For years, the United States has danced around the fact that it has repeatedly enter the sovereign territory of other countries with drone attacks and in some cases small unit attacks without the permission of countries like Pakistan. Such acts violate international law and would be viewed by the United States as an act of war if committed on U.S. territory. This week,Defense Secretary Leon Panetta finally responded directly to those objections and said that the attacks would continue unabated. Panetta essentially stated that we can invade other nations because we can and that countries will have to come to accept that — using the same concept as “floggings will continue on ship until morale improves.”
Panetta insisted this is really not them (other countries) but us. Speaking in India, he proclaimed “This is about our sovereignty as well.” As for Pakistan, which has repeatedly objected to attacks on its territory, Panetta said “It’s a complicated relationship, often times frustrating, often times difficult. They have provided some cooperation. There are other times when frankly that cooperation is not there.” Strangely, we would not view the relationship as complicated if Mexico sent drones into Texas to take out suspects or landed Mexican special forces in Arizona to kill enemies. We would treat it as a matter of war.
Panetta has finally made “American exceptionalism” official policy. We do these things simply because we can; because we are the United States. From torture to military tribunals to hit lists, the United States is above the legal standards that we impose on others. The greatest danger is that our hypocrisy abroad is turning into hypocrisy at home where we continue to claim to be the “land of the free” while stripping citizens of basic rights and expanding unchecked presidential and police powers.
Obama has expanded drone attacks to an unprecedented level while expanding his claimed authority to kill citizens without a charge or trial. Now the most common image of the United States abroad is not our Constitution but our drones. For many people around the world, Panetta’s speech will be viewed as adding unrestained arrogance to unrestrained power.
Source: ABC
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/05/al-qaida-drone-attacks-too-broad
“Drone attacks create terrorist safe havens, warns former CIA official
Indiscriminate use of drones in Middle East causes too many civilian casualties, warns former CIA counterterrorism head.
A former top terrorism official at the CIA has warned that President Barack Obama’s controversial drone programme is far too indiscriminate in hitting targets and could lead to such political instability that it creates terrorist safe havens.
Obama’s increased use of drones to attack suspected Islamic militants in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen has become one of the most controversial aspects of his national security policy. He has launched at least 275 strikes in Pakistan alone; a rate of attack that is far higher than his predecessor George W Bush.
Defenders of the policy say it provides a way of hitting high-profile targets, such as al-Qaida number two, Abu Yahya al-Libi. But critics say the definition of militant is used far too broadly and there are too many civilian casualties. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates up to 830 civilians, including many women and children, might have been killed by drone attacks in Pakistan, 138 in Yemen and 57 in Somalia. Hundreds more have been injured.
Now Robert Grenier, who headed the CIA’s counter-terrorism center from 2004 to 2006 and was previously a CIA station chief in Pakistan, has told the Guardian that the drone programme is targeted too broadly. “It [the drone program] needs to be targeted much more finely. We have been seduced by them and the unintended consequences of our actions are going to outweigh the intended consequences,” Grenier said in an interview.
Grenier emphasised that the use of drones was a valuable tool in tackling terrorism but only when used against specific identified targets, who have been tracked and monitored to a place where a strike is feasible. However, recent media revelations about Obama’s programme have revealed a more widespread use of the strike capability, including the categorising of all military-age males in a strike zone of a target as militants. That sort of broad definition and the greater use of drones has outraged human rights organisations.
The BIJ has reported that drone strikes in Pakistan over the weekend hit a funeral gathering for a militant slain in a previous strike and also may have accidentally hit a mosque. That sort of action adds credence to the claims that the drone campaign is likely to cause more damage by creating anger at the US than it does in eliminating terrorist threats.
“We have gone a long way down the road of creating a situation where we are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield. We are already there with regards to Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he said.
Grenier said he had particular concerns about Yemen, where al-Qaida linked groups have launched an insurgency and captured swathes of territory from the over-stretched local army. US drones have been active in the country, striking at targets that have included killing US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son.
The BIJ estimates that there have been up to 41 confirmed US drone strikes in Yemen since 2002 and possibly up a 55 unconfirmed ones. Grenier said the strikes were too indiscriminate and causing outrage among the civilian population in the country, lending support to Islamists and seeing a growth in anti-US sentiment.
