I will post a link to the full article if the TLS puts it up. However, here is a bit taken from Patrick’s note on FB:
“Obama will soon learn how even small wars can drain all the oxygen from a presidency.”… “For there is is a far superior alternative to the occupation of worthless places at very great cost in policy attention as well as in dead soldiers and money: surveillance to detect gathering threats…followed by ground, air or naval raids to destroy them. Raiding is far more economical than counter-insurgency, if only because it requires intermittent action, and is eminently suitable for Afghanistan….”
I don’t take a position here regarding whether strategy in Afghanistan should shift from counterinsurgency to counterterrorism in the sense that Luttwak means it above. That’s a big discussion, particularly without reading the whole Luttwak piece first. There are several complicated possibilities, especially when Afghanistan and Pakistan are each considered: among them are surge and counterinsurgency on the Iraq model, or using a raiding strategy as Luttwak describes above, or a combination (which is one way of looking at this current move by the Pakistani army, as well as the Swat Valley operations; massive artillery lead assaults against whole regions that also had the effect of making various AQ and Taliban targets more susceptible to Predator strikes).
Whichever of these strategies one might favor, however, all of them feature increased use and reliance upon targeted killing, via Predator, via special ops, etc. If you propose to do counterinsurgency on the surge model, you will use clear and hold in combination with raiding strategies as enemy leadership is flushed out. If you are backing away from counterinsurgency, and following Luttwak’s strategy above, you are also looking primarily to these raiding methods. Even without taking a view on the correct strategy, targeted killing is a featured and growing part of any of them.
As I have said repeatedly here and at Opinio Juris and in this paper on SSRN, the strategic considerations favor increased use of targeted killing by the US on pretty much every matrix. That places great pressure on the legal rationales that allow the practice as the US carries it out. Jeffrey Goldberg correctly observes at the Atlantic that, for example, pressures on Israel’s targeted killing practices – moves to indict its military leaders, for example, for undertaking these tactics – will inevitably point to similar US policies:
Tactics deployed to hurt Israel inevitably cause collateral damage. It’s a good thing that the United States, and a handful of European countries, have opposed the referral of Israel to a war crimes tribunal, but they aren’t doing enough (and, of course, France and Great Britain absented themselves from the vote). They would do more, I think, if they understood that Israel represented a kind of test run for a uniquely nefarious idea. Israel may find itself in the docket soon, but the U.S., and Britain, and other Western democracies that are battling Islamist terror, may soon find themselves in similiar straits. Who could seriously argue that what happened in Gaza was unique? Talibs hide behind civilians in Afghanistan, and often those civilians get killed. It’s only a matter of time before David Petraeus, or Bob Gates, find themselves under attack from the same forces that want to punish Israel for trying to defend itself from a state-sponsored terror group seeking its elimination.
Many actors in the international legal community regard targeted killing as the US has carried it out, for example, in the famous Yemen 2002 Predator strike against an Al Qaeda operative, as simply an extrajudicial execution and murder – that 2002 strike, after all, was described by the UN’s special rapporteur as “a clear case of extrajudicial killing.” Apparently the United States was required to seek to detain or arrest instead. International legal scholars spin out complex and intriguing theories for why the view of the vast majority of Americans, American policy makers, politicians is wrong. Brought down to their bottom line, as Mark Osiel sums them up in his excellent book The End of Reciprocity, the international law scholarly community is “almost entirely hostile to the practice, sanctioning it only under the most restrictive conditions, of a sort that can virtually never be satisfied in practice.”
The Obama administration comes in with a certain immunity to these complaints – but its strategy is predicated even more strongly than the Bush administration’s was on targeted killing as a way of fighting terrorists while ratcheting down the full-scale wars (whether that be a good strategy or bad). Given how much the international law community has lined up against Israel, and absent the Obama administration, earlier lined up against the targeted killing of the Bush administration, one wonders why the administration does not forthrightly state its views on the legality of the practice – offer its opinio juris to backstop its state practice.
It needs to bear in mind that the justification of going after Al Qaeda in an armed conflict that takes place on a global basis will not satisfy critics of targeted killing or of “global wars on terror.” There is a legal attack both on the idea of targeted killing and on the idea that it can be justified by reference to a geographically unbounded war. But if one limits the war to Afghanistan, then what about Pakistan – or Somalia, or any other place in the world in which AQ might take refuge, but in which one could not say, under those standards, that an armed conflict was underway? And what happens when the enemy is no longer Al Qaeda, but something else down the road?
The US long had a plain answer to those questions, in the form of a speech by then-DOS Legal Adviser Abraham Sofaer in 1989, later issued in the Military Law Review that same year. It addresses in a comprehensive way that issues of addressing cross-border terrorism, including self-defense in international law, the lawfulness of going after terrorists in safe havens where the government was unable or unwilling to control its own territory, why targeted killing did not violate the US regulation against “assassination,” and other topics. I have been told by several sources that the speech was cleared by DOS, DOD, DOJ, and the White House; it was intended as a major statement of policy.
