(Update: Thanks, Glenn, for the Instalanche! Please see the further post above, on what I think the US legal position ought to be – what the Obama administration should be stating as its view of the relevant international law, and how I think the WSJ’s op-ed today in defense of drone strikes is not actually as protective of them as it might be. I should add, too, that the part that Glenn was nice enough to quote is not really any different from what PW Singer says repeatedly in Wired for War, and indeed, I somewhat imagine that some of the human rights lawyers with whom I’ve had this conversation actually took their position from Singer. It’s not some deep secret.)
The National Journal has a two part cover story on Predator drone strikes – required reading for those following the targeted killing and Predator drone developments, and although it is behind a subscription wall, no question that this National Journal issue is making the rounds of Washington and the agencies. If you follow this topic, you’ll want to make sure you get a copy.
Part 1: ‘Wanted: Dead’: With little public debate or notice, the Obama administration has significantly stepped up its targeted assassinations, by James Kitfield. Well-sourced, well-researched story on the ramping up of targeted killing by the administration.
Part 2: Are Drone Strikes Murder? A growing number of experts say the legal foundations for targeted drone killings are shaky at best, by Shane Harris. Harris has sought out a wide variety of legal views for this piece, and the result is the best journalist take on the legal issues involved that I’ve read. In particular, Harris has understood several things no other journalist has (at least that I’ve seen), including the importance in this debate of the customary international law of self-defense, and the controversies over what it makes to undertake “direct participation in hostilities” so as to make yourself a possible target. Harris interviews a range of sources with, I guess, me on one side, and Mary Ellen O’Connell and Nils Melzer on the other. But also John Radsan, William Banks, Matthew Waxman, and more – and lots of NGO folks, too. This piece gets the argument over the law better than any journalism I’ve seen, and Harris has spent lots of time interviewing experts in depth to understand what’s at stake.
Not only is use of Predator drone strikes expanding, indications are that the Air Force has been moving forward with new and more discriminating technology - the “micro-drone” appears to be under development, according to a source indispensable for the outsider keeping up with military robotics, Wired’s Danger Room (under the fold):
The Air Force Research Laboratory set out in 2008 to build the ultimate assassination robot: a tiny, armed drone for U.S. special forces to employ in terminating “high-value targets.” The military won’t say exactly what happened to this Project Anubis, named after a jackal-headed god of the dead in Egyptian mythology. But military budget documents note that Air Force engineers were successful in “develop[ing] a Micro-Air Vehicle (MAV) with innovative seeker/tracking sensor algorithms that can engage maneuvering high-value targets.”
We have seen in recent years increased strikes by larger Predator and Reaper drones using Hellfire missiles against terrorist-leadership targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But these have three significant drawbacks.
First, you can never be quite sure of what you hit. In 2002’s notorious “Tall Man incident,” CIA operatives unleashed a Hellfire at an individual near Zhawar Kili in Afghanistan’s Paktia province. His unusual height convinced the drone controllers that the man was Bin Laden (who stands 6 feet, 5 inches). In fact, he was merely an innocent (if overgrown) Afghan peasant.
A second problem is that the Hellfire isn’t exactly the right weapon for the mission. Originally designed as an anti-tank missile, it’s not especially agile, nor is it designed to cope with a target that might swerve or dodge at the last second (like cars and motorbikes).
And thirdly, such strikes tend to affect a number of others, as well as the intended target. It raises the risk of killing or injuring innocent bystanders. …
The Air Force’s 2008 budget plans described the planned Project Anubis as “a small UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] that carries sensors, data links, and a munitions payload to engage time-sensitive fleeting targets in complex environments.” It noted that after it was developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory, Anubis would be used by Air Force Special Operations Command. The total cost was to be just over half a million dollars.
No official announcements have been made since then, and the Air Force did not return a request to comment on this story (hardly surprising for a weapon so likely to be used covertly). But the current Air Force R&D budget does mention the effort, briefly. This newer document refers to Project Anubis as a development that has already been carried out. According to the budget, $1.75 million was spent to reach the goal.
The current state of Project Anubis is unknown. It could be one of tens of thousands of military research efforts that started, made some progress and ended without a conclusion. Or Anubis could now be in the hands of Air Force Special Operations Command.
The logic of much of the legal opposition to the use of these weapons, beyond the specifics of the legal arguments in specific circumstances, as has been said to me dozens of times by leading lawyers in the human rights community, academics, and activists, is that the more discriminating the weapon and the less it risks American soldiers in its use, the greater the incentive for it to be used, thus raising the threshold of violence. On a couple of occasions, the American military and CIA officers using these weapons have simply been described to me as “cowards” because they hide behind their computer screens and won’t come out to fight, as it were. I’ve responded by noting that the enemy hides behind its women and children, and won’t come out to fight, either. But, very strikingly, the immediate riposte in every conversation of this kind is that the US military has brought this on itself by using weapons that leave the other side with no choice but to use civilian shields.
I admit, all of this reasoning in order to show why coming up with more discriminating weapons that risk American soldiers less, and which puts them under less pressure on account of personal danger to open fire, seems utterly perverse to me. There is also something a little off-putting, to say the least, to have overly clever American law students – in a couple of talks I’ve given on this subject – very far indeed from war or combat, putting on their “rational incentives” thinking caps in order to come up with a view that the optimal structure for welfare maxmizing on the battlefield was for American soldiers to have to expose themselves to fire rather than use drone technology and not put them at risk.
orca says:
The 8 CIA agents recently killed in Afghanistan were involved in drone strikes in Pakistan.
The Taliban targeted them because of their involvement.
January 9, 2010, 1:08 amAndrew says:
The American military and CIA officers using these drones are accused of hiding behind computer screens. What are they supposed to do, ride on the drones like Slim Pickens? I don’t see how the legality of drones can be affected by whether they put the drone controllers at sufficient risk.
Meanwhile, the cited article authors hide safely behind subscription walls….Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
January 9, 2010, 2:04 amLysenko says:
I’ll admit that it’s been awhile since I left the UAV community, but this seems like an odd solution. With a maximum range of about 5km LOS (going off the Wasp’s specs), it’s an improvement over a large-caliber sniper rifle (call those 1.5km tops, barring those one in a thousand shots like Cpl. Furlong’s), but you’re still talking about getting the drone operator pretty damn close to the target and maintaining eyes-on. Not to mention that in my experience there’s a huge difference between listed max range and effective max range (that is, the range at which a drone can operate without worrying about intermittent loss of link). That difference isn’t such a big deal when you can lose uplink and the UAV keeps circling, sending you video footage. It’s quite possibly a big deal when you’re guiding a UAV in to hit a specific human target. By the time you factor that in as well, the weight of the system, the unit cost, the operator training cost…I have to wonder just how much of an advantage this provides to SOCOM over an operator with a Barrett.
January 9, 2010, 2:19 amorca says:
You mean like the 9/11 hijackers did?
The Right seems to feel that the less risk there is to the assassin, the more legal the assassination is.
January 9, 2010, 2:45 amCrusader says:
Of course it’s murder and the United States is an evil, murderous, genocidal nation that deserves to be eliminated. Allahu Akbar, right?
January 9, 2010, 2:55 amorca says:
Haha, I don’t know about that, but our crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan are a pretty good way to step down from the “World’s Only Superpower!” perch so China begin its reign.
January 9, 2010, 3:00 amMonty says:
It just seems like we are heading towards absurd results. It is legal to declare war on a nation that harbors the terrorists attacking you. We could then invade, and try to capture the terrorists, killing many thousands of military personel and civilians during the invasion, possibly killing the terrorists in the process, and then withdraw, leaving the country in ruin. THAT would be legal… BUT, if we conduct a targeted killing, without the objection of the host country, killing the terrorist, and at worst a dozen or two civilian confederates, it would be illegal.
I’m uneasy about the targeted killings too, but I don’t see a preferable alternative… We let them continue attacking with impunity, we invade, or we allow targeted killing. (sure, you could hope to pressure the host nation into allowing capture, that worked so well on the taliban). Maybe Pakistan shouldn’t let us conduct predator strikes and instead allow our forces to capture terrorists, but, strikes are what they have chosen to allow, and its much easier for them to deny involvement then there would be with the feet of our soldiers deep in thier territory.
January 9, 2010, 3:21 amlibertariansoldier says:
The CIA agents were hit by the Taliban version of a Predator.
January 9, 2010, 3:29 amSoronel Haetir says:
And I would still argue that until someone is willing to attempt enforcement international law is all but irrelevant.
We could go so far as to ditch a century and a half of treaties and go back to issuing letters of marque and reprisal. Although there is likely little enough loot in these ventures that you wouldn’t get many takers. I suppose you might get a more professional class of bounty hunters going after the most wanted list though, I believe there are still a few good payouts waiting there.
January 9, 2010, 3:59 amVladimir says:
I hope I’m not an overly clever law student, but without getting into the admittedly absurd moral condemnation of the operators, surely you agree with thinking through the strategic implications of enabling these attacks. Those students would be premature if they claimed to reach a conclusion that contradicted the opinion of those who had done more research, but you seem to group together any questions that acknowledge downsides. Off the top of my head, what is the probability that politicians will have a lower threshold for intelligence and be willing to order more attacks without the threat of American casualties, resulting in more terrorists being hit but also more civilian casualties (even if casualties per attack goes down) leading to more aggression toward the US in the future? Or, how likely are recent terrorist recruits to become more radicalized if they think an attack on them is more likely? I’d hope you would not be put off by these in a Q&A.
January 9, 2010, 4:29 amDaniel Charlies says:
I think it’s fine to embrace this technology, but then we and our allies especially must understand that it will eventually be used against us too when the technology proliferates.
“Do Unto Others…” or at least take care that the strikes are accurate, and not killing women, children and civilians.
Sure would hate to see that happen to our folks, innocent children and women killed without a trial because of operator or informant error.
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January 9, 2010, 7:01 amRodger Lodger says:
What is wrong with cowardice that helps our side? What are we, knights of the effing roundtable?
January 9, 2010, 7:08 amBob from Ohio says:
Another example of the uselessness of international “law:. This is a low cost, effective means of killing our enemies beyond the reach of effective normal power projection.
We are not going to let “law” stop us.
January 9, 2010, 8:58 amKarl Lembke says:
Shades of the Darkover Compact!
January 9, 2010, 10:52 amKarl Lembke says:
And of course, the whole question of making war too tidy was addressed in the Star Trek episode, A Taste of Armageddon.
January 9, 2010, 10:58 amSwan Trumpet says:
The argument that we oughtn’t make use of superior technology that allows us to strike enemy targets without directly exposing our own troops to harm can only be made by those who are clueless about warfare. A just war requires – among other things – that we use every tool at our disposal to bring about a decisive conclusion so that peace can be restored as quickly as possible. Rapid conclusions make all civilians safer.
War isn’t a boxing match with a referee blowing his whistle when your opponent is on the ropes. There is no morality in conducting war in a manner that dictates if we kill twenty enemies on a given day, we must cease actions until the enemy has had a chance to catch up by killing twenty of our guys.
The Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s is instructive. After capturing an Iranian city and fortifying it with heavily armed troops, the Iraqis surrounded the perimeter with landmines. Lacking the technological tools to clear the mines the Iranians used hundreds of thousands of women and children tied together with ropes to clear the way for their armed forces. With Iranian troops ready to shoot at their backs, this human bomb-fodder had no choice but to keep moving forward in waves clearing the minefields. Using the same “logic” that claims it’s illegal to use unmanned drones in warfare, we can easily expostulate to claim it is also illegal to conduct a war in any fashion other than that dictated by the enemy – no matter how barbaric the means.
January 9, 2010, 11:42 amorca says:
“decisive conclusion?”
We’re in the ninth year of a war nobody on our side has a clue how to win. Obama’s plan is a Nixonian “Peace with Honor” pullout by the end of 2011.
These UAV murders are only allowed because:
1. They give “our boys” the illusion they’re “accomplishing something”
January 9, 2010, 12:04 pm2. A significant percentage of Americans enjoy the idea that their country is slaughtering brown people.
DanInAustin says:
How are these targeted killings any different than the assassinations of North Vietnamese in Viet Namn? (aside from the fact that the predator strikes are contributing to the destabilization of Pakistan). Personally I’m for killing the terrorists anyway we can but i’m a bit surprised that Obama can support it.
January 9, 2010, 12:15 pmAllan Walstad says:
I’d like to re-emphasize what Daniel Charlies posted earlier. This “micro-predator” technology is going to be used against us. Radio-controlled model airplanes have been around for a long time. All you need is a small TV camera and broadcaster–hell, how about cell-phone technology? And a small warhead.
January 9, 2010, 12:19 pmSwan Trumpet says:
Look up the 30 Years’ War. This war is a clash of cultures. It will be won by the people who have the will to see it through. I don’t believe Mr. Obama has the strength of character or commitment to liberty that is required to achieve a decisive victory.
January 9, 2010, 12:19 pmAllan Walstad says:
Well, everybody thinks their side is “just.” And “decisive conclusion” is just a euphemism for “victory” here, is it not? And peace only follows from victory, right? So, what I’m left with is “War requires that we use every tool at our disposal to bring about victory.” I’m sure that’s what the folks at Al Q say, too. They don’t have jets and tanks and missiles and massive armies. What they have is people willing to go on suicide bombing missions. Which appear perfectly moral by your enunciated standards.
January 9, 2010, 12:28 pmbailey says:
Notice how the international law proponents like Orca seem to be pretty much anti-US and pro-terror? The snark is directed at us and the enemy is lauded. Gee, I wonder why people are so prone to not trusting lawyers.
January 9, 2010, 12:30 pmAllan Walstad says:
Three cheers for the 30 Years’ War? Dear Lord.
January 9, 2010, 12:30 pmAllan Walstad says:
Bailey, I didn’t see any reference to international law in orca’s comments–although, in my experience, US officials are quite happy to appeal to international law when it serves their interests. Your comment is an ugly smear directed at those who would dare criticize the actions of US government officials. I wonder how big a step it is, in your mind, from calling us “anti-US and pro-terror” to snuffing us out with Predator strikes?
January 9, 2010, 12:40 pmSwan Trumpet says:
You are writing from a position of ignorance. Yesterday’s Pakistan Security Briefing including this positive news showing Pakistan is strengthening – not destabilizing as a result of American cooperation:
“On Friday, Senator John McCain headed a U.S. congressional delegation in a visit with President Asif Ali Zardari to discuss matters of U.S.-Pakistani cooperation in the fight against the Taliban. McCain had earlier stated that drone attacks against the Taliban in Pakistan have been successful and will continue but the U.S. has no intention of a military incursion into Pakistan.
Major Gen. Sajad Ghani and also announced that the nighttime curfew in the region has been permanently lifted. Ghani, who was in charge of the offensive, claimed that the military has killed around 2000 militants and captured an additional 800. Ghani also highlighted the military’s contribution to the rebuilding of local schools, hospitals, roads, and bridges destroyed during the operation.”
January 9, 2010, 12:41 pmbailey says:
How could I not notice the wonderful love that orca has for this nation. As to Allan, you are just spewing the standard far left drivel. You can’t judge, we’re as bad as they are, etc. It’s not that difficult to make a moral judgment that we are superior to the Taliban any more than it is to recognize we were superior to Imperial Japan or the Reich.
January 9, 2010, 12:50 pmMnZ says:
I am sorry, but this is pretty kooky if you consider the basic facts.
Facts:
1) Al Qaeda had declared war on the United States.
2) Al Qaeda does not control territory rather it hides in the shadows of lawless regions.
3) Al Qaeda (and the Taliban) have shown no aversion to targeted killings.
4) Al Qaeda (and the Taliban) have the superior technology for targeted killings. (I.e., the suicide attacker.)
Finally, if you couple the aversion of “‘international law’ experts”* to collateral damage and their aversion to targeted killings, I am left with the presumption that the only legal outcome under international law would be to allow Al Qaeda to plot attacks in lawless regions. Now, what is the exact utility of a law that requires this result? Please tell me…
*-Double scare quotes.
January 9, 2010, 12:57 pmorca says:
Dear lord, what Afghanistan debate would be complete without personal attacks?
I’d wager that few people in the U.S. military with an I.Q. above 80 believes these UAV murders are going to shorten the war.
January 9, 2010, 1:04 pmAllan Walstad says:
bailey, I take note of your additional insults and presumed mind-reading. If you should start offering something more along the lines of rational argumentation, I’ll be interested.
January 9, 2010, 1:07 pmKen Arromdee says:
Because they don’t like the US fighting the war at all, but it’s impolitic to say so, and picking around the edges is the best they can do. It’s like how everyone objects to Israel killing more people in Gaza than Hamas kills in Israel. The idea that the side that’s better at keeping its own people safe has no right to kill the enemy is ludicrous, but it plays well with an audience raised on movies and TV where the good guys give the bad guys a fighting chance.
January 9, 2010, 1:13 pmbailey says:
You got it, MNZ. That’s what the orcas and allans of the world want. Just don’t insult them by directly addressing their comments.
January 9, 2010, 1:13 pmMnZ says:
I’d wager that few people in the U.S. military with an I.Q. above 80 believes these UAV murders are going to shorten the war.
Yes, because nothing increases one’s desire more to attack America more than the knowledge that he could be taken out at any time in a surgical strike with no collateral damage.
January 9, 2010, 1:15 pmorca says:
If you hadn’t noticed, these guys aren’t really that concerned about dying for their cause.
January 9, 2010, 1:21 pmorca says:
Leaving aside the “no collateral damage” joke, the prospect of dying for their cause doesn’t seem to be a big concern to these guys.
January 9, 2010, 1:30 pmMnZ says:
Leaving aside the “no collateral damage” joke, the prospect of dying for their cause doesn’t seem to be a big concern to these guys.
Yes. Dying for their cause. Terrorists know that there is a big political benefit when there is collateral damage. If they die without collateral damage, then they are not really dying for their cause. They are just being killed…no glory…no political benefit.
January 9, 2010, 1:39 pmorca says:
MnZ, do you honestly believe launching a Hellfire missile into, say, a crowd of mourners at a funeral cause no collateral damage?
Or are we talking about some future fantasy weapon that can read minds before it strikes?
January 9, 2010, 1:48 pmMonty says:
Pakistan says they will not allow our troops to conduct operations on thier soil, if we take them at thier word, which will cause more collateral damage, a drone strike, or a military incursion with the oposition of Pakistan’s military? Yes, there is collateral damage with our strikes, but anything we could do would have collateral damage, and the strikes are the least damaging.
January 9, 2010, 2:08 pmChris Travers says:
I don’t think you can phrase that as an absolute. After all, nuclear weapons are currently of the table, right?
Or do you suggest we go around nuking places where top AQ folk might be hiding so we can be more sure we got them?
If so, how is that really more defensible from trying to fly an airliner into the Pentagon?
January 9, 2010, 2:15 pmSteveMG says:
If the terrorists wore identifying clothing and ceased operating from within and among civilian populations much of the “collateral damage” problems caused by targetted strikes, it seems to me, would be mitigated.
But that’s putting the responsibility on the enemy and not the US and one apparently doesn’t garner much acclaim among the law crowd advocating such a view.
Yes, yes, let’s be more responsible with the use of these new weapons but let’s remember who is causing this dilemma.
January 9, 2010, 2:16 pmbailey says:
Steve, amongst the Orca and Allan set, we are just animals getting our jollies by killing brown people.
January 9, 2010, 2:18 pmChris Travers says:
One thing that seems generally missing from the analysis is the question of where these strikes occur and what the alternatives are.
A few questions for those who oppose UAV strikes:
Do we have any reason to believe that fewer civilians would be killed if we were sending in F-22′s instead of Predators? Are there any hard facts which suggest that UAV’s are currently less accurate than manned missions with fighter/bombers (F22, B2, etc), ground attack aircraft (A10, etc), or aircraft gunships (AC-130)?
If not, what alternatives do you propose?
In my opinion, one really has to consider what the alternatives are, and where the strikes are occurring. I haven’t seen much analysis in either case.
January 9, 2010, 2:23 pmChris Travers says:
So let me ask you a question:
If we were more responsible about not, say, striking weddings, funerals, etc. and waiting to strike the guys house when he gets home, would you be less opposed to the use of UAV’s?
January 9, 2010, 2:27 pmG. May says:
“I’d wager that few people in the U.S. military with an I.Q. above 80 believes these UAV murders are going to shorten the war.”
Speaking as a recently retired member of the U.S. Military, I’d also like to offer that this Administration’s recent domestic criminalization of the foreign battlefield (or whatever you’d call this mess) while announcing a pullout date – results be damned – is doing a hell of a lot less to shorten the war than the use of UAVs. No one has a clue how to win this? Well there’s a nice little strawman.
I’d also like to add that even fewer people in the U.S. military with an IQ above 80 consider targeted killings with UAVs to be “murder” any more than pulling the trigger on them while they’re in their sights.
What is the difference, legal or otherwise, between using unmanned or unmanned aircraft to fire these munitions?
Mr. Anderson is quite correct in that this “reasoning” rearing it’s ugly head is perverse. Though certainly not as perverse as the clerics and imams who, from the comfort of their hideout/base, brainwash and radicalize their followers into committing suicide for the ‘benefit’ of both. And neither is as absurd as intentionally handicapping the force that must deal with an enemy with the capacity to use a weapon that can hide amongst the innocent, infiltrate bases, is self-controlled, can lie and has the ability to exercise independent thought.
Though I think the charge is usually unfair, after I read these types of opinions, I’m unsurprised by the consequent accusations of treachery.
Perhaps these “overly clever” types feel that war is only legal when combatants are jabbing bayonets into one another’s chests. The “overly clever” should leave the conduct of war to their betters and remain safely tucked away in their ivory towers to whip up more “rational incentives” under their awesome little thinking caps.
January 9, 2010, 2:28 pmChris Travers says:
I would go further, actually. Nobody knows what the victory conditions are.