“That brings you to a place where young men, who are typically armed, are in the same area and may hold these militants in a certain form of high regard. If you strike them indiscriminately you are running the risk of creating a terrific amount of popular anger. They have tribes and clans and large families. Now all of a sudden you have a big problem … I am very concerned about the creation of a larger terrorist safe haven in Yemen,” Grenier said.
Grenier was the CIA’s station chief in Islamabad when terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York and attacked the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. He played a key role in co-ordinating covert operations that led up to the downfall of the Taliban in Afghanistan. He later headed up the CIA’s CTC where he led the CIA’s global operations in the War on Terror as its top counter-terrorism official. He left the agency in 2006.”
Otteray,
We are sleepwalking into the Drone Age, unaware of the consequences
Obama’s policy of killing ‘militants’ in Pakistan may go down well in the US, but it is provoking an extremist backlash abroad
Clive Stafford Smith
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 2 June 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/02/drone-age-obama-pakistan
Excerpt:
Last October I was at a jirga in Islamabad where 80 people from Waziristan had assembled to talk about the US Predator drones that buzz around overhead, periodically delivering death by Hellfire missile. A jirga is the traditional forum for discussing and resolving disputes, part parliament, part court of law. The turbaned tribal elders were joined by their young sons on a rare foray out of their region to meet outsiders and discuss the killing. The isolation of the Waziris is almost total – no western journalist has been to Miranshah for several years.
At our meeting I spoke as the representative westerner. I reported the CIA claim that not one single innocent civilian had been killed in over a year. I did not need to understand Pashtu to translate the snorts of derision when this claim was translated.
During the day I shook the hand of a 16-year-old kid from Waziristan named Tariq Aziz. One of his cousins had died in a missile strike, and he wanted to know what he could do to bring the truth to the west. At the Reprieve charity, we have a transparency project: importing cameras to the region to try to export the truth back out. Tariq wanted to take part, but I thought him too young.
Then, three days later, the CIA announced that it had eliminated “four militants”. In truth there were only two victims: Tariq had been driving his 12-year-old cousin to their aunt’s house when the Hellfire missile killed them both. This came just 24 hours after the CIA boasted of eliminating six other “militants” – actually, four chromite workers driving home from work. In both cases a local informant apparently tagged the car with a GPS monitor and lied to earn his fee.
Last week officials in the Obama administration talked to the New York Times about the “Secret Kill List” drawn up for drone assassinations. Democratic strategists in an election year calculate that the article will prove a vote-winner, dispelling any notion that Barack Obama is soft on terror. The administration voices wanted to leave the impression of an involved and committed president who reads Thomas Aquinas’s theory of the “just war” in between personally vetting the kill list.
Mitt Romney dubbed Obama “Dr Strangelove” back in 2007. It may have been a rare, perceptive insight. A decision by the smartest man in the room is only as good as the information that he receives, and no matter how accurate the shiny new missile, if it’s aimed at the wrong person it will hit the wrong target.
It is easy to understand how the CIA slaughtered Tariq and many other innocent victims. Those who press the Hellfire buttons are 8,000 miles away in Nevada and are dependent on local “intelligence”. Just as with Guantánamo Bay, the CIA is paying bounties to those who will identify “terrorists”. Five thousand dollars is an enormous sum for a Waziri informant, translating to perhaps £250,000 in London terms. The informant has a calculation to make: is it safer to place a GPS tag on the car of a truly dangerous terrorist, or to call down death on a Nobody (with the beginnings of a beard), reporting that he is a militant? Too many “militants” are just young men with stubble. At least 174 have been children.
The New York Times reports that Obama first embraced a policy of taking no prisoners in order to avoid the embarrassing sore of Guantánamo. Then he accepted a method for assessing casualties that “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants” unless there is explicit posthumous proof of their innocence – because they are probably “up to no good”.