So far as I understand, the US government has never withdrawn that speech as policy. On the other hand, the US government seems to have narrowed significantly the grounds on which it concludes that targeted killing is justified – the documents are not public, so we don’t know for sure – to limit it to “armed conflict” and “combatants” – without taking account, if that is true, of targeted killings justified and necessitated by self defense that do not take place within an armed conflict in the technical sense of the term under international humanitarian law treaties. US domestic law, after all, authorizes the CIA “fifth function” use of covert force as an exercise of lawful self-defense, and yet outside of armed conflict as defined under international humanitarian law – and for good reasons.
The current Predator campaign in Pakistan appears to be run by the CIA. The adminstration, in my view, ought to take a far more vigorous approach to defending the full lawfulness of that campaign, as well as other operations that the US might undertake, whether via the CIA or military special ops or a combination, outside of the geography of an “armed conflict” in any but the Bush administration’s “global” view of the armed conflict with Al Qaeda. An excellent place for the administration to start would be for the current DOS Legal Adviser, Harold Koh, to reaffirm in toto the Sofaer 1989 speech as continuing, good policy and the legal views of the United States.
Mark Buehner says:
“surveillance to detect gathering threats”
And here lies the rub. If you don’t have any boots on the ground, working with the locals and building relationships, your intelligence quickly comes to rely entirely on satellites and signals. The limitations of this type of intelligence were clear all the way back to 911, and AQ has become expert in avoiding it.
Sure, we will pick off an occasional leader when we get lucky (as well as the inevitable house full of civilians), but we need to ask ourselves how the Taliban and AQ will benefit in the meantime. They will surely reoccupy huge swathes of Afghanistan, completely securely, making it that much harder yet to pinpoint and attack.
Like most easy answers, this one looks far better on paper than in practice. You can’t win a war through the air.
October 18, 2009, 2:09 pmtamerlane says:
This sounds like the Soviet strategy in Afghanistan: Hold the cities and other critical areas and let the countryside go. The Soviets successfully used this strategy in Afghanistan for a very long time. Unfortunately, this strategy contains no recipe for withdrawal and will keep us, as it kept the Soviets, mired down in Afghanistan for a very long time.
October 18, 2009, 2:33 pmMark N. says:
The administration doesn’t seem particularly weak on this; as you note, the official policy defending targeted killing has never been withdrawn, and Obama continues to authorize targeted killings in line with that policy. I’d suspect diplomatic concerns rather than an intent to weaken the practice are behind a failure to restate it: we’re currently carrying out targeted killings, the rest of the world is grudgingly acquiescing (or at least not complaining too vociferously), so we basically have our way. Why throw down a gauntlet in the form of a “yes, we’re going to use targeted killings, and everywhere, maybe even in your country” statement, that would more or less force governments to come out and oppose us?
October 18, 2009, 3:18 pmA. Zarkov says:
Quagmire! Why does Obama think he will succeed where the Soviet Union and many others have failed? For one thing he has failed to provide a convincing reason for the any US military action in Afghanistan, let alone something so delicate as targeting killing. If we really need to be at war there then declare it along with the goals and an exit strategy. But we won’t get that because we have yet another idiot in the White House who is so blinded by his narcissism, he cannot see the implications of his bound-to-fail poorly defined mission.
October 18, 2009, 3:22 pmHarry Eagar says:
Kilcullen doesn’t believe in winning, so whatever approach he takes is a plan for endless, inconclusive cruelty.
It is not generally known that in some of those remote parts of Afghanistan, Islam is a recent (within the last 120 years) introduction. The residents were offered the choice of converting or dying. They converted.
Kilcullen, the self-proclaimed expert on Islamic rural organization, does not know this.
October 18, 2009, 3:31 pmKenneth Anderson says:
Mark N: The problem is that whether the Clinton, Bush, or Obama administrations, none has clearly stated its legal rationale for targeted killing. What one gleans from bits and pieces of stuff – eg, a tantalizing bit in the 9/11 Commission Report, or in conversation with former administration people (going back to the 90s) actually suggests a weakening of the rationale from self defense to a much narrower conception of targeting combatants in an armed conflict. Superficially, this sounds good – the problem is that if you ever intend to kill people outside of the technically defined armed conflict under the specific treaties of IHL, you might flunk those treaty requirements and then you have a big problem with trying to describe those actions as combatant killings in an armed conflict; it turns out that there was not a legal state of armed conflict, within the terms of the treaty, that you thought you were relying upon.