It is one thing to say we don’t know how to win. The stark truth is we don’t even know what “winning” means in concrete, achievable terms.
This “war” is really too open ended to be a real war. Instead we are just seeing perpetual military operations done to MAINTAIN national security. There is a huge difference there.
This much is true. Hence my question for opponents as to what the alternatives are and what they propose doing instead.
January 9, 2010, 2:37 pmOff Kilter says:
Swan Trumpet: “Look up the 30 Years’ War. This war is a clash of cultures. It will be won by the people who have the will to see it through.”
William Shakespeare: “Cry havoc! and let loose the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial.”
Frankly, Swan, I think Bill has the better argument…
January 9, 2010, 2:41 pmSwan Trumpet says:
Great question. I don’t pretend to have the expertise or insider knowledge of our current nuclear arsenal, but I do know that the Bush administration had ordered and tested what is known as Mini-Nukes. These weapons are somewhere in the range of 10 kiloton or less and designed to detonate well below ground, avoiding that killer radioactive fallout cloud. The fact that we have been developing and testing nuclear weapons since we used the A-Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki tells me that nuclear weaponry is not intrinsically an armageddon.
But in order for a war to be virtuous we have to think of consequences and there is no reason to think that dropping a mini-nuke on Aden will somehow convince Islamists elsewhere to give up the fight. I think the use of these types of weapons should probably be reserved for instances where they are our only realistic option. One example of this might be striking at Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities.
January 9, 2010, 2:49 pmorca says:
We should never have declared war on the Taliban.
Looks like we got another couple years of “war theater” before we correct that mistake.
January 9, 2010, 2:49 pmG. May says:
I’m almost with you on this one. I’d say it’s more like “Nobody in a position of political power is willing to definitively state what the victory conditions are.” I certainly think the conditions are definable, but it would depend on meaningful commitments from NATO or the UN after major combat ops have ceased.
All of the above would entail spending more political capital than anyone really has for the immediate future.
January 9, 2010, 3:02 pmG. May says:
This doesn’t answer the question.
Can you answer the question in context?
January 9, 2010, 3:06 pmorca says:
In context?
Resume the draft…send 10+ million American soldiers to the Afghanistan/Pakistan border.
January 9, 2010, 3:11 pmBuddy Hinton says:
If a technology comes up that places US soldiers at less risk, and does not increase risks to innocent civilians, then it is a good technology.
If a technology comes up that places US soldiers at less risk, by shifting that risk to innocent civilians, then it is a bad technology and should not be used. The life of an innocent civilian is simply more important than the life of a US soldier because engaging in war is the US soldier’s job and not the innocent civilian’s job.
This ain’t rocket science — well, in a way it is, but the morality part of it isn’t.
January 9, 2010, 3:16 pmSteveMG says:
Arthur Schelsinger, Jr. on the “doughfaces” (not to be confused with John Randolph’s use of the phrase):
The Doughface really does not want power or responsibility. For him the more subtle sensations of the perfect syllogism, the lost cause, the permanent minority, where lie can be safe from the exacting job of trying to work out wise policies in an imperfect world.
And that:
Politics is for the Doughface a means of accommodating himself to a world he does not like but does not really want to change, he can find ample gratification in words. They appease his twinges of guilt without committing him to very drastic action.
Make morally hazardous decisions in a complex world? No, it’s easier to complain about them and demand perfection.
January 9, 2010, 3:19 pmG. May says:
Silly me, I thought you were serious-minded. Sorry for failing to ignore you. Correcting myself right now.
January 9, 2010, 3:20 pmSwan Trumpet says:
Antony says “..let slip (not loose) the dogs of war.” And you’ve got the wrong play for the topic. It’s not Julius Caesar but Henry VI that’s relevant here, when Dick the Butcher says, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
If lawyers want to micromanage a Commander in Chief by handicapping our military, let them first put on army fatigues, go to the front lines and show us all how it’s done – legally that is. Those that survive will sing new songs.
January 9, 2010, 3:21 pmG. May says:
You’re right, that morality isn’t rocket science. It’s easy to answer the question when it’s re-worded to the more basic “technology”.
But more specifically, and in keeping with the topic of the thread – are munitions launched from an unmanned aerial vehicle different than muitions launched from a manned aerial vehicle?
January 9, 2010, 3:29 pmFlashman says:
Any technology, that can save one US soldier’s life, is worth using. Any of the “clever” attorneys should have the responsibility of trying to explain to a family member that has just lost a loved one that the death of their son / daughter, husband, or wife was understandable and justifiable since their loved ones life had no greater meaning than the terrorist.
I also find orca’s idea that “smart” people in uniform would certainly agree with him / her! As another retired member of the military I find this view to be facetious at best.
We have a prosecutor where I live who has publicly remarked that a law enforcement officer is no more than a “trained monkey with a ticket book.” As such, he has consistently refused to charge miscreants with “resisting” because, as he so ignorantly believes, it’s the law enforcement officer’s job to take a beating….but God forbid one use “excessive force.” I have always found this type of relativistic and immature academic reasoning to be slightly silly if it weren’t so offensive.
The real issue is how do we as a nation, and the military, respond to asymmetric warfare. Neither international law, with its focus on state actors, or military doctrine can keep pace. Michael Howard (the military historian, not the MP) had it right when he wrote that “Usually everybody starts even and everybody starts wrong…the advantage goes to the side which can most quickly adjust itself to the new and unfamiliar environment and learn from its mistakes.” This process is neither quick nor easy. However, in this case I’d quibble with the “starts even” comment, given that the terrorists, by the nature of the type of warfare they wage, will typically have the initiative. It’s how we leverage technology (among other things) to regain and maintain that initiative that’s important. Mistakes occur, sometimes with horrible consequences. But there is a difference between purposely targeting civilian targets and hiding behind a civilian population than mistakenly targetintg civilians. Just look at the public debate that erupts in the west. Good example is the German ordered bombing of Kunduz and the issue of targeted killings of al-Q leadership. There’s no such public debate inside al-Q, or at least Aljazerra doesn’t cover the issue!!
January 9, 2010, 3:36 pmbpbatista says:
Good God! Are we completely insane? These liberal bed-wetters whould require our soldiers in the field to get a warrant before they can fire back during an ambush. Maybe we should have been required to serve an eviction notice on Hitler before D-Day.
The twin fetishes of political correctness and international legalism are to nations what anorexia and bulemia are to individuals — mental illnesses that are also slow forms of suicide.
January 9, 2010, 3:38 pmorca says:
The heirs of Westmoreland who have to pretend they’re fighting to win a war have my sympathies, but lacking the tools, the talent and the will to defeat the Taliban, the next best alternative isn’t to just randomly plink off scary looking folks in nuclear-armed Pakistan.
It’s just not. And anyone who advocates such a practice needs to be given a speedy, early retirement.
January 9, 2010, 3:38 pmG. May says:
Nice troll! Orca’s worthiness of being ignored – confirmed.
January 9, 2010, 3:57 pmorca says:
Haha, don’t listen to him!
I guess none of this matters because wingnut military “experts” have been saying all along that it takes nine years to defeat an insurgency and here we are…in our ninth year of fighting the Taliban.
All over soon, right?
January 9, 2010, 4:05 pmChris Travers says:
Which is this though? And what are you comparing it to?
As far as Afghanistan and Iraq, yes, we can imagine an end to the current war in fairly concrete and achievable terms.
But is our primary enemy the insurgents in those countries? Or is it the global terrorist network that we claim to be fighting?
In that larger conflict, what does victory look like? How do we know if we are victorious? When do we say, “We won?”
January 9, 2010, 4:08 pmunhuh says:
I can’t wait til those little drones become available in the US Black market. I would pay $25Gs for one to use to take out folks who need to be taken care of. The sort of cowards who hide behind their high walls after enriching themselves at the rest of our expense.
January 9, 2010, 4:43 pmSteveMG says:
The threat from radical Islam, for the near term, simply cannot be solved. It can only be managed.
Yes, little consolation for those who’ve lost loved ones. Best I can do.
Far from the original topic, again.
January 9, 2010, 4:50 pmrpt says:
However, he is far ahead of his predecessors in this regard. What would you like him and us (who pay for these debacles) to do?
January 9, 2010, 5:23 pmInstapundit » Blog Archive » KENNETH ANDERSON HAS MORE on targeted killing and Predator drone strikes. “The logic of much of the… says:
[...] ANDERSON HAS MORE on targeted killing and Predator drone strikes. “The logic of much of the legal opposition to the use of these weapons, beyond the specifics [...]
January 9, 2010, 5:45 pmTwirip says:
Can you say who it was that was doing that describing? That seems like an important point.
January 9, 2010, 5:53 pmTwirip says:
That would be true even if we were bombing them with fleets of B-17′s.
It’s not off-putting once you accept the fact that they are playing for the other team.
January 9, 2010, 5:57 pmJoe T. Guest says:
Amazing how so much of the world seems to think that suicidal bloodthirsty fiends ought to be handled with kid gloves. Seems to me they opted out of the social contract that obliges us to act nicely a couple decades ago. At our core we humans are apex predators. The fact that a third of our population is deluded enough to think it’s a good idea to lie down both with the lambs and that aggressive pack of predators from the next county over baffles me.
January 9, 2010, 6:01 pmcro says:
I’m sure this has been said somewhere, but why is it that when we do put our soldiers on the line to defend civilians in foreign countries that is criticized by the exact same people who find fault with drone strikes?
What do we think soldiers are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? Primarily, they’re providing security for the people who live there. If that wasn’t true, they’d never leave their bases and we wouldn’t need nearly so many of them.
So, if we do endanger our soldiers we are wrong, and if we avoid endangering them we are also wrong. Why not just admit that there are some people opposed to any war the United States fights, and are against any methods the United States uses to fight them?
January 9, 2010, 6:05 pmTwirip says:
Given that this mentality is so mainstream on the left, it is hardly a surprise that they support the jihadis over US troops. Hell, if I believed the left’s premises, I’d no doubt come to the lefts conclusions. If Americans are so very evil, who’s to say it would not be a good thing if they were defeated? All the left’s anti-American positions make sense once you accept the left’s view of America and Americans.
January 9, 2010, 6:10 pmAllan Walstad says:
Some of the comments suggest, accurately, that one’s attitude toward these drone strikes will tend to correlate with one’s attitude toward the war itself. Let’s review. On 9/11/01, 19 thugs with boxcutters hijacked planes and flew them into buildings, at great loss of life and property. The main reasons they succeeded were that the feds failed to make use of information they had (sound familiar?) and the cockpit crews were unarmed. Since then, as far as attacks on US soil are concerned, there have been a couple botched attempts by rather incompetent individuals. Oh yes, and an angry member of the US military shoots a bunch of comrades at a military base, again because the authorities were inept and all the soldiers were not only unarmed, but disarmed and helpless by regulation.