“I’m arguing to protect your life from a group of madman who have no regard for anything you cited and who are willing to martyr themselves in the process.” mespo727272 to gbk
And in the process, you’re creating god-only-knows how many others with a vehement hatred of anything and everything American. If you want to keep this despicable “war on terror” going, just “keep on keeping on” with drone strikes by O’Godma and it will never end. If Romney is elected, he’ll probably follow suit, and on and on and on it will go. And in the meantime, things on the home front will change to such a degree that you very well may no longer recognize this little “garden” of yours.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/what-we-misunderstand-about-drones/257778/ “The problem with drones is not the drones themselves but the trend of killing first and asking questions later.”
mespo,
Define “cooperate”. Mexico and many other South and Central American countries are begging – literally – for us to change our domestic drug laws so as to undercut the revenue streams of drug cartels threatening their stability in a very real way. And we say “mind your own business”.
Elaine, targeting of missiles is highly accurate. They hit what aimed at within a three meter circle. Strikes have been carried out in populated areas when unavoidable, with no collateral civilian damage. To be able to hit a target the size of a moving Volkswagen Beetle with a small missile traveling at three times the speed of sound is an amazing technological achievement. Remember, these are not giant missiles. These are small missiles with just a few pounds of explosive in them–some with only about two pounds. They are not giant two thousand pound bombs. The drones are about the size of a Cessna trainer you can see at your local airport. They cannot carry big ordnance.
In WW-II, bomber targets were often missed by as much as five miles. These missiles are rather like the statistics I saw from the Vietnam war. About 50,000 rounds of rifle ammunition were expended per enemy soldier killed. Highly trained snipers used 1.3 bullets per kill. The drone strikes are more like the sniper than the soldier firing wildly into the brush.
Elaine, I linked that Elliott article yesterday morning. I don’t think anyone paid attention to it. lol
Drone strikes: playing God in Pakistan
When is a last resort truly a last resort, particularly in areas well back from recognised battlefields?
Editorial
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 June 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/05/drone-strikes-pakistan
Excerpt:
There are at least two concerns about the gathering pace of drone strikes, Mr Obama’s weapon of choice against militants sheltering in remote parts of the world – Waziristan, Yemen, or Somalia. The first is that at a crucial juncture of an election campaign – when a clear Republican opponent has emerged from the swamp of the party’s selection process – this administration is highlighting the fact that its president is a killer. In this new age of secrecy, three dozen current and former advisers are allowed to talk to the New York Times about the president’s role of personally overseeing the shadow war with al-Qaida. Mr Obama has not been shy about the role he personally played in Osama bin Laden’s death. His counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan makes speeches defending drone strikes as legal, ethical and wise. This administration is not on the defensive about its summary executions. It positively seeks to advertise them.
The second is that words are swiftly followed by actions. Drone strikes, which were in abeyance before the failure of Nato’s Chicago summit to break the deadlock with Pakistan over reopening military supply lines to Afghanistan, have returned with a vengeance – three attacks in as many days, and 29 people dead. Are they justified if, as the US claimed on Tuesday, al-Qaida’s second in command, Abu Yahya al-Libi, is among the victims? Or do inhabitants of North Waziristan have a point when they say the strikes are pulling their province apart. Many people have moved to escape the drones, and anyone who stays lives in terror of being killed. Indeed being a male of fighting age has become a posthumous criterion for being regarded as a terrorist. All this poses questions for a pragmatist like Mr Obama. When and where does this stop? Libi will be surely be replaced. Or have drones become a permanent feature of US power?
Maybe I’m a hand-wringer–but I think we Americans should question the use of drone strikes in other countries, seek to find out if the strikes are as “surgical” as claimed, try to ascertain if innocent civilians are being killed, and if the drone strikes are being used to recruit people to the terrorists’ anti-American cause.
*****
Dissecting Obama’s Standard on Drone Strike Deaths
by Justin Elliott
ProPublica, June 5, 2012
http://www.propublica.org/article/dissecting-obamas-standard-on-drone-strike-deaths
Excerpt:
Asked last week about the Times report, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters the president “goes to extraordinary measures” to avoid civilian casualties.
“We have at our disposal tools that make avoidance of civilian casualties much easier, and tools that make precision targeting possible in ways that have never existed in the past,” Carney argued.
But analysts point out strikes can go awry even if a missile hits its programmed target.
“Any military official will tell you your precision is only as good as your intelligence sources and your intelligence analysis,” said Naureen Shah, associate director of the Counterterrorism and Human Rights Project at Columbia Law School. “How much do we really know about Somalia and Yemen and Pakistan? We have errors in targeting in Afghanistan and we’ve been there for a decade.”