October 18, 2009, 3:41 pmohgoodgrief says:
Perhaps it is time to consider something really radical: I’m not an expert on the topic of Afghanistan but I did drive past a Holiday Inn last night.
How about using Islam’s own methods against them: Tell them to convert to say Christianity, or die. Take one tribe at a time and show them the way. After a few tribes are wiped out the rest will get the message. Far fewer casualties will result and we can leave them to live out their lives in peace…as opposed to living with the “religion of peace” and fighting, killing and dying for the rest of their miserable lives.
October 18, 2009, 4:13 pmusual suspect says:
What is the difference between targeted killing in a foreign country and a terrorist act? Plenty of civilians die in both cases and there is no legal justification besides “because we can”.
October 18, 2009, 4:16 pmSuperSkeptic says:
That seems like a step back in time, whereas targeted killing with predators seems like an attempt to step forward. I don’t know who you will persuade to re-adopt razing cities and cultural extermination. One has no chance of legalization; here, there is the discussion of the legal parameters of the other.
That’s exactly what we’re working on here.
October 18, 2009, 4:41 pmtamerlane says:
I’ve never understood the moral outrage with targeted killing. To me targeted killing translates into rubbing out the thugs behind the violence instead of the innocent young men they dupe into killing and dying for them and all the many other innocents who die in a good old-fashioned war.
October 18, 2009, 6:29 pmusual suspect says:
Tamerlane wrote:
> I’ve never understood the moral outrage with targeted killing.
> To me targeted killing translates into rubbing out the thugs
> behind the violence instead of the innocent
> young men they dupe into killing and dying for them and all the
> many other innocents who die in a good old-fashioned war.
Targeted killings lead to a lot of civilians (including children) being killed for no reason. Also there is no mechanisms to determine if the target of a bomb is a “thug” or an inconvenient journalist, human rights activist or a competitor to corrupt local authorities. There are no legal justification which can be used to back killing and maiming children in foreign countries which are not at war with the US
October 18, 2009, 7:53 pmAndrew Hamilton says:
I’m tempted to point out (assuming that the choice is between methods of conducting warfare) that if the alternative to “targeted killings” is “untargeted killings,” then a lot more people will die (as in the area-bombing campaigns of WWII, incl. Hiroshima and Nagasaki) than if minimization procedures and “targeting” are employed.
October 18, 2009, 8:05 pmsubpatre says:
The problem with ‘targeted killing’ is that it’s the same as any other deliberately induced fatality; it is murder pure and simple. Maybe the folks who ‘get it’ deserve to get it, but in civilization that is —or at least was until just a few years ago— the business for courts to resolve and pass judgment on.
Nor is there any promise from Andrew Hamilton’s specious reasoning that ‘targeted killing’ results in fewer deaths. Archduke Ferdinand was a ‘targeted killing’ that resulted in ~16 million dead.
October 18, 2009, 8:50 pmDNJ says:
Opponents of targeted killing certainly do not suggest we should instead engage in untargeted killing. Untargeted killing is a clear violation of International Humanitarian Law, in particular the principle of discrimination (between civilians and combatants).
That sounds like a perfect recipe for losing the allies the United States has in Afghanistan, destroying what international goodwill it has (something that has been somewhat rebuilt by the Obama Administration after the disasters of Bush in this area) and getting the international community to vigorously oppose it. In other words, it would gravely hurt the US’s national security and foreign policy interests and make the war in Afghanistan considerably harder to win by losing the resources of allies and the United Nations.
October 18, 2009, 9:43 pmMark Buehner says:
Is it possible to fight a war without murdering innocents? No, its not. So is this really a question of whether war should be ‘legal’? It doesn’t particularly matter to the victim if they are a neighbor of a safehouse that gets flattened by a smart bomb or just a stray bullet on a straight up battle. The greatest moral imperative in war is to end it quickly and decisively, which is the only way to stop the killing.
October 18, 2009, 10:14 pmInstapundit » Blog Archive » WILL THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION MOVE TOWARD more targeted killing in Afghanistan?… says:
[...] WILL THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION MOVE TOWARD more targeted killing in Afghanistan? [...]
October 18, 2009, 10:56 pmJohn Moore says:
This brings back memories of the reviled (incorrectly IMO) Phoenix program in the Vietnam War. It also used a lot of targeted killing of illegal enemy combatants (VC cadre not in uniform, engaged in coerced tax collection and terrorism on civilians).
Even though this was in-country in a legal war, that didn’t prevent the opponents of the war, internally and internationally, from using it as an example of the supposed vileness of the US participants.
I suspect that the international law community is ultimately going to implode. While international law on “human rights” and other nice but unenforceable rights continues to advance, war stubbornly refuses to change. It is still a bloody, nasty business where being on the side of international law (and US law) becomes an ever disadvantage to the forces of good.