Meanwhile, Bush and his comrades attacked Iraq, which posed no threat, continued their occupation even after the baselessness of the the invasion became clear, and embarked on a decade of war in that country that cost far more US lives and treasure than were lost in the 9/11 attacks. They invaded Afghanistan and set the same course there, with what is shaping up to be the same result in losses. Now the war is spilling over into Pakistan and it looks like Obama, Tweedledee to Bush’s Tweedledum, is looking at a military mission in Yemen. (And this is on top of all the myriad other places around the world where the US has troops and bases and intervenes or prepares to intervene militarily.) And who are we fighting in this “war on terror?” A bunch of pathetic barbarians who pose exactly zero real military threat to this country.
If they did pose a real military threat, if we could actually be in danger of invasion and conquest, if there was a real war going on, then I would say let’s use whatever we’ve got in order to prevail.
But they don’t and we aren’t.
One of the things to which libertarians are especially sensitive is that the costs of war–whether well-justified or not– go far beyond lives lost in battle and resources squandered. The biggest cost is in the things war does to our own society. The first casualty, as we all know, is truth. So, we have all this trumped up evidence of Iraqi nukes, the eventual demonstrated falsity of which has zero effect on what we are doing! We also have the complete BS propaganda from Bush about how “they attack us because they hate our freedoms”–and ridicule for anyone who suggests that at least some of their motivation might be to retaliate for our own military interventions in the Middle East. Regardless of whether or to what extent our previous actions were right or wrong, the willful turning of a blind eye to understanding the enemy’s motivations constitutes a refusal to think, and the mindless ridicule and personal attacks against critics is nothing but an attempt to discourage thought.
Then of course we have an ever-greater concentration of powers by the central government over us all, to regiment, to spy, to discourage dissent, to spend without limit. In the past, when wars came to a definite end, there might be at least some (though not complete) return to normalcy. But now, when any ragtag group’s ability to get one guy onto a plane with a makeshift bomb is war, we have finally entered an Orwellian era of continuous war. War being the health of the state, to the detriment of the individual.
There was no mission in Iraq. There was a limited mission in Afghanistan, to take a fair shot at capturing bin Laden and to punish the Taliban for harboring Al Q. Then get out. But nation-building? Now we continue to refine these devilish instruments of remote-control assassination while we throw away money we don’t have on occupying countries thousands of miles away. And if some of us express doubts that all this is to our own good, much less the general good, we are treated to slimy insults. Fortunately, I’ve heard it all before and am not much impressed.
January 9, 2010, 6:10 pmRob Crawford says:
Except that they were the defacto ruling power of the territory from which 9/11 was planned and executed, and refused to cooperate with the destruction of al’Qaeda camps and forces on their territory (leftist fantasies to the contrary notwithstanding). Their refusal made them party to the attack.
Your sympathies are clear, “orca”.
January 9, 2010, 6:14 pmRob Crawford says:
Lie, much?
January 9, 2010, 6:15 pmTwirip says:
Allan, I know you know you were trying to be thoughtful and reasonable. And you were, in several places. But Iraq was not invaded by “Bush and his comrades”. It was invaded by the United States of America.
I seem to recall that we lost far more lives and treasure in WWII than we did at Pearl Harbor. By your logic, we should have surrendered on Dec 8, 1942.
Yup. But something has to give way here. We can have a closed borders America which does not feel the need to interfere all over the world. Or we can have an open borders America which is compelled to interfere everywhere, because the logic of open borders is that America must try to make the world more America-like and cannot tolerate differences. But it’s madness to expect that there can be an open borders America which minds its own business. It’s business, by definition, is unlimited in scope.
January 9, 2010, 6:28 pmTwirip says:
I meant Dec 8, 1941 of course.
January 9, 2010, 6:30 pmClaude Hopper says:
Pointless quibble: “thus raising the threshold of violence” should be “thus lowering the threshold of violence”. Lower threshold, more violence.
January 9, 2010, 6:30 pmmac says:
Orca, Walstad,
You take advantage of the fact we’re NOT like the side you favor. If we were like them, your bodies would long since have been found dismembered, with your genitals stuffed in the mouths of your hacked-off heads.
You take advantage of your freedom to attack those who defend you. You better hope they don’t get tired of carrying such a thankless burden.
January 9, 2010, 6:42 pmMike K says:
Allan Walstad: Meanwhile, Bush and his comrades attacked Iraq, which posed no threat, continued their occupation even after the baselessness of the the invasion became clear, and embarked on a decade of war in that country that cost far more US lives and treasure than were lost in the 9/11 attacks.They invaded Afghanistan and set the same course there, with what is shaping up to be the same result in losses.
It is pretty easy to misstate history and then draw spurious conclusions. People have been doing that for centuries.
No mention of the status quo ante the invasion in 2003. I therefore assume you opposed the First Gulf War since that was the proximate cause of the 2003 invasion.
You might recall that the 1998 fatwa by bin Laden was based on the presence of our troops on the Arabian peninsula because Saddam evaded the ceasefire conditions.
If we had not launched Desert Storm, Desert Shield would still be going on 20 years later or did you oppose that military campaign, as well?
If you agreed with Barbara Boxer on Desert Shield, would you have been content to see Saddam with possession of the Saudi and Kuwaiti oil fields with his far more advanced that anticipated nuclear program undisturbed by UNSCOM ?
I’m just asking. Like many leftists and radical libertarians (The pull the hole in after you variety), you ignore the history that left Bush II with the choices he faced in 2003 after the 9/11 attacks.
I think lawyers call that an incomplete hypothetical.
January 9, 2010, 6:48 pmJAL says:
So what the lawyers are really saying is “It isn’t fair.”
January 9, 2010, 6:50 pmJAL says:
A significant percentage of Americans enjoy the idea that their country is slaughtering brown people.
Isn’t this the most amazing thing to see a supposedly educated person writing? (One might think Sen. Harry Reid was posting here.)
The majority of the Islamist fanatics who are at war with us are not — wait for it — “brown” people.” Ever taken time to check them out? We’re not fighting in middle Africa, you know.
Actually a large number of the guys in my son’s command when he was in Iraq were — wait for it — “brown people” with names like Juan, Carlos and Miquel. Funny — they were willing to die to protect the Constitution of a country in which a “significant percentage” (and what might that be?) are thought to think by some ignorant individuals that slaughtering brown people is “enjoyable.”
January 9, 2010, 7:03 pmtom says:
So, Phoenix bad? But, Predator good?
January 9, 2010, 7:21 pmhitnrun says:
The racial brown-people angle is academic, in every sense of the word, and irrelevant. If someone wants to believe that, the proper response is not “no!” but “who cares?” This country has already fired one Congress and expelled a political party for the war. As a LA major who should know, arguing with someone who believes the undergraduate pap about phallic symbols and brown people in the real context of this serious issue is a waste of ire.
As for the Predator issue, I can only say that the concerns of the various hand-wringers very well might be valid in the case of “military action,” like the wars of Clinton and Reagan.
But in a declared, committed war like the GWOT, particularly in Afghanistan, no holds should be barred. We decided together, as a Republic through our Congress, to enter a state of war against these radicals in this territory, however vaguely defined. That being the case, we have no right – nor should we have any desire – to specify the exposure of our soldiers to “bring down the threshold of violence” or impose some handicap on our warfighting efficiency.
War is not a social movement. It’s not an election campaign. It’s the committed application of a nation’s force to destroy and hinder the force of a declared enemy. If we have a moral problem with some aspect of this, there’s a very simple solution: don’t go to war.
January 9, 2010, 7:24 pmSwen Swenson says:
So the main complaint with drone strikes is that they’re not sporting? That killing the enemy without endangering our own troops isn’t fair somehow? I guess the whole concept of warfare has changed since I studied military science. Back then the whole idea was to employ strategy and tactics to avoid a fair fight whenever possible. In fact, the more unfair you could make the fight the better. But back then war wasn’t like T-ball, we were more interested in winning than in helping the enemy with his self esteem issues.
We’ve come a long way since General Patton said ‘The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his.’ Somehow, I don’t think Patton would approve of this development. He’d probably feel like slapping someone. I know I do.
January 9, 2010, 7:42 pmJohn Moore says:
Daniel Charles:
What ignorant drivel! Does DC really believe that this technology would be used against us as a consequence of our current activities?
One would hope that he and others who make this ludicrous assertion would recognize that our enemies in this war will use whatever technology they can in order to attack us, and there are few technologies more horrendous than crashing airliners into skyscrapers!
January 9, 2010, 7:54 pmPriapus says:
Lets make a deal then: If al queda agrees to wear uniforms ,our boys will fight them face to face.
And to the academics? Let Conner and Jessica fight against the “religion of peace” (submission, that’s what Islam means btw) where everyone gets a ribbon, and they want to stone Jessica for looking one of these disgusting people in the eye, or for not going out without a family member in tow with them. Do these people have any clue as to the contempt they have for you in general, let alone some lesbian, intellectual jerkoff from B.U. or Berkeley? They would be like Hanibal Lechter, just delighted to cut your head off (as it says in the Koran) or carve off your daughter Sarahs clitoris. What is wrong with you cretins?
January 9, 2010, 8:31 pmG. May says:
To your first question – This is why I mention NATO and the UN. Some meaningful help from those organizations in nation building Afghanistan, while we simply provide security, would go a long way. Instead, we have the usual US doing the heavy lifting on the military, security, counter-insurgency, and finance of the whole operation. We have the resources, talent, drive, and tools to do it (despite shockingly ignorant commentary above), just not the political will.
The international “community” could go a long way in helping us fill that gap, but it just doesn’t. It has nothing to do with “reaching out”, “engaging”, or “hitting reset buttons” and everything to do with the realities of nations acting in their own self-interests. Consider that the international “community” (incuding us) did absolutely nothing for Afghanistan after the Soviet pullout and no one moves in to clean up the mess until over a decade later. Just leaving the problem for someone else to clean up not only didn’t work, but it had extremely adverse effects back home. The situation requires serious foreign policy. And in the interest of brevity, I’m going to stop there.
To your second question – The primary enemy is both the insurgents and the global terrorist network. We’re discussing two arms of the same beast, not two independent organizations.
Regarding your third question – victory is when terrorism is pushed back to its previously regional boundaries. The farther in time you like back before 9/11, even major terror attacks were geographically limited with the exception of the first WTC bombing. The closer you get to 9/11, the more sophisticated the attacks become and the farther abroad they reach. Since 9/11, multiple actions succeeded in pushing terrorism back to its traditional boundaries. Now we see a slight resurgence and a reconsolidation of the most successful global terror network. Let Afghanistan go and we’ll be back at pre-9/11 square one.
Continue to keep them on the move, continue to disrupt financing, continue intelligence sharing, continue to treat them as terrorists and illegal combatants instead of common street criminals and there will be a perpetual advantage you can call victory. Allow them the use of entire countries or take your eye off any of those other key issues and it’s a loss.
January 9, 2010, 8:33 pmChris Travers says:
Ok, but does that mean a permanent war in Somalia, for example, or Yemen, or even Colombia (given allegations of cooperation between some insurgencies there and international terrorist networks)? Do we essentially have to stamp out all lawless areas (and hence civil wars) to make that happen?
I would suggest that insurgent organizations are not uniformly tied to global terrorist networks, though, and that those which are tied, are cooperative because insurgency and terrorism are close cousins, perhaps even fraternal twins. Where you have lawlessness you will have terrorist bases, and where you have civil wars, you will have expertise sharing with other insurgencies.
But your “victory” is really in my book a state of continual war. It means the “war on terror” in your book will never be won to the point that it is over.
At that point, then we can take out of it that civil libertarians such as myself need to be fighting tooth and nail against the loss of ANY civil liberties because we will never get them back. But that undermines your view of victory, does it not?
Personally, I don’t think an ongoing war is ever really won until it is over.
January 9, 2010, 8:51 pmChris Travers says:
The International Crisis Group wrote a great paper on Islamism. In their opening section, they point out that calling Islam a religion of peace is very misleading and that the dialog on the subject assumes that Islam and Christianity are more similar than they are. They conclude that Islam is a religion of law rather than peace, and hence is structurally more similar to Judaism than Christianity (but is different from both).
The paper is extremely interesting and I would recommend that everyone read it. Free registration is required.
January 9, 2010, 8:56 pmJohn Moore says:
Where there is not a natural (religious) tie between insurgency and Jihadist terrorism, we could punish insurgencies aiding global terror, convincing them it would be in their own best interest to stay away from the Jihadi terrorist organizations. On the other hand, most insurgencies in the world at the moment seem to be a result of Islamic expansionism.
January 9, 2010, 9:01 pmAllan Walstad says:
The first Gulf War was the cause of the 2003 invasion? Nonsense.
January 9, 2010, 9:03 pmmariner says:
Mike K:
Actually it looks more like “invicible ignorance”.
January 9, 2010, 9:06 pmAllan Walstad says:
Unlike Al Q, Japan had battleships, aircraft carriers, bombers, millions of troops, and direct control over a large and increasing area. See the difference, Twirip?
January 9, 2010, 9:12 pmAllan Walstad says:
Mac, is that just the dirty smear it sounds like, or are you so dense as to suppose my heart is with Al Q? Try re-reading my comments with an ear open to my actual concerns.
January 9, 2010, 9:20 pmAllan Walstad says:
Troll, much?
January 9, 2010, 9:22 pmJohn Moore says:
I get it! We should only surrender to those who are weak. Or is it that we should only surrender to those who kill our civilians by the thousands rather than just our servicemen.
Okay, I don’t get it.
And…
It was, in fact, one of the causes, in the sense that the outcome of that war led us to flying patrols over Iraq every day, which were militarily engaged by Iraq at least once a week. In other words, the first gulf war never ended, and we were engaged in active military hostilities with Iraq continuously until the end of the the second Iraq invasion.
Not the only cause, but one of the lists casus belli. And, of course, the WMD suspicion was made much stronger by the fact that we found enormous amounts of WMD’s as a direct result of the first gulf war. Then, there was the attempted assassination of a US president by Saddam – as a result of the first gulf war.
January 9, 2010, 9:34 pmLTC John says:
Um. Wrong. It is one of the more effective weapons we have, the UAV (“murders”? Oh, please…)
Yup, they actually identified themselves as soldiers, sailors, etc., of Japan… they fought as a nation-state. The “law” seems much clearer with such a foe, yes?
I would hope all the law students who are miffed at the unfairness of our Armed Forces actually killing bad actors with remote controlled devices would just be honest enough to state such aloud. Hiding behind the “law”, as described, simply makes me want to eat my ILARDC card…
January 9, 2010, 9:39 pmG. May says:
No and no. I don’t think I suggested that, though I can understand how you might infer it. It’s a complicated subject that doesn’t lend well to short conversations on blog threads because it leads to those sorts of conclusions.
Some areas are clearly more of a threat than others, so the idea of having to stamp out all lawless areas is a bit of an oversimplification.
In the specific case we’re discussing however, the insurgency in Afghanistan is closely tied to AQ. Forgive my lack of clarity, but this is what I was talking about.
What I suggest is enough military intervention to prevent a war in the first place. In this example, I’m not referring to Afghanistan since doing nothing for so long reaped us such great rewards.
Do you think the war on terror can be won? What would you propose as an alternative to what I suggest?
I’m sorry, but you lost me here. At what point did I suggest an infringement upon your civil liberties?
January 9, 2010, 9:44 pmJeff Medcalf says:
That sounds remarkably like “the US is only entitled to fight where it has a chance of being defeated.” I reject the premise.
January 9, 2010, 9:51 pmorca says:
Can you give us your professional estimate as to exactly how much these attacks will shorten the war? Feel free to round off to the nearest decade…
January 9, 2010, 9:56 pmJohn Moore says:
Troll, again
January 9, 2010, 10:16 pmyankee says:
That is exactly what the government wants. An endless war means an endless need for more taxes, more spending, and more “emergency” powers. And you cannot win a war on a state of mind.
January 9, 2010, 10:19 pmJohn Moore says:
As a more substantive answer… the war will end when the enemy quits. We cannot predict that. However, the goal of the attacks is not just to end the war – it is to DEFEND our citizens during the war. You may have missed that part… you know… defending our people.
January 9, 2010, 10:22 pmJohn Moore says:
See above. We are defending our citizens. Whether that results in a “win” of a war in any timeframe you would approve of is irrelevant.
As for the idea that the government is waging this war for more taxes and more spending, that’s just plain nuts. Need I lay it out for you.
The “emergency” powers so far sought seem to be wanted to protect the citizens, not as a power grab, no matter what various paranoids seem to think.
January 9, 2010, 10:24 pmDanube of Thought says:
I’m appalled at the school of thought that says our side should expose itself unnecessarily to the enemy, and the implicit, related notion that if only we did so, the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters would do the same.
In warfare the last thing anyone wants is a fair fight; you want the odds to be very unfairly weighted in your favor. Nothing in any of the laws and customs of war, particularly including the Geneva Conventions and their precursors, is to the contrary.
January 9, 2010, 10:28 pmorca says:
The Taliban never attacked America.
Neither did Saddam.
January 9, 2010, 10:29 pmJohn Moore says:
Orca, I never expected you, in particular, to understand.
The Taliban’s agents directly attacked America in 2001, in case you have forgotten. Al Qaeda was deeply integrated into the Taliban, serving as their enforcers. The Taliban, in return, served as their hosts and enablers.
So yes, the Taliban attacked America.
And, as I already pointed out, Saddam, in violation of the truce obligations, attacked American aircraft repeatedly. Saddam also attempted to assassinate a former president of the United States.
So yes, Saddam attacked America.
Your threshold for “attack” seems to be extraordinarily high – to the point of earning you the appellation “surrender monkey.”
January 9, 2010, 10:43 pmAllan Walstad says:
Look, John, the fact that our political leaders chose to keep engaging in military activities in Iraq for years at a time in no way serves as justification for our invading Iraq in 2003. Saddam had been booted out of Kuwait, his military given a good spanking, and Bush Sr. had the notable common sense not to push into regime change and nation-building.
How about this: we use force judiciously in response to the magnitude of the threat, soberly factoring into our considerations the many different costs of war? In addition to other concerns I expressed earlier, I would suggest caution against weakening ourselves flailing at gnats while much more formidable potential foes gain strength. Nobody I know is talking about surrendering to Al Q. I doubt the whole bunch of them could rule so much as Johnstown PA, given the number of folks around here with guns and and plenty of experience using them.
January 9, 2010, 10:45 pmHyphenated American says:
By this logic, we should also disarm our soldiers, policemen and the like – I mean, after all, is it not cowardice that they are much better armed and protected than the criminals?
All in all, liberal desire to make everyone equal found a new venue – make all sides fighting in a war equal.
Before I forget – Obama has a lot of security around him – does this prove that he is a coward? Liberals, don’t you want Obama to be driving a Honda Prius from home to his work in the White House? It would make him make much more conscious of his decisions….
January 9, 2010, 10:50 pmJohn Moore says:
I disagree. We engaged in military activities in Iraq as part of enforcing the truce, and to protect human rights. Saddam’s attacks on us, and Bush Sr, were direct acts of war, and our invasion was justified, on those grounds alone.
No, actually, quite a few folks here on VC are talking about surrendering to AQ. They just don’t understand it that way.
As to what AQ “could rule” – is that relevant? However, they did, in fact, rule Anbar Province, and that turned our really great for the inhabitants, didn’t it? BTW, the folks in Anbar had as many guns and as much experience – unlike the US, Sunni households were all allowed to keep at least one fully automatic weapon.
But, you know and I know that we aren’t talking about AQ “ruling” the US. We are talking about them harming us. They did us tremendous harm on 9/11 – at least I consider 3000 lives and $1 trillion in direct costs to be something more than a national flea bite. They intend to do us tremendous harm again. They almost succeeded in 2006 with their plans to detonate a number of 747′s over U.S. cities. Osama Bin Laden did a lot of experiments with chemical weapons, and AQ had an active biological warfare program headed by a PhD biologist (whom we captured in the last year or two).
We should not be fooled by our luck in foiling their plots – they are patient and determined. Better to keep them off balance (which the predators have been doing, probably partly responsible for the plots failing).
Likewise, we should not under-estimate our enemy. We did that in the ’90s, and in spite of what some cost-benefit types think, the cost was enormous.
January 9, 2010, 10:55 pmAllan Walstad says:
Hyphenated American, would you point out who was accusing our soldiers, policemen, and president of cowardice? I don’t recall doing so, but perhaps someone else did?
January 9, 2010, 11:00 pmBattleofthePyramids says:
Perhaps a larger strategic issue is being missed, here. Given that the current war on Islamic Terrorism is in fact a clash of civilizations; that is, the majority of Muslims either support the Jihadists currently waging terror, or are unwilling to oppose them because they agree with their basic premise, that Islam should be superior to all other religions and an Islamic Caliphate should dominate the world.
In other words, there is more to this war than a handful of scattered fanatics. Muslims worldwide support madrassas which train muslims in terror. Muslims worldwide donate to terror groups, and Muslims worldwide agree that non-muslims deserve to be terrorized and attacked.
All of the above being the case, perhaps trying to reduce civilian casualties is the wrong approach to take. Note that in WWII the USA did the exact opposite. Wide area saturation bombing campaigns were carried out against both Nazi Germany and Japan to destroy their ability to wage war. It worked, as we all know. Rather than try to target only terrorists, while leaving all those who sympathize and support them untouched, the USA would be better off to learn from the Russian experience in Chechneya, where they faced a situation similar to that which the USA faces in Afghanistan. Unlike Bush and Obama, the Putin administration is not afraid of killing Muslims until the Mulsims have had enough. And it worked.
January 9, 2010, 11:01 pmorca says:
The 9/11 terrorists were harbored and trained right here in America.
Besides, the Taliban are our agents via the thugs we trained to attack the Soviets.
January 9, 2010, 11:15 pmAllan Walstad says:
As to “enforcing the truce” I suggest it was more like enforcing our will for years at a time. If you are going to fly military planes over someone else’s country for years at a time and when they take a shot at you chalk it up as an excuse for another invasion, then all you’re doing is looking for an excuse for another invasion. It’s rather like walking around with a chip on your shoulder. So Bush Sr. might as well have pushed on to Baghdad in the first place–but there were good reasons not to–like the thousands of our soldiers dead, tens of thousands wounded, and trillion bucks squandered.
As to “protecting human rights,” there are any number of countries all around the world whose governments are violating individual rights. How freaking many wars do you want? Since when it is our job to right every wrong from here to Timbuktu? Iraq, as most of us have come to understand, is a place where various factions have been at each other’s throats for centuries. This situation lends itself to the rise of a strongman whose rule, though ruthless, may leave most people in better shape than continual warfare. How may people died in Iraq as a result of our invasion and the turmoil that followed? When we leave do you really think all will be peace and light over there?
As to the failed attempt on Bush Sr., as I recall we didn’t even learn about it until later, and Clinton’s response (again, by my recollection) was one cruise missile. Beats getting into a war of “honor” to the tune of thousands of our own soldiers dead.
No, actually, you are the one who brought up the red herring about surrendering to Al Q, and I’m the one who called you on it. To suggest that you understand better what others are saying than they themselves do is a pathetic response.
Do you have a reference on the $1 trillion? But again, this was 19 individuals with boxcutters. The only reason they succeeded (again) was because fed agencies failed o make use of the info they had, and the cockpit crews were unarmed. Al Q is capable of hurting some people and causing some damage, as is anybody who has some money and means us ill. But they pose exactly zero military threat to this country, and meanwhile thousands of people are murdered, tens of thousands killed in accidents every year, and it seems a plane crashes by accident about that often too. This goes back to having the probity to use force proportionate to the treat without getting suckered into squandering lives and resources and all the other costs of prolonged war.
January 9, 2010, 11:35 pmHyphenated American says:
Alan Walstad:
Poor alan, you cannot read. Here is the quote from the article we’ve been all responding:
Isn’t it typical that liberals don’t have reading comprehension?
January 9, 2010, 11:43 pmAllan Walstad says:
I might have hoped that this was irony on your part, BattleofthePyramids. But I suspect it’s straight. So thank you for another example of the broader and perhaps subtler costs of war.
January 9, 2010, 11:44 pmJohn Moore says:
Allan, it is not necessary that the flights be good policy for the attacks on them to have been illegal acts of war. As for the assassination attempt on GHWB, that was a clear and direct act of war. Either of these is justification for the invasion of Iraq. Whether that was a good policy is not the point.
As to your argument about AQ, it is again irrelevant that the sharp point of the AQ stick was 19 guys with boxcutters. The intent and the effect are clear.
You then fall into the typical argument that because many people are killed by various ways in the US, AQ is somehow less of an issue. That’s a red herring.
Ultimately, though, the threat is radical Jihadism, with AQ being one of the more significant organizations. The level of threat is arguable, and you choose to take the low end side. When AQ has been engaged in chemical and biological weapons experimentation, and have already killed thousands of Americans, prudence suggests that we treat the threat as very serious. Military folks have long understood the dangers of asymmetrical warfare, where a “weak” opponent still inflicts major damage. Modern technology, especially in the bio-weapons area, allows a small, “weak” group to inflict catastrophic damage.
Likewise, the correct form of response is obviously arguable and spans a wide range of possibilities, from the (idiotic) treatment of terrorists as ordinary criminals, to wide-scale warfare against the population of any country that tolerates terrorists within their border.
How much do you think is necessary to prevent another 9-11 (or worse), or was 9-11 just an acceptable level of damage, given your argument about the number of people murdered and killed in accidents every year?
January 9, 2010, 11:46 pmHyphenated American says:
Alan, an attempt to kill our former president by Saddam Hussein – is this an act of war by international standards? Therefore, wasn’t our invasion of Iraq justified? Moreover, if we invade Afghanistan to avenge the murder of 3,000 people and I assume you are okay with this – then what’s your objection to doing same against Saddam?
January 9, 2010, 11:48 pmAllan Walstad says:
Hyphenated American, the original post has been followed by many pages of discussion, and I thought you might have been referring to one of the recent discussants. Thanks for the pointer.
January 9, 2010, 11:49 pmyankee says:
Even that wouldn’t have been enough if it weren’t for the procedures the crew were taught to follow in the event of hijacking. Previous hijackers had tried to fly the plane somewhere and demand a ransom, so the secret to survival was for passengers and crew not to resist. The Flight 93 attack failed because by that point the passengers had heard about the World Trade Center attacks; a similar attack will never succeed again for the same reason.
January 9, 2010, 11:52 pmJohn Moore says:
Which is why the preferred mode starting in 2006 has been to detonate large airliners over US cities. I am not at all confident that this approach will continue to fail – especially since the last guy to try it lawyered up and shut up, thanks to our utterly idiotic administration.
January 9, 2010, 11:54 pmAllan Walstad says:
John, if you’re looking for an excuse to invade, you can find one. That’s not quite the same thing as a justification for plunging into a deadly and destructive war. I’m sorry I haven’t made any more headway with the idea of a soberly measured response proportionate to the level of real threat. The fact that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by 19 individuals with boxcutters is highly relevant, because it goes to the real level of threat, which is utterly puny. The relevance of the number of other murders and violent deaths yearly is, again, to have some sense of perspective on the level of threat. As far as preventing another 9/11, I highly doubt that our costly mideast wars have helped at all. If we’ve killed off some foes, others have stepped forward to take their place. This is not like defeating, say, Japan in WWII. Once their ships and planes were destroyed and their troops routed, they were done. And no, there is nothing idiotic about prosecuting individual murderers and attempted murderers as criminals, rather than elevating them to the status of warriors.
January 10, 2010, 12:06 amyankee says:
The question isn’t whether it’s “acceptable,” but how much effort is worth putting into preventing it. Additional security procedures at airports? Sure. Put more law enforcement/intelligence resources into keeping tabs on Al-Qaeda and preventing them from getting biological/chemical weapons? Sure. Declare that we’re in a global “war” on an emotion (or tactic) requiring indefinite detentions without charges or trial, torture, new secret spy programs, and invasions of countries with nothing to do with the original attacks? No.
The fundamental flaw in post-9/11 thinking was to decide that this was a war rather than a law enforcement action. The original invasion of Afghanistan was probably justified (though I am not sure about that), but the idea of using 9/11 as the basis for global war without end was and remains a tremendous error.
January 10, 2010, 12:07 amAllan Walstad says:
Good point Yankee.
Good night, all.
January 10, 2010, 12:07 amJohn Moore says:
Allan,
I agree that we should wage war proportionate to our objectives. The distraction about the Iraq war was that – a distraction to our discussion.
However, we strongly disagree about the level of threat of AQ. Any group which can kill 3000 people, destroying major real estate, and crash a large aircraft into the center of our military power is not an “utterly puny” threat. As I tried to point out regarding bio-war and the 2006 plot, they are trying, and potentially capable of major, deadly attacks.
Your view of our war on radical Jihad as one that must be won in a few years, and that the purpose of our warfare is to defeat radical Jihad in that context, is simply incorrect because of the nature of the enemy. Our warfare is, in the short run, to disrupt the enemy’s capabilities to do us significant harm. In the long run, it must be to end this threat, which may indeed be at the level of a gigantic class of ideologies/theologies.
Had we not invaded Afghanistan, for example, the “puny” threat might, by now, have released a contagious, deadly pathogen into the US, killing hundreds of thousands, and paralyzing the country.
Far fetched? Not if you know anything about contagious pathogens and read the writings of defense officials worrying about that threat. Keep in mind that biological warfare experts who have discounted these threats tend to think in terms of military (weaponized) biological weapons, which is not what terrorists need to use – the use cases are radically different. The NRC considers biological warfare to be the most likely ad most deadly threat from AQ.
But that’s just one example. They might also obtain a nuke, one way or another. Their campaign in Pakistan is aimed at getting Pakistan’s nukes (they’ve admitted this) through taking over that vulnerable country. Again, not a “puny” threat.
Or, they might just succeed in blowing up a plane or two over a US city. You can argue that the deaths of a few hundred people is puny, but in an operational sense, it would be a very big deal – both in terms of its impact on the transportation system, and the psychological effect including the consequent demands for retribution and prevention.
This is wrong-headed. Nobody suggested elevating the panty bomber to the status of warrior. Rather, he should be given the status of war criminal and illegal combatant. The idea that this was mere attempted (mass) murder is simply wrong. It was an organized attack on America by a foreign enemy, and the agent was not entitled to any rights (note how Roosevelt treated the German saboteurs). Specifically, he should be available for effective interrogation – and it really was idiotic to deny that capability. We know that he said that others were training to do the same thing… before he shut up. What else does he know that might save a whole bunch of innocent lives, and why should we deny ourselves that information? It’s not like this pathetic loser would require water-boarding before giving up useful intelligence information.
January 10, 2010, 12:23 amChris Travers says:
I suggest we stop calling “war” and start calling it “containment.”
Regarding civil liberties, you personally haven’t asked directly, but in general when we look at cases like Padilla’s, the virtual strip search technology coming to an airport near you, and the like, it seems to me the only way to justify any argument that these are temporary measures needed to win a war.
I can buy that we can win the war in Afghanistan if we have the political will to do so (and honestly this means putting a lot of pressure on the Afghan government for political reforms too), but we can’t win the war on terror in any meaningful way.
If you agree with me that we can’t give up ONE INCH of our civil liberties to fight the endless war on terror, then I am happy with that though.
January 10, 2010, 12:27 amJohn Moore says:
This is exactly and strongly backwards. We were already treating it as a law enforcement action before 9-11, and that brought us 9-11.
It is clearly more than a law enforcement action. We are not dealing with criminals, we are dealing with foreign organizations intent on damaging and destroying our society, using the preferred methods of mass murder.
Law enforcement is simply not up to this task. When the enemy is operating in protected territories, where the “crime” involves attacks killing more people than Pearl Harbor, where evidence is not available, and where the “ticking bomb” scenario is real (it is in effect right now as a result of the underwear bomber’s revelations), law enforcement (with all the attendant legal protections) is simply like bringing a rubber knife to a firefight – utterly and obviously insufficient.
That people cannot see this completely amazes me!
I hope that this argument is only put forth to counter perceived over-militarization, but I fear that some people really, truly believe it on its own merits.
Amazing.
January 10, 2010, 12:28 amChris Travers says:
We should keep it in perspective though. Yes, I believe that AQ was a major threat. Whether it still is or not is a good question.
Interestingly while really terrible bio-weapons exist (weaponized smallpox being the best example), most bioweapons are miserably ineffective at killing lots of people. The USSR “accidently” released weaponized anthrax over civilian populations a few times and the fatality rates, though significant, were hardly apocalyptic (roughly one to two per thousand). The basic issue is that the tensions involved in defining what makes a good bio weapon doesn’t leave a lot of room for doomsday weapons.
This isn’t to say that they don’t constitute a threat. They could overwhelm our medical system etc.
Similarly, absent military-grade dispersal systems, chemical weapons are fairly ineffective, as we saw in the Tokyo attacks (VX would make a great tool for assassinations though).
Most likely though, neither of these in a terrorist setting will beat the destructive power of high explosives……
Again this isn’t to say that AQ is not a threat. They have pulled off a number of impressive attacks in a number of different countries including Yemen, Indonesia, the UK, and the US. Their weapons are the tried-and-true high explosives that damaged the USS Cole, damaged the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, and the WTC in the first such attack in the US.
What this means is we should be engaging in a policy of disruption and containment, but since the war can never be won in a conventional sense, we must not give up one inch of our civil liberties.
January 10, 2010, 12:39 amlucklucky says:
“The 8 CIA agents recently killed in Afghanistan were involved in drone strikes in Pakistan.
The Taliban targeted them because of their involvement.”
Of course, that Junkers downed by the Hurricane was the cause that Hurricane was hit by the Messerschmidt. If Hurricane wouldn’t have been a bad bad aircraft, Messerschmidt would be quiet in his corner… same for the PzIV tank that burn cause a Sherman tank hit, if it wasn’t for that there would be Peace above Land…
January 10, 2010, 6:10 amDavid Gillies says:
Militant Islam and its adherents exist at our sufferance. This is not to say that it will not prevail – it is entirely plausible that we will cavil in the face of its malevolence and permit it, through inaction, to gain the upper hand. But we can, right now, extirpate it from the planet, albeit at grievous spiritual cost. We simply choose not to. The relative justness of our positions can be pictured with the following thought experiment: if the Taliban had a fleet of ballistic missile submarines, how long would it be before warheads descended on our population centres?
January 10, 2010, 6:29 amKerry says:
We must kill them with drones, we must kill them with grenades, we must kill them with all sorts of fire, direct and indirect. We must kill them in cave and village, in shopping mall, and in smallboats, jostling on the waves in the dark from the fantail, using accurate head shots, we must kill them in their sleep on Christmas. We must never dissemble!
January 10, 2010, 10:01 amTwirip says:
Alan Walstad says:
The 9/11 attacks were no more carried out by “19 individuals with boxcutters” than the Predator attacks are carried out by “some guy with a little remote controled plane”.
January 10, 2010, 10:35 amKerry says:
Notwithstanding my previous comment, it seems the discussion here is focusing on hardware, material, tactical action etc. What is lacking, and has been lacking, (perhaps since Jefferson?), is a willingness to attack the ideology behind the assaults on us, and to define very clearly, from the enemies’ point of view, not ours, (al Queda is no threat to us, the Taliban didn’t attack us etc.), their intentions. (And, in so doing, we might just clarify ours.) We may dismiss it as silly, preposterous, or just plain nuts, but these 7th century types believe they are fighting a religious war, and their intent is to destroy or subjugate the West,(note the capital W). Our commercial airline industry is presently disrupted by hours long searches, and we are currently winning the war on tweezers, snow globes and books read in the last hour of flight. We similarly disrupted Hitler’s Panzers for several weeks after the Normandy invasion by the subterfuge of Patton’s FUSAG. Patton’s phony radio traffic and rubber trucks were “no threat” to the paperhanger, but he believed they were. While we could then destroy Nazism and its will to fight by destroying their ability to wage war, we are not waging war on those waging war upon us, as we are not trying to destroy their ability to do so. That particular ability derives from a viral ideology, spread the same as computer viruses. Who here protects their computer from viruses by turning off the computer forever? Or keeping the screen dustfree, and the desk stocked only with crayons, not pens? And we cannot succeed by confiscating shampoo bottles and discussing the moral difficulties of video operated drones. One presumes most readers here know of Pershing’s (perhaps apocryphal)thought experiment with the Moo-slims in the Philippines. Some fifty were captured, 49 shot, coated with pig blood and entrails, and planted in the ground and the 50th set free to spread the word. Surely there is something we can do to strike the fear of Oll-ah in these people. And if the moderate Moo-slims get upset, my retort would be, “Tough. No I don’t think much of your religion, and whose fault is that?” This ’72 Virgin’ crap could be exploited. Harry Reid could undercut that meme with pictures of showgirls and vacation brochures.
January 10, 2010, 10:42 amUntil the current ‘Why do they hate us, oh no’ handwringing is replaced “Just who the hell do you think you people are?”, and “If you don’t like us coming after these people too bad”,this writer is not sanguine.
willis says:
Just like, the airplanes were used against us in 9/11 after years of us doing it to the radical muslims. Is that what you were thinking Charlie?
January 10, 2010, 10:44 amTwirip says:
Alan
I don’t see any difference which is responsive to my point.
You claimed that the the war was a bad idea because it has been more expensive in lives and in money than the 9/11 attacks. I merely pointed out that this is the normal pattern in war. Substitute the sinking of the Maine or the Lusitania for two other examples. I don’t think there has been a war in history which was less expensive than its proximate cause. The number of Japanese troops has nothing to do with the point being raised.
January 10, 2010, 10:47 amTwirip says:
The first Gulf War ended with a cease fire contingent on Iraq’s obeying certain conditions. They failed to do so, and this was the immediate legal cause of the the second war. You might want to read the report of Hans Blix to the UN Security council in January 2003, as well as Osama Bin Ladens list of grievances against the United States.
I’m checking out that ICG report, thanks for the link.
January 10, 2010, 10:56 amKerry says:
Note that the founder of the religion of the west, unlike some other founder whom we will not name, (Hordes of hungry porcines be upon him), never personally killed anyone. “IHS”
P.S. To those who will attempt to discredit the Faith by noting the failures of its followers to practice it to perfection, are the current crop of child raping throat slitter religionists living up to or failing their founder? And, as one must pick a side in this life, which side do ya like?
January 10, 2010, 11:08 amG. May says:
Ok, so call them Overseas Terror Containment Operations. We do the same things I already outlined, change the name of it and everyone feels better.
I don’t recall suggesting or implying support for asinine security measures at airports in the first place.
Then consider us in agreement.
January 10, 2010, 11:33 amChris Travers says:
Wow…. STILL accusing Spain of sinking the Maine? Based on what, exactly?
January 10, 2010, 1:04 pmJohn Moore says:
A few comments on this…
The Anthrax released in 2001 was not fully weaponized (it did not have antibiotic resistance) and was released in a way designed for maximum publicity but not maximum deaths. Even so, it caused significant disruption and terror. AQ would most likely release Anthrax at one or more crowded transportation hubs, killing more people and damaging our economy by the resultant disruption of transportation.
However, a good military bio-weapon has constraints that an AQ weapon does not. It needs to be safe to use, reliable, and controllable in its impact. AQ, on the other hand, would at most be constrained only by the controllability, and given their ideology, probably not even by the latter, given their willingness to kill their fellow religionists. This means that they would likely strike with a contagious agent such as a highly virulent flu, or a SARS-like illness, or perhaps smallpox, although that is easier to contain. This makes suicidal cults like AQ uniquely dangerous.
Note that I haven’t mentioned chemical weapons. Perhaps that’s a personal bias, because I don’t work or live in a high-rise, the most obvious target given the difficulty of dispersing the agents in the open atmosphere. However, an AQ Sarin/VX attack would still be highly disruptive.
It may be that AQ is currently deterred from using these weapons, given the response that would likely follow. AQ is not only a jihadist organization, but it has political goals that might be harmed by such an attack. It would be dangerous, however, to depend on them having that viewpoint.
Finally, some Jihadists are apocalyptic, including Iran’s official leader. A weapon which caused a world-wide apocalypse might be viewed as bringing on the final apocalypse. We saw this same thinking with Aum Shinri Kyo, and they were responsible for attacks with both Sarin and Anthrax, and had much larger ambitions.
January 10, 2010, 1:22 pmChris Travers says:
No doubt, but mostly because folks are overly afraid of it.
Bio weapons and chemical weapons are better at causing disruption and terror (in large part due to media ignorance) but high explosives are better at killing people.
Also typical counter-agents against nerve gases have more general applications in part because many pesticides are cholinesterase inhibitors too (just like Sarin or VX) and hence are likely to be on hand in at least some quantity in hospitals.
On the other hand, imagine what someone with a bottle of vx and an eye dropper could accomplish…..
January 10, 2010, 1:34 pmChris Travers says:
That whole sado-masochistic scene at the temple though seemed pretty kinky…..
Or were you referring to the founder of modern science?
January 10, 2010, 1:39 pmJohn Moore says:
The National Research Council and myself beg to differ. Bio and Chem weapons are designated WMD’s because of their potential for a very high death to weapons mass ratio.
As for the counter-agents for cholinesterase inhibitors, their availability at hospitals is irrelevant. A killing dose of those agents is lethal in just a few minutes. It is unlikely that any who receive a lethal dose would make it to a hospital. The primary antagonist is atropine, which is indeed a common medication.
I posit a couple of practical attack scenarious:
1) A small droplet VX aerosolizer deployed in a crowd (AQ loves mass transit hubs). This would kill a few people but cause lots of terror and disruption. Deployed in an aircraft, it might kill everyone. The oxygen masks are not adequate protection, as VX and Sarin are liquids and are absorbed through the skin.
2) A liter or so of Sarin (or less of VX) sprayed into the air intake of a large building. This could kill hundreds or thousands. This scenario is why many of those air intakes have been hardened or guarded in large cities. Note that a binary nerve agent recovered from one of the chemical weapons shells recovered after the 2003 Iraq invasion would provide more than adequate agent for this purpose.
As an aside, I once had a crop duster park his aircraft next ot mine at a small Kansas airfield. When he got out of the plane, he was not feeling well. He said he had experienced a Palathion leak and was headed to the hospital for an atropine shot. Obviously he had experienced a relatively low dose. I believe Palathion is no longer used in the US.
January 10, 2010, 2:23 pmTwirip says:
There you go again, Chris.
I think you’re one of the better commenters I’ve had disagreements with around here. That said, you have a habit of not listening to what I say.
One more time then: I’m not commenting about the Maine, Pearl Harbor, or the Lusitania. I’m pointing out the error in your initial argument that a war is a bad thing if the cost of the war exceeds the cost of fighting it.
Regardless of whether Spain sunk the Maine or not, that was the cause of the Spanish-American war. And the cost of the war exceeded the cost of the battleship. The cost of war always exceeds the cost of the wars proximate cause.
January 10, 2010, 2:36 pmKerry says:
Chris Travers, huh…? “Seemed kinky…” to whom…?
Paragraph 7. The Fall
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
385 God is infinitely good and all his works are good. Yet no one can escape the experience of suffering or the evils in nature which seem to be linked to the limitations proper to creatures: and above all to the question of moral evil. Where does evil come from? “I sought whence evil comes and there was no solution”, said St. Augustine,257 and his own painful quest would only be resolved by his conversion to the living God. For “the mystery of lawlessness” is clarified only in the light of the “mystery of our religion”.258 The revelation of divine love in Christ manifested at the same time the extent of evil and the superabundance of grace.259 We must therefore approach the question of the origin of evil by fixing the eyes of our faith on him who alone is its conqueror.260
And much more: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c1p7.htm
Of course one may choose whether or not to accept this/these explanations. Either, (as I believe C.S. Lewis put it, and I recommend his Mere Christianity to all readers), Jesus Christ either was who He claimed to be, or He was not. I will note that,for example, the Martyrs put to death by Diocletian, Nero et. al. believed it, while those millions who died courtesy of the believers of the “…He was not” persecutions, did not go voluntarily to the Gulags and Bergen Belsens. (Speaking of the latter, V for Victory currently has a nice posting about some of those martyred by the Nazis http://v-forvictory.blogspot.com/2010/01/crucifix-versus-swastika.html#links. Note also that some many thousands of Priests and Religious were murdered by Franco.) We are in a religious war whether we choose to believe so or not. Got Faith, in something greater than yourself, or have you (not specifically you, Chris) taken the oath that there is nothing greater than oneself? “IHS”
January 10, 2010, 3:18 pmjukeboxgrad says:
twirip:
Good idea. Blix said this (1/27/03):
That’s why Bush had to chase the inspectors out. They were in the process of finding out that there was no need for a war over WMD, because there were no WMD. If Saddam was hiding WMD, he would not have allowed the inspectors to check “all sites.”
And this is what Bush said on 7/14/03:
A glaring example of Bush telling an outright lie.
==================
chris:
You’re asking that question thinking that no sane person would answer ‘yes,’ but it should be noticed that certain commenters (example, example) have essentially given that answer.
==================
flashman:
It should be noticed that certain commenters propose “purposely targeting civilian targets.”
==================
allan:
This is the key point. Orwell warned us, and so did Ike, but we didn’t listen, and we’re still not listening.
January 10, 2010, 10:19 pmjukeboxgrad says:
may:
Your statement is a classic Orwellianism. “Military intervention” is another word for war. In other words, to avoid war, we need war. Makes perfect sense.
In a rare moment of inadvertent honesty, Bush said “I don’t think you can win it.” A war on a tactic can never be won, especially when we have elements in our own society who shamelessly assert that we should use that tactic ourselves.
The “war on terror” was formulated in those terms precisely because it can never be won. The inventors of the concept profit from endless war, and that’s why they invented the concept.
It’s important to notice that “GWOT” was devised not long after our main prior enemy went out of business. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the weapons industry. The end of the USSR was a dangerous event for them, but they were creative enough to invent a new, improved enemy that is conveniently more durable and renewable than the old one. No one should say that American business is not innovative or imaginative. This was an instance of a major business problem being addressed with a clever solution.
==================
yankee:
Yes, it’s exactly what the government wants. More importantly, it’s what’s wanted by the corporate interests that own our government. War is good business. That “spending” ends up in someone’s pocket (link, link). Those who profit from war share a common interest with the terrorists: keeping us afraid. Scared people are willing to sign lots of blank checks. Our military spending is at its highest level since WWII, and we spend as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. This is quite remarkable, given that our major enemy went out of business a number of years ago. But when people are scared, they are easy to swindle.
Also, perpetual war only means “more taxes” when the GOP is out of office. When the GOP is in charge, it mostly means more borrowing from China. Which is the same thing as “more taxes,” except that it’s on our descendants, and that’s OK because they’re not voting yet.
January 10, 2010, 10:19 pmjukeboxgrad says:
moore:
This is how much “binary nerve agent” was “recovered from one of the chemical weapons shells recovered after the 2003 Iraq invasion:” none. One binary sarin shell was used as an IED. The people who used it didn’t even realize it wasn’t an ordinary shell. And even if they had realized it was a chemical shell, it would have been useless in the application you mentioned (“sprayed into the air intake of a large building”), for reasons I explained here and here.
You have been peddling this same baloney repeatedly. You also did so here. You are shamelessly dishonest. But we’ve already seen proof of that.
I guess if you want to look at it that way, then America attacked America, because we supported Pakistan while they supported the Taliban. In the entire world, only three countries recognized the Taliban: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and UAE. All good friends of ours. Then again, once upon a time we are also pals with Saddam. Reagan and Rummy assisted Saddam with lots of useful goodies, like cluster bombs, anthrax and bubonic plague.
Looking at the picture broadly, it becomes possible to understand that it doesn’t really matter who the enemy is. What’s important is having enemies. Not having enemies is bad for business, because war is good business.
From the perspective of someone who thinks war is bad, our foreign policy has been pathetically incoherent. But from the perspective of someone who understands the role of business (as Ike did, for example), our foreign policy makes perfect sense.
Indeed. Which means it’s important for us to create a steady stream of new enemies (unless we’re willing to let a bunch of important companies lower their profits, and we’re not). Can anyone think of a better way to do that, other than killing innocent people (which we obviously have done and continue to do)? I can’t. Which means the war ending is something we don’t really need to worry about. What a relief.
You’re doing a great job of illustrating the central issue, and with no apparent sense of irony.
AQ et al have relatively little power to hurt us directly. Most of their power to hurt us depends on our willingness to hurt ourselves, in the way we choose to react. We hurt ourselves when we spend money we don’t have on wars we don’t need. We also hurt ourselves when we shred our moral credibility, because moral credibility is a strategic asset. AQ et al are happy to see us voluntarily walk away from that asset.
As we willingly bleed ourselves, financially and morally, our enemies laugh, stunned that we are so self-destructively cooperative. And how nice for China that we thus bankrupt ourselves and hasten the day when they will replace us as the world’s only superpower (as orca said). It looks like the communists are going to win, after all. Oh well.
You mention “the psychological effect” of terror, which means that on some level you understand that the point of terror is to get us to respond in a self-destructive manner. At the same time, you are so lacking in self-awareness that you fail to see that you are a prime example of that self-destructive reaction (i.e., “the consequent demands for retribution and prevention”).
To a great extent the GOP is a coalition between people who embrace war because they are making a killing, and people who embrace war because they are in love with the idea of war. Lots of people are in love with the idea of war for the usual primal, tribal, and nationalistic reasons that have to do with various forms of chauvinism and arrogance: moral, cultural, racial, and religious. A draft would go along way toward curing this pathology, but it’s not happening soon.
It’s important to notice that you are willing to place lots of faith in the government, provided that they do a good job of keeping you afraid. Smart politicians have also noticed this. One of them said it this way:
January 10, 2010, 10:20 pmChris Travers says:
Point taken.
January 10, 2010, 11:22 pmChris Travers says:
I think this makes a difference because in the major declared wars the US has fought, civil liberties have been temporarily suspended in key important areas. A different Constitutional balance develops between our liberties and the need to preserve the state.
By calling this perpetual conflict a “war” and by continually demanding restrictions on civil liberties because to do otherwise might cause some people to get killed, we risk losing our Constitutional liberties in large part.
As long as we generally agree it is not a “war” in the Constitutional sense, then we can agree on two things:
1) Congress and the President can use appropriate Constitutional powers to contain the enemy including military strikes, and
January 10, 2010, 11:27 pm2) Our Constitutional balance is not shifted away from personal liberty just because some people want to kill us.
John Moore says:
I keep reading things like this, and then wonder which civil liberties I have lost. So far, I haven’t found any.
January 11, 2010, 1:09 pmsteph houghton says:
/why don’t you read the article that this discussion in predicated on before comenting.
January 11, 2010, 1:11 pmsteph houghton says:
we are not discussing morality, but the law of war. There is nothing perse illegal with using suicide bombers as long as you attack millitary targets.
January 11, 2010, 1:15 pmsteph houghton says:
/by this logic if the less civilians would have been killed by a land war without strategic bombing in WW2 then the allies were morally obliged to follow that course of action. Do you people even believe this shit?
January 11, 2010, 1:26 pmjukeboxgrad says:
moore:
This is what Madison said:
This is what Cato Institute said:
You don’t care that a US citizen was imprisoned in defiance of the Constitution, because the US citizen wasn’t you, or someone who looks like you. The foolishness of that attitude is self-evident.
On the other hand, you never lost your right to repeatedly make false claims and then refuse to take responsibility for doing so.
January 11, 2010, 1:30 pmsteph houghton says:
First teror is a tactic, not a state of mind. Second you can win a war on a state of mind if facism was a state of mind and if WW2 defeated it.
January 11, 2010, 1:44 pmsteph houghton says:
Realy so he was not behind the attack on the first president bush? Oh the facts are against you once again.
January 11, 2010, 1:48 pmsteph houghton says:
Wrong again. Get your facts right. I know you all love the big lie but it will not work with the informed.
January 11, 2010, 1:58 pmsteph houghton says:
No it is more like inforceing the truce which is to say inforceing international law. But who cares about that? That is what makes me ill about all these aleged lovers of international law. The love it when it is good for our enimies, whe3n it is good for us, not so much.
January 11, 2010, 2:09 pmsteph houghton says:
But is it a war without end? I’m not sure I agree with the premise.
January 11, 2010, 2:18 pmChris Travers says:
You are assuming the Humanitarian Law Project prevails at the Supreme Court? I recognize you might not want to help Hamas with advocacy work, but do you think you have the right to do this or that it would be different if one was advocating for the KKK or Communist Party of America?
Also Justices Scalia and Stevens certainly seemed to think that some due process erosion had occurred (see their dissent in Hamdi). While this might not affect you personally, it does affect the general questions of the loss of civil liberties generally.
Finally, I think the discussion of full body imaging scanners in airports add questions of reasonableness of searches which would not have been possible before the courts before. This hasn’t become widespread yet, but there seems to be a general push for it.
January 11, 2010, 2:22 pmsteph houghton says:
It does not mater if it happened. It was though to have happened. Can you not understand a hypothetical?
January 11, 2010, 3:25 pmsteph houghton says:
Um no he had had many previous chances and not taken them. It is you who are telling a lie.
January 11, 2010, 3:32 pmsteph houghton says:
I agree with you here.
January 11, 2010, 3:41 pmjukeboxgrad says:
steph:
Except that Bush didn’t say Saddam “had had many previous chances and not taken them.” When did Bush say he was talking about the “many previous chances?” He didn’t. Bush said “we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in.” The truthful statement would have been ‘he didn’t let them in until he let them in.’ Or, ‘he wouldn’t let them in, except for when he let them in.’
Saddam did indeed “let them in,” which means it was false to claim that “he wouldn’t let them in.” Unless you live in a world where up is down. But I suppose you do.
This reminds me of Giuliani saying “we had no domestic attacks under Bush.” Naturally. Except for when we did. Likewise, Saddam “wouldn’t let them in.” Except for when he did. Feel like making things up? IOKIYAR.
So if McChrystal is in DC and takes his family to McDonald’s and AQ blows up the place, is this any different than what we’re doing with Predators? And would this be a case of a military target that “hides behind its women and children?”
January 11, 2010, 4:00 pmChris Travers says:
that reminds me of the immortal words of Oliver Goldsmith:
I don’t see that as being fundamentally less legitimate. Also I see suicide bombers in the West Bank who attack either IDF troops or settlers as fundamentally different than those who attack civilians inside the green line.
January 11, 2010, 7:45 pmSenior Analyst says:
Totally ridiculous! Check out my blog for the counter-argument at http://crisishotspot.blogspot.com/.
The Senior Analyst
June 2, 2010, 11:19 pm