Shah, who is working on a study on civilian harm from covert drone strikes, said she was not surprised by the Obama administration’s reported standard for counting civilians given the extremely low estimates of civilian casualties leaked by administration officials over the years.
The Times story last week, for example, quotes a “senior administration official” claiming that the number of civilians killed by drone strikes under Obama in Pakistan is in the “single digits.”
That’s in stark contrast to outside estimates. Independent organizations analyzing news reports and other sources have put civilian deaths from drone strikes from the high double digits in Pakistan alone to the high triple digits including countries like Yemen and Somalia.
mespo:
what about the soft drink/drone dichotomy?
From a Lockean perspective I think you are right on the drones. From a Jeffersonian perspective I think you are wrong on the big gulp. How do you reconcile the 2, in my mind, contradictory views?
Gene H:
That’s a legitimate point but I feel it would be unwarranted since we do act in cooperation with Mexico to stop drug dealers. My point is limited to “states” who will do nothing to stop terrorists.
Bron:
I distinguish between internal affairs and external affairs. I once thought Anwar al-Awlaki was an internal matter, but after reading he was an operational chief of al-Quaeda and had called for the killing of innocent Americans including children and servicemen and women, I placed him squarely in the “external” camp of traitors and enemies. Traitors, as you know give up citizenship, by their actions. I feel these people regardless of their place of birth, hell-bent on our destruction by their own manifest words and deeds, are entitled to no due process. Now if there is some doubt as to their role in the war against us then I do believe that is an issue of some limited due process. After all, the Constitution applies to people living in the US and to a limited extent to those Americans living abroad. Basically, it is a territorial document.
This view is not unique to me. It is a classic approach stretching back to the Greco-Roman world. We need not accord our external enemies anything approaching due process, in my view.
I have a little thought experiment to put the issue of sovereignty and international relations into perspective:
What would happen if the Federales launched drone attacks into Arizona to kill drug cartel members? What if those drone strikes killed a bunch of civilians in the process? What if they did this all without cooperation or permission of the United States government let alone the State of Arizona?
I’m getting all verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves.
Ignoring sovereignty starts wars.
Ask Poland.
mespo:
I am sort of curious how you can think it OK to not sell big gulps but are perfectly fine with targeting American citizens abroad?
I find that to be something of a dichotomy. I am in your corner on this one [I think], you make war against the people of a country whether citizen or not and you had better be prepared to suffer the consequences.
John Locke said kill a person who wants to kill you as you would kill a beast in the forest.
What fascinates me though is my perception that these 2 ways of thinking are opposed. But maybe I am wrong on the drone strikes and you are the one who is being consistent?
anonymously:
“How in the world did you make that leap?
I certainly don’t hate my county. It’s possible, even likely, that I care about this country more than you do, given your views on this thread.”
********************
I suppose then you are from the “I’ll destroy the village to save it” camp of American patriotism.
gbk:
“It’s enlightening to read the thought process of someone who argues for the blatant disregard of international law, the US Constitution, and basic human empathy in their culturally protective stance that justifies their eschewing of international law, the US Constitution, and basic human empathy.
Thanks, Mespo”
*************************
I’m arguing to protect your life from a group of madman who have no regard for anything you cited and who are willing to martyr themselves in the process.
I find the thought process of the masochistic enlightening as well. Thanks.
CLH:
You’ve got a small part of it right. The Romans did suffer from internal rot primarily from attitudes of the intelligentsia that martial vigor was a bad trait. It caused the legions to be manned by mercenaries instead of loyal Roman citizens. The Romans began to question their right to defend themselves and were more concerned with their pleasures. They also became consumed by religion. Rome was strongest when it understood the world was dangerous and had to act accordingly. That wasn’t fear; it was reality. Something not so much in abundance with many of the comments here advocating either we do nothing to protect ourselves or we do too little.
MM:
On your blog, you describe your self as an “ex-patriot.” Now I see why. Enjoy your life in Southern Taiwan carping at this government. We’ll deal with the issues here even as you enjoy our protection there. By the way, your attempts at propaganda fool no one except maybe yourself.
MM,
“Calling me “a professionally military trained propagandist” makes a great way to start off an argument with ad hominem abuse.”