October 18, 2009, 11:19 pmKevin says:
Using B-17s and B-29s to burn down cities obviously is a more humanitarian approach, and it’s endorsed by FDR!
If someone is conducting and/or planning attacks on the US or US forces in a foreign country and the local government can’t stop them that government is not sovereign. If there is no sovereign government there isn’t anyone to declare war on. It’s like declaring war on pirates.
October 18, 2009, 11:45 pmmatt says:
This sounds more and more like Clinton’s strategy in both Sudan and Afghanistan. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.
Carter gutted humint intelligence, and now 30 years later our fearless leader thinks that a few drones with Hellfires will tip the balance. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose. The idiots on the left will never learn.
October 18, 2009, 11:58 pmTen Four says:
Targeted killings lead to a lot of civilians (including children) being killed for no reason. Also there is no mechanisms to determine if the target of a bomb is a “thug” or an inconvenient journalist, human rights activist or a competitor to corrupt local authorities. There are no legal justification which can be used to back killing and maiming children in foreign countries which are not at war with the US
It seems that in the absence of a declared war with a Westphalian state with uniformed combatants, the alternative actually on offer here is to do nothing. Just sit back and wait to be attacked at our enemy’s convenience.
If the “law” does not permit effective forward defense, then the “law” needs to be changed. But one rather thinks the “law” here is being twisted by parties who are our adversaries to further their own ends. It is simply foolish to allow that.
As a couple of posters above have noted, the most moral course is to successfully end the conflict as quickly as possible. Given reasonable efforts on our part to avoid collateral damage (a standard which we routinely far exceed), the targets bear the moral culpability for collateral damaage by intentionally hiding among civilians.
October 19, 2009, 12:14 amtz says:
When we attempt “targeted killing”, we might or might not get one or two terrorists. We are all but guaranteed to get a dozen or two innocents. And the hundreds of the friends and relatives of the innocents turn into terrorists.
The strategy of decapitation works except for something like the mythical Hydra, but that is what these 4th generation wars are. For a lot more very good information:
http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Lind_Index,00.html
Meanwhile, think back to 9/11 – how many of Al Queda’s targets would the buildings need to have contained to make that a perfectly justifiable “Targeted Killing”.
The identical act with identical intent too often is labeled differently when it is preceded by “we” instead of “they”. “We” battle and inflict collateral damage. “They” commit acts of terror.
I hate globalism perhaps more than anyone else on this board, but believe in the rule of law. If we do not like Spain trying Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc. directly or in absentia, we cannot credibly condemn other countries who then practice exactly the same things.
We can bully and get our way on practically anything through force, but PLEASE don’t try to make even a single argument to excuse it as being something else. Extra-judicial killings are precisely that – entirely outside of any rule of law or standard or virtue of justice.
For a time we can afford to lower our standard from one of justice (and I would extend that to marque and reprisal which is subtly different) and become savages to destroy our enemies, though I would note the first WTC bombing was handled judicially, not militarily. But having become savages there will always be some fear, hatred, or other voice from our darker side saying we must stay savage lest a return to civilization make us seem weak, or that playing by rules will cause us to lose.
At some point that lesson will be learned and politicians, judges, and lawyers will end up being ignored or the targets of people who wish to bypass the inconvenience – either the ruling class or the people. For if there ought to be extra-judicial killings, and a judge blocks or certifies a criminal complaint, why not simply kill the judge? Won’t everyone be safer if we just dispense with this kubuki and turn into a junta? It would at least lose the hypocrisy.
October 19, 2009, 12:33 amJohn Moore says:
And a lot of good that did.
There appears to be a need for standards about extra-judicial killings, but they won’t come from the international legal community. I’m sure the CIA and the military have their standards – whether they are appropriate or not, who can tell – but most likely they err on the side of caution (less killing) – it’s a natural bureaucratic trait.
October 19, 2009, 12:38 amHarryEagar says:
matt sez: ‘Carter gutted humint’
Not accurate, but even if it were, are you implying that the pre-Carter humint was worth anything?
October 19, 2009, 1:08 amBrad says:
This feels strange saying this, but apparently some memories have lapsed.
The Taliban, (the old Gov of Afghanistan), provided safe haven to a rather large organization, (Al Queda), that commited a act of war against us, (the United States), by murdering over 3000 of our civilians. The Taliban allowed that same group t build training camps in their country, for the express purpose of training people to kill our citizens. The Taliban was given a choice by our President at the time, to either turn over Al Queda’s leadership to us for trial, or face the consequences. They chose unwisely. We declared war on both the Taliban, and Al Queda because of this. Both the Taliban, and Al Queda, continue to use civilians as shields to launch attacks against other civilians, as well as our troops, (A violation of the Laws of Armed Conflict). The refuse to wear uniforms, instead they disguise themselves as civilians, even up to and including dressing up as females (more violations of the laws of war), to take advantage of the cultural mores in place that make it a insult to view women without them being completely covered from head to toe.
This is just a small example of the actual laundry list of violations of the Laws of Armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, ect ect, that these clowns commit on a daily basis. I have fought them through 3 different deployments over the last 8 years. I am currently back in their god forsaken lands for yet another 6 months, and back home we are discussing whether it’s right to try and target them as individuals, so we can avoid killing the civilians they surround themselves with. The next time we go to war, I think I would rather be on the side of the guerillas. They don’t have to follow rules. They are not taken to task by anyone, including the news organizations, for any of their behavior. They seem to receive the benefit of the doubt from a larger portion of the international community, and a good portion of my fellow citizens, than I currently do.
Just once I would like to hear a news organization report the results of a firefight like this, “Today the Taliban, in direct violation of the Laws of War, caused the deaths of 30 civilians by attacking US troops, while using women and children as human shields. The UN has condemned this behavior as barbaric, and asked the US Government to apprehend, and/or execute, the unlawful combatants as soon as possible.”.
Sorry this was so long.
October 19, 2009, 1:19 amTen Four says:
Brad – thanks for your service, good luck, and good hunting.
October 19, 2009, 1:28 amCro says:
It seems to me that if we have so many disincentives to capturing enemy leaders and cannot effectively interrogate them for intelligence then killing them outright becomes much more attractive.
Any imprisonment of enemy combatants becomes a PR nightmare, and serves little purpose other than temporarily removing enemies from the fight. Unlike foot soldiers, terrorist leaders can’t be freed or amnestied without a good chance of them rejoining the war. So, it becomes much more sensible, from a military standpoint, to kill them in open combat rather than trying to capture them. It’s become more palatable politically as well, as it’s much easier to justify targeted killing than prisoner interrogation.
This is a bad thing. There are very often civilians around enemy leaders, often their families. Also, we don’t gain the benefit of the information they possess. Prisoners who know that they won’t be interrogated harshly are much less likely to talk.
The current climate encourages killing rather than capture, which is a perverse incentive. Captured enemies are alive, whatever else happens to them. It’s hard to justify the position that killing them, often with civilians as well, is preferable. But that’s exactly what’s happened.
October 19, 2009, 1:37 amRicardo says:
That’s quite a claim. You are basically claiming 8% of all killed by targeted killings are terrorists while the other 92% are innocents (this is “all but guaranteed”). Do you have support for this claim?
October 19, 2009, 2:21 amDavid N. Narr says:
A legal or “justice” system, politics, and even (God Help Us) international public opinion are substitutes for the war of all against all. When one party to the conflict subverts the rules or refuses to play by them, all bets are off. Totalitarianism in its various forms (including Islam) seems to be ingenious in turning Western Civilization’s moral and legal scruples against it. But turnabout is fair play. I do not have a problem with targeted killings as long as they work to the ultimate benefit of those we have sent to do this terrible duty for us. If not, we may have to get to Ohgoodgrief’s approach, outlined above.
October 19, 2009, 5:38 amsubpatre says:
Ricardo writes “You are basically claiming 8% of all killed by targeted killings are terrorists while the other 92% are innocents (this is “all but guaranteed”). Do you have support for this claim?”
Do you have any support for anything different? This is the same government, operating on much the same principle, and in much the same way, that keeps ‘no fly’ lists of people to keep off of airlines. Lists known to be wrong for the overwhelming majority of names.
Common sense backs a figure smaller than 10% accuracy. Whether Carter, Bush I, or Church gutted the intelligence community is immaterial; the US hasn’t had accurate intelligence information for a very long time. As a matter of fact, the US intelligence agencies have repeatedly demonstrated they are consistently wrong —or worse equivocating— about information derived from human assets.
The shoe is on the other foot about the concept of any ‘accuracy’ in identifying enemy individuals needs to be supported by evidence. This isn’t postal employees bringing well marked, printed envelopes to buildings with jumbo numbers attached to them. The default assumption in this case should be utter incompetence.
October 19, 2009, 7:41 amSF Alpha Geek says:
So what is the proposed alternative, under the aegis of the “international law community,” to targeted killing? As an earlier commenter to this post pointed out, it sounds like the only choice on offer in the sense of international law (as Kenneth Anderson accurately notes, whether the Obama administration chooses a “counterinsurgency” strategy or a “counterterror” strategy, targeted killings will remain a part of the equation) is to allow targeted killing or to do nothing? Is there another alternative on the table that I’m missing here?
More broadly, the west has spent the last 350 years or so building an international regime based on the concept of state sovereignity – nation-states are responsible for the things that happen within their borders, nation-states have a monopoly on the use of force (only nation-states may wage war), and thus nation-states make and honor agreements to try to minimize the chances of and to mitigate the effects of war, and so on.
We are now faced with a substantial threat from a large band of people that never agreed to play by our rules, and it seems to me that there are two responses we can make – the first, the “international law” response that seems to be implicitly proposed here, is to pretend that our opponents are, in fact, participants in our rules and our sense of order, and to insist on applying the same rules to our war with them as we would to a traditional (in the post Westphalian sense) war between nation-states. That is, the argument being framed here seems to assume that, of course, we’re going to apply the rules of international law developed to govern relationships between nations to the present conflict, and the only decision to be made is how to apply those rules.
The second, and largely unspoken option, is to acknowledge that the rules of soccer don’t work in a rugby game, and to admit that trans-national Islamic terrorism is neither a war between nation-states nor a problem that can be solved with the proper application of jurisprudence, and to develop new rules to deal with the problem. (I think that’s what the Bush administration was stumbling towards, but they either couldn’t or wouldn’t make the issue explicit.)
Personally, I think that the laws of nations that governed piracy in the 18th and 19th centuries aren’t a bad place to start. Declaring and treating terrorists as hostis humani generis and hunting them to the uttermost ends of the earth seems like a good place to start – it worked for the Royal Navy, at any rate – but I think it would make things a lot clearer and intellectually honest if we just said so. It seems to me that the international law crowd and the pragmatic “we’d like to actually win this thing” crowd spend a lot of time talking past each other, largely because we haven’t done a good job of articulating the core issue.
And, as long as I’m running on, lets not forget that the 800 lb. gorilla in the western room is that one of the transformational outcomes of the peace of Westphalia was to establish the primacy of the secular sovereign over the religious establishment as the proper repository of the use of force – if you need another reason to confront the idea that our opponents are not participants in the framework we’ve built to regulate the trans-national use of force. Extrajudicial, indeed . . .
October 19, 2009, 9:41 amMark Buehner says:
Err, ok lets play your game by your rules. Instead of targeted killing, we should drop a squad of commandos into the village and dig out the terrorists the old fashioned way. Now, ‘facts’ prove that every time we attack a village, 90% of the population is killed in the crossfire, 90% of which are children under the age of 1.
Don’t believe my figures? Prove they are wrong.
October 19, 2009, 11:36 amMark Buehner says:
That’s certainly true, although i’d prefer the analogy of bringing a knife to a gun fight.
The whole premise is silly as a question of saving lives. Want to see what ‘the old fashioned’ way of digging out terrorists from friendly strongholds looks like? Best case is the Israelis in Gaza. Worst case is the Russians in Grozny. Take your pick. Does bringing down a building and killing a handful of civilians offend you? How does leveling a city make you feel better?
October 19, 2009, 11:39 amSL says:
“Targeted killings” – Isn’t that the basis for the laws of war?
October 19, 2009, 12:09 pmWordsmith says:
Well-said. Thank you, Brad.
October 19, 2009, 12:20 pmsubpatre says:
Mark Buehner says, “Don’t believe my figures? Prove they are wrong.”
It is incumbent on the claimant —that’s you, making the claim— to cite support for their claim. Until you have some facts, some citation, then claiming any kind of effectiveness is pure crap. Oops, Buehner already did that.
My previous comment was that despite incredible casualty and effectiveness claims —now including yours— there’s no factual or logical foundation for any of them. My second point was government claims about the effectiveness (worthiness, wondrousness, ad nauseum) of government actions should not be accepted without independent corroboration.
October 19, 2009, 5:13 pmJohn Moore says:
Brad, heartfelt thanks for your service.
There are many who will seek to hobble your efforts and endanger your life, out of foolish high-mindedness without regard for the outcome. Some are present frequently in the comment section of this board.
The transnationalists hold “international law” above life and liberty. The assure themselves that if we don’t obey these bureaucratic and ill thought-out or outdated rules, even more injustice will happen.
In short, they are fools.
Don’t let the
bastardsfools get you down.Cheers.
October 19, 2009, 9:07 pmRicardo says:
In other words, you can’t actually back that figure up with evidence. Thanks for clarifying.
October 19, 2009, 11:10 pmsubpatre says:
‘Ricardo’ writes “In other words, you can’t actually back that figure up with evidence. Thanks for clarifying”
[Sorry I didn't recognize 'Ricardo' as 'Mark Buehner’s sockpuppet more quickly.]
For the accuracy of the No-Fly List, try the Volokh Conspiracy’s coverage of Walter Murphy, a series of posts that exposed the ‘List’ as a hack with no apparent or discernible controls for accuracy.
In 2007 TSA’s Administrator told Congress that after names on the 350,000 name List were checked “. . . maybe half the names will be cut”; a governmental admission of 50% inaccuracy. That promised review never happened. We also know since that time government critics —whistleblowers, political protesters, policy writers— have had their names added to the no-fly List.
Today the no-fly List contains about a million names. To maintain that fiction, you must believe one million people, most in the US, are so dangerous or willing to destroy the airplane that they cannot be allowed to board.
It’s a claim that one out of every 300 people (but only since the year 2001!) is willing to commit suicide by airplane and take all other passengers with them. Including convicted murderers in prison, there aren’t that many people in the US willing to murder one other person, much less kill a plane-load while killing themselves.
The Canadian version of the List contains up to a total of 2,000 names. Using it as a baseline, the American no-fly List is wrong 500 times for every time it is right.
And you defend using this technology for “targeted killing”. [spit]
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October 20, 2009, 1:10 amBy every measure available the List is worthless as a representation of terrorism or even danger, and my guesstimate of 10% accuracy extremely generous. But it’s a better measure than any garbage the Ricardo/Buehner puppets have fielded.
Ricardo says:
subpatre, everyone except for you on this thread is talking about targeted killing. For some reason, you are insisting on steering the conversation to the topic of no-fly lists. Why you are doing this, I don’t know but I’ll let you continue. If you want to supply any evidence on the actual topic of targeted killings concerning the proportion of innocent people they kill, that would be especially welcome.
Incidentally, I’ve never met anyone named Mark Buehner before in my life. I’ll leave you to concoct whatever conspiracy theories you want, though.
October 20, 2009, 1:41 amJohn Moore says:
The No Fly List inaccuracies are just typical of government bureaucracy, and say little about targeted killing. In fact, they say nothing about it, unless you are making the general point that government systems are inefficient and poorly run.
October 20, 2009, 2:01 amsubpatre says:
John Moore says: “The No Fly List inaccuracies are just typical of government bureaucracy, and say little about targeted killing. In fact, they say nothing about it, unless you are making the general point that government systems are inefficient and poorly run.”
That’s not true, the Canadian no-fly List shows another set of bureaucrats can pare the list to a tiny fraction of its size.
The primary problem is accountability: What assurances do we have that the horrible terrorist John Moore —now on the “targeted kill” list— really needs killing?
In combat, there is group accountability. We civilians can talk to friends and acquaintances who served; we can get a rough sense of how just and justified the combat is. How hard or easy it is to avoid shooting the wrong people. Every community in America now has dozens of combat veterans, people who served on the ground, and most are willing to talk.
Veterans can’t be censored (within reason), while a remote-control operation run out of a bunker in Cheyenne can and will be censored. The operation itself, the List, and the List’s criteria; all will be classified.
The same folks who are appalled at the state executing the wrong people once or twice a year, sure seem eager to make some ‘hits’ on brown people overseas with not once trace of accountability.
So yes, I am making the specific point that our government cannot make ‘enemies’ lists with anything close to reasonable accuracy; but I’ll be open to any opposing evidence. When people are denied transportation due to lousy lists, we can live with it. When people get murdered on the same basis, there will be blowback.
October 20, 2009, 3:25 amJohn Moore says:
If you really believe that the military and CIA, involved in killing, operate under the same bureaucratic incentives as the makers of the terrorist watch list, you are delusional. If you do not believe that, then the terrorist watch list is utterly irrelevant. Or, I suppose, we could just hand over targeting to the Canadians, whose snipers in Afghanistan are quite adept at “targeted killing” using different stand-off weapons.
So the folks operating out of that bunker don’t become “veterans?”
Are you aware that the military Predator video stream is available to a wide number of personnel – not just in the bunker, but at the Pentagon, AO op centers and other command centers? It even has a slang term: “Predator Porn.”
As for the CIA, do you think that a Predator operations team is more classified and less accountable than a field team of operators?
Yes, accountability is needed. Highly secret accountability, but with appropriate controls. And you can bet that the accountability exists, because the people who run these operations are not stupid – they know that they will be second and third and fourth guessed by Monday morning quarterbacks, so they will be sure that 6 lawyers, two psychiatrists and the janitor sign off on every killing.
They also know that there will be leaks, classified or not. A whole lot of the information leaked under the Bush Administration was classified at Top-Secret or higher (in the SigInt leaks, MUCH higher).
October 20, 2009, 12:20 pmsubpatre says:
John Moore wrote “If you really believe that the military and CIA, involved in killing, operate under the same bureaucratic incentives as the makers of the terrorist watch list, you are delusional. If you do not believe that, then the terrorist watch list is utterly irrelevant. . .”
“Yes, accountability is needed. Highly secret accountability, but with appropriate controls. And you can bet that the accountability exists, because the people who run these operations are not stupid . . . ”
There’s not one shred of evidence that ‘List’ procedures are different, yet try to make it a swipe at ‘delusion’. Close to one million names on the no-fly List are (in your words) “utterly irrelevant”, since the Canadians use a list that is close to one million names shorter, and their security record equals the US security record. That’s close to the definition of irrelevant.
In your scenario there is no accountability —not unless you count “Moore’s highly secret accountability”— for who or what the list contains.
‘Highly secret accountability’; what a load! Normal people would be ashamed to write that, yet it’s the core of your argument.
October 20, 2009, 9:45 pmJohn Moore says:
subpatre, just what do you propose? You can’t have public accountability (although there is no reason it can’t be public in the future, which leads to discipline in the present).
So we just give up the tactic? Or do we put it on twitter and let people vote on each target?
I see. So you assert that the who-to-kill decisions are made by the same criteria as the TSA’s don’t fly list. Brilliant argument.
October 20, 2009, 11:21 pmBrad says:
Under the rules we are currently following, it usually takes a minimum of a hour to get any type of air support, unless it was loitering right overhead when the balloon went up. Even then, it’s very hard to get clearance for them to fire, because of the leaderships absolute terror at possibly hitting a civilian. The bad guys know this, and use it against us at every turn.
We could wipe out a platoon sized element of bad guys, move out to another objective, and when the news arrives on scene, the story they are told is that we killed 50+ civilians. Even in a situation where there was not a civilian in sight during the whole engagement! Which story do you think they print 9 times out of 10? Hell, as far as we can see, 90% of time the major news organizations rely on stringers to feed them the stories, and those same stringers are on the bad guys payroll more often than not.
One serious thing that the people back home do not understand, is that we are losing the information war with these guys. Amazing, but true. While it’s true that most of their rank and file are illiterate, backwoods nimrods, their higher leadership is not. They know how to use urban legends, rumor, and propaganda to their benefit. Hell, Zawahiri has quoted from Ho Chi Minh’s book for gods sake. They have studied how to use a western culture against itself, including using it’s news organizations, and it’s so called “progressive elements”, to further their aims. I just wish more folks back home would realize that.
October 21, 2009, 2:07 amsubpatre says:
Brad, thanks for doing what you have done. You may not agree with me, but I think it’s time for us to leave.
Excuse me for being a retrograde who looks
fondlyfavorably at the time when there wasn’t any ‘decision’ about supporting fire; it was just done. For a decade or two after WWII the world revered the US, yet we won that war by ruthlessness that would terrify the p out of the prissy poll-addicted politicians today.The average Joe-in-the-field made everyday decisions about a machine gun nest in a French farmhouse, or an ambush from an abbey. The US took plenty of prisoners, but it didn’t stint from eliminating opposition either. Sometimes Joe decided to save a house or a civilian or a monastery; and other times they got shelled or bombed.
Today we have spineless, decision-paralyzed leadership at the top, ‘rules of engagement’ we wouldn’t put on the cops, and I’d rather we retreat than waste more good lives. And to stay on topic, we can pull out and be done with it; but Predator drones performing “targeted killing” are just going to stir the pot. Then we would have to go back in again or face retaliation here in the states.
October 21, 2009, 3:27 amThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » UN Special Rapporteur Criticizes US Predator Program in UN Speech says:
[...] regular readers know, I think the Predator targeted killing program is perfectly legal; on the other hand, the unwillingness of either the Bush or, now, Obama administrations to state [...]
October 28, 2009, 9:15 pmBrad says:
Problem with Predators is that you are basically shooting Hellfire missles, (anti-tank weapon), to take out a bad guy. Sure it works great on a car, but it generally just punches holes in buildings. You can use it to spot for a F-16/A-10/F-18 though. Now the Predator II, (Reaper), can carry 500 pounders, and that is a whole different story. What people are failing to understand is that more often than not, we are not killing civilians at all. It gets reported that we are constantly, but we are not. When it does happen, it was not on purpose, and it was usually because the bad guys were using them as shields. The media, either wittingly, or unwittingly, are letting themselves get used as a propaganda arm of the Taliban/terrorists. I watched them do it to Israel during their invasion of Lebanon, and the various excursions they have made into the Palestinian Territories, and now for the last 8 years they have been doing it to us.
October 29, 2009, 12:20 amJohn Moore says:
It seems reasonable that more appropriate ordinance will be developed for this mission – lower yield warheads (or dial-a-yield), smaller missiles, importantly: cheaper missiles.
Something similar is happening with gravity bombs – the small diameter bomb. Not only can more be carried, but they have better calibrated lethality by using a casing such that shrapnel range is greatly reduced (smaller, lighter shrapnel pieces).
As for the media, they will always be a propaganda arm for our enemies. It has been in their DNA since the 1968 Tet offensive (my generation’s war). They are a bunch of amoral slime who need to be fought as an ally of the enemy.
October 29, 2009, 1:32 am