Actually, it’s accurate considering you yourself said before (more than once) that you were trained in Psy-Ops by the military. That would make you “a professionally military trained propagandist” by definition. So either it is an accurate description of you or you were lying when you claimed that training. Which is it? I’ll accept either answer at this point. If I had wanted to start of with ad hominem abuse I’d have said something along the lines of, “Hey, you pompous condescending ex-pat asshole, you totally misrepresented OS’s statement.” See the difference?
I also have forgotten more about argumentation than you’ve ever known, but if you want to labor under the impression you’re all that while you use such a crude tool as straw men on such a regular basis hay fleas are flying out of your ass, you go right ahead. Speaking of which, what I offered was technically criticism, not argument, and I don’t give a damn whether you liked the way it started or not.
I’m funny that way.
And while we are talking about starting off on the wrong foot, I’ll mention that your first two interactions with me directly involved you completely and totally misrepresenting my positions and being quite hostile about it. How’d that work out for you again? Just about as well as the tactic is working for you this time, which is to say not at all.
As to reductio ad absurdum? You should really work on your presentation because reductio ad absurdum isn’t the same thing as misrepresenting someone’s position. It can look similar because it involves disproving a proposition by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence, but first the proposition being extended into absurdity must be accurately represented. “IF YOU LIVE IN AMERICA, DO NOT GO TO WORK IN A HUGE BUILDING THAT SYMBOLIZES AMERICA’S MILITARY OR CORPORATE DOMINATION OF THE PLANET” as an extension of “IF YOU LIVE IN THE MIDDLE EAST, DO NOT RIDE IN CARS WITH–OR STAND NEXT TO–KNOWN TERRORISTS!” is a false equivalence. Being a target incidental to going to work in what may be a perfectly innocuous job – even if you personally don’t like the employer – is not the equivalent of hanging around with known criminals like terrorists. One statement says “don’t hang around with criminals”, the other “don’t be a target of criminals”. Straw men are inherently irrational. Maybe that’s why you like them so much? (That was a rhetorical question.)
A proper reductio ad absurdum would be to say “IF YOU LIVE IN AMERICA, DON’T RIDE IN CARS WITH – OR STAND NEXT TO – JUGGALOS.” In case you don’t get the reference through the rarefied air you’re breathing with your head up your ass, Juggalos are fans of the band Insane Clown Posse and they were recently identified by the FBI as “threats to national security”. The reality of the matter is they are mostly drunk and drugged out heavy metal rap fans who like to party way too much but they like terrorists are allegedly criminal threats to our security. That would have been a proper use of the form of reductio ad absurdum because both objects of the sentence are of debatable value as an actual threat to national security and one of them absurdly so. See, despite what you may think, I understand subtleties of argumentation far better than you which is why I picked up on your straw man in the first place. To be clear, you are far more impressed with your skills than I am, but please, try to tell us how you weren’t using a straw man when you were manifestly making misrepresentations by using false equivalences, MM.
As to the rest of it, if you want to rationalize away your straw man instead of own it, that is your decision too, but the bottom line is you misrepresented what he said. It’ll be pointed out every time you do it too. Why? Because it is what it is: a logical fallacy and a tool of propagandists. Use it all you like as long you don’t mind someone pointing it out when you do it.
Was that coherent enough for you?
Or do you need another explanation?
Gene H,
Calling me “a professionally military trained propagandist” makes a great way to start off an argument with ad hominem abuse. But then to continue by lecturing me as to what constitutes acceptable argumentation in this forum, well, that borders on sheer chutzpah. Don’t do as you do, eh? But only as you say? Not a good start, Gene.
If you will kindly revisit Otteray Scribe’s opening slur aimed at those of us — like Professor Turley, I might add — who protest against the murdering of American citizens and foreigners without a shred of due process, you will read the following:
Now, when someone starts out by calling others “hand-wringers,” “preachers,” “pearl-clutchers,” and “moralizers,” you may consider that logical argumentation and not rank ad hominem abuse, but if you do so consider it, then you don’t know the first damn thing about logical argumentation or known fallacies and should forthwith stop trying to lecture me or anyone else on the niceties of refined discourse. Otteray Scribe began with unwarranted abuse, just as you did, and he got the response he deserved, as you will. All I did was take his so-called “moral,” to wit:
and turn it back upon itself with: