By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the commonlaw of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.
~John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Ch. III, (kudos to Bron)
On the night of February 13th, 773 RAF Avro Lancaster bombers swept in low and fast on the Saxony railway town of Dresden. It was early 1945, The Third Reich was collapsing and some 600,000 people had taken refuge in the city to avoid the Allied onslaught. The presumed target was the military complex on the outskirts of town known as the Albertstadt. Dresden, itself, was riddled with military garrisons intermingled among the civilian population. In two waves, the RAF dropped 650,000 incendiaries and 8,000 lbs of high explosives and hundreds of 4,000 pounds bombs on the city center, all with little to no resistance. The entire city was ablaze. RAF crews reported smoke rising to a height of 15,000 ft. Fires were seen 500 miles away from the target.
The next day, February 14, 1945, as Dresden was trying to cope with the crisis, 450 U.S. B-17 Flying Fortress long-range bombers assigned to the 1st Bombardment Division of the United States VIII Bomber Command arrived at 1230 local time. Guided by the fires, they discharged 771 tons of bombs.
The results on the ground were horrific with an estimated 25,000 killed. Survivor Lothar Metzger recalled:
We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from.
I cannot forget these terrible details. I can never forget them.
Some estimates bring the number of those killed to 100,000. Nazi propagandists took the figure to 200,000. RAF recon noted that ” 23 percent of the industrial buildings, and 56 percent of the non-industrial buildings, not counting residential buildings, had been seriously damaged. Around 78,000 dwellings had been completely destroyed; 27,700 were uninhabitable, and 64,500 damaged, but readily repairable.”
The raid, ordered by Churchill, rendered such a blow to Western psyche that he distanced himself from the raid saying, “It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of the so-called ‘area-bombing’ of German cities should be reviewed from the point of view of our own interests. If we come into control of an entirely ruined land, there will be a great shortage of accommodation for ourselves and our allies… We must see to it that our attacks do no more harm to ourselves in the long run than they do to the enemy’s war effort.” Of mention, is no sense of the human cost to the enemy of the raid. Th emphasis seems to be purely egocentric: What kind of country will we have when this is all over?
However British Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris was not so circumspect:
“Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. The feeling, such as there is, over Dresden, could be easily explained by any psychiatrist. It is connected with German bands and Dresden shepherdesses. Actually Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things.”
“War is hell” seems to claim the Air Marshall, and strategic concerns take precedence over humanitarian ones in a war zone. Is he right, or are both he and Churchill “war criminals” to quote some of the more animated commentary on the blog? Neither were prosecuted or charged with war crimes for the Dresden raid.
Which brings us to David Drumm’s fine posting yesterday about a claim of double-tapping Drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere in support of the war against the terrorists. The evidence published by the 18-month-old Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) claims that 6 instances of double-tapping have occurred with rescuers being targeted with second strikes. A review of 5 of those sources (ABC’s article was not easily retrievable) reveals that one arguably involved an attack on civilians, one was unclear on the status of the rescuers, and three reported second attacks on militants and extremists.
In response to my query on this point, David correctly pointed out that the Obama Administration does consider fighting age men in the strike zone “militants.” That fact was disclosed in a long New York Times article:
It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.
But does six instances of secondary attacks obscured by the fog of war prove that the US has a policy of targeting innocent rescuers? Can it even be said that we are indifferent to the humanitarian concerns of rescuers even as we attack our enemies on their home turf?
From a legal perspective, targeting killing of persons who present an imminent threat to a country is permissible. Obama himself has insisted on such evidence before authorizing the strikes though there are trade-offs, according to the New York Times. The CIA’s man in the White House, John Brennan, a crusty Irishman who has spoken in defense of civil liberties and to close Guantanamo but who has faced withering criticism for his role in post 9/11 interrogations, explains Obama’s analysis:
The purpose of these actions is to mitigate threats to U.S. persons’ lives. It is the option of last recourse. So the president, and I think all of us here, don’t like the fact that people have to die. And so he wants to make sure that we go through a rigorous checklist: The infeasibility of capture, the certainty of the intelligence base, the imminence of the threat, all of these things.
Assassination of persons is generally regarded as murder although, by executive order, the US President may order the killing of foreign leaders who represent an imminent threat to the US.
Former U.S. District Judge (S.D. NY) Abraham Sofaer explains the difference:
When people call a targeted killing an “assassination,” they are attempting to preclude debate on the merits of the action. Assassination is widely defined as murder, and is for that reason prohibited in the United States…. U.S. officials may not kill people merely because their policies are seen as detrimental to our interests…. But killings in self-defense are no more “assassinations” in international affairs than they are murders when undertaken by our police forces against domestic killers. Targeted killings in self-defense have been authoritatively determined by the federal government to fall outside the assassination prohibition.
Likewise, Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser US Department of State, defends the use of drones as ” part of “responsibility of US to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks.”
But what then about rescuers killed trying to aid militants?
Georgetown Law Professor Gary Solis, author The Law of Armed Conflict: International Humanitarian Law in War, and no friend of the US drone policy concedes that “Legal guilt does not always accompany innocent death.” In an example, published by Harper’s Magazine, Solis comments on a US helicopter attack on civilians rendering aid to combatants. “Can a van picking up wounded victims be fired upon? If the helicopter personnel reasonably associated the unmarked van with the presumed enemy personnel, yes. An “enemy” vehicle without red cross, red crescent, or white flag receives no special protection, even if wounded personnel are on board.”
Thus, even critics of the drone program conclude that trying to render humanitarian aid to injured militants affords no protection unless they are clearly visible as such. There is nothing in any of the articles cited by the BIJ indicating that rescuers were so denominated.
What then to make of the double-tap policy and the humanitarian toll. I see no proof that US drone masters are “targeting civilians.” Targeting implies intention and given the Administration’s definition of militants in a strike area it is unlikely that there is the intention to harm civilians rescuers where proof of such status exists. The Administration argues that its definition is based on its decade long experience with al-Qaeda. One certainly can argue with the definition of “militant” given its breadth, but does this definition make us any more culpable that acknowledged WWII heroes Winston Churchill or Air Chief Marshall Harris in arguing that our prime responsibility in war is to deny the enemy the ability to wage war against us even as civilians are maimed or killed?
What do you think?
Sources: linked throughout
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
“Today, Mexico said it was perfectly justified killing Arizona police and fire personnel who came to the aid of those wounded in drone strikes against drug lords. Embassy officials said that, ‘Any male over the age of 18 could be assumed to aiding and abetting cartel activity. We’re doing what we have to do to protect Mexican sovereignty and threats against our citizens.'”
You’d be able to read at night in the Midwest by the light of the fires as Mexico burned if they tried to sell us that line of bullshit.
Sorry Gene but the analogy does NOT work since the US is NOT killing Pakistani cops or troops intentionally. In fact, the militants hate them as much as the US and they are very happy to kill Paki cops and government forces.
The situation is more like the US in the Civil War when the US government had NO control over much of its territory. If the Confederacy had been raiding British shipping, the Brits would not have attacked DC, but the Confederacy and its ports. I doubt Lincoln would have minded the Brits going into the Confederacy and kicking some ass.
Pete, seems it’s already happened in Gaza.
Dredd, saw one doc with him two times. Plagued. Don’t know but suspect some family tragedy (suicide of child?) due to his Vietnam involvement—just guessing.
As for heart, yeah, take Cheney, he will go on without one if the docs succeed. But he never had one anyway. So what. Apres moi, ce ne fait rien. I don’t give a shit, he says.
if it’s okay to target first responders, how long until the hospitals or clinics they are taken to become targets.
idealist707 1, June 10, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Dredd,
Thanks for the McN quotes, lets look at one where he is just covering his ass with a lie …
==========================
He confessed to war crimes in public on camera.
Even though there were no charges against him.
His conscience indicted him, it would seem.
Which makes me wonder about 18 suicides per day in the current veteran culture.
The key seems to be to not have a conscience if you want to “live” on after committing war crimes.
idealist: I meant it in a derogatory manner, as a dishonest effort to make fine moral distinctions using false premises.
Have we declared ‘war’ on the ‘militants’ in the areas where we are sending drones or are these ‘statistics’ all coming with the amaranthine ‘war on terror’.
If the declared ‘war’ is on terror, is anyone else terrorized ( besides myself…) that those who wage the ‘war’, also define the ‘war’ , and well, seem to be profitting excessively by the ‘war’……
MikeA
I asked Google what casuistry is. Three sources had three explanations: two diametric, and one other as well. Is it case or principle based? And more pertinently how did you intend?
Dredd,
Thanks for the McN quotes, lets look at one where he is just covering his ass with a lie:
“After the action got under way, and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening, and why we were doing what we did.”
There were no unanticipated events. But the lies came from Vietnam, but not the JC, and in spite of Johnson knowing they were lies, he persisted.
The next is a lie also:
“Underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues.”
Also an excuse only. The highest advisors including lifelong political ones said: GET OUT. But he didn’t.
Could his presidency have been based on a contingency? In my mind, yes.
“Just get me elected, and you’ll get your damn war.” Preceeded by a certain assassination he was involved in from day D minus 2 years.
They play rough up there.
So in the whole, this quote just is a disingenuous attempt to put the record in a more favorable light, while admitting to minor errors and thus luring us to believe it follows the historical dictum.
“That which is unfavorable in the record, is probably the truth.” He and his advisors are no fools in spinning the record. Just so here.
Casuistry lives. Indeed, it is thriving.
The moral issues surrounding Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki have never been resolved. They have been buried with the dead. The Nuremberg trials occurred for three reasons:
1. Germany initiated a war of conquest without cause.
2. Germany engaged in horrific acts of genocide.
3. Germany lost.
Attempts to draw analogies between Dresden and drones is pointless. We can do nothing about the former and it took place within the context of a declared world war.
The ongoing drone warfare is another matter, however. So let’s take a look at that. Ignoring the issue of sovereignty for the moment, the Obama administration, in recognition of the immorality of directly targeting civilian populations, has adopted a rule that all males of military age found within the parameters of a strike zone are deemed to be militants. (The corollary to this rule is that all males of military age found within the parameters of a strike zone are deemed to pose an imminent threat to the United States, which would be laughable were it not also deadly.) The rule suffers from the same flaw as Prof. Solis’ argument concerning unmarked vans carrying casualties. It relies upon what is effectively an irrebuttable presumption made out of whole cloth in a hollow, morally corrupt and unsuccessful effort to negate intent.
Those of us who are lawyers know that if I perform an intentional act with the knowledge that it will either certainly or most likely result in injury to others, my intention to cause the injury is established. And I cannot absolve myself from responsibility for the intentional taking of innnocent human life by redefining “innocent” to suit the situation.
The Obama administration needs to come up with much better arguments than the pathetic nonsense we’re hearing now.
I am reminded that Jesus was condemned by the Romans for being King of the Jews. The Romans thought the same way the Romans had always thought: Knock them out and knock down their king and keep them down. Pretty simple, but backed up by workable technology. Then they ran into a snag: Some guy they killed got himself unkilled! They couldn’t kill the undead! Uh oh, there were these people running around preaching the ascendency of the afterdeath king who was the “trump card” to Rome.
So Rome did what? Became the Church, that adopted the undead as their own (dead and thus interpretable, infinitely interpretable) leader/god, and took over through Christ-dominion the former province of pax Romana.
There was hardly a wrinkle in it!
We don’t want to get rid of terrorists or protect people from tyrants. We want to impose our own “pax americana” and even that is only a “pax incorporata.” I see the kids playing computer games where the “undead” and the robots take over the world. No corporation, which has First Amendment rights (and money equals speech) is any undeader than the undead in these computer games; no unit of the MIC is any less a Robot.
A friend of mine is dying of cancer in Portland, Oregon. Kaiser Permanente has “hospice” and “palliative care,” both of which are equivalent to “no care unless you pay for it yourself.” It’s not in the fine print. It’s written out without any shame just like the [nonprofiti] corporation has a right to say it: After paying your premiums for 30 years, when you’re dying, we get to tell you to (a) do it within three or six months; and (b) pay for it yourself.
But we will spend how much on drones to monitor citizens in Virginia and kill suspected terrorists in Yemen?
Oh, by the way, good book: “The Natural History of Destruction” by W.G. Sebold. About the bombing of the German cities during WWII. Hard read.
Robert McNamara’s points that we do not learn by our mistakes:
(The Fog of War, 11 Lessons). The real fog of war is not knowing that it is a disease, not a solution.
@mespo: “Quite simply, al-Qaeda cannot survive the drone program and they’ve made that clear. To me that is justification enough.”
. . . because government reporting and predictions have been so right — even given the propaganda filter we are fed . . . .
Too many careers and too much money is guiding our policy for me to have much belief in rosy scenarios. Freidman units should have woken us to the “just around the corner” aspect of justifying our incredibly dim record. If, for example, we can be told with a straight face that Afghanistan is a success story, can we seriously believe any old twaddle about Al-Qaeda?
@DonS ‘@mespo: “Quite simply, al-Qaeda cannot survive the drone program and they’ve made that clear. To me that is justification enough.” . .
I am going to make a guess that the war against terrorism is going to end about the same time the war on drugs is over and prostitutes are cleared from our streets.
I agree that one can justify most any weapon, including drones, against units forming for a near term attack.
But it is unjustified and counter productive to attack the leadership and lamely explain away deaths by claiming any military age male must be a terrorists.
This technique is going to be counter productive because
(1) it will ensure a generation of warriors committed to our destruction.
(2) this is not a hierarchical organization – killing the leadership will not cure the problem
(3) modern communications assures the ideas and techniques are transmitted everywhere
(4) any two guy’s working in their basement can form a conspiracy to gather information, material, and develop a plan.
Certainly we should use what ever means to prevent an attack. But our main long term strategy should be to play for time to convince large populations that we are not the enemy and the radicals do not have a solution.
“The rest is mindless wanderlust.” would read better as “The rest of the pro-drone misadventure is mindless wanderlust.”
Gene H. 1, June 10, 2012 at 12:06 pm
…
I find the logic of this article to an exercise in rationalization after the fact for an inappropriate response to a problem that has been mischaracterized from the the start. The closest thing to state sponsorship of Al-Queada comes from Saudi Arabia who supplied the manpower and money for the 9/11 operation. The fact that Bush spent the first 72 hours afterward rushing Saudi royals and members of the bin Laden family out of American jurisdiction bolsters the connection to Saudi Arabia being more substantive than merely acting as a host state for criminals. If war was to be declared, they were the ones to declare war upon.
…
============================================
That is the reality.
The rest is mindless wanderlust.
Lawyers see these events in microcosm form every time the wrong person is targeted for committing a crime, convicted, then sentenced to death.
The Innocent Project is well aware of the reality.
But for nations to wrongfully target, convict, and spread death through other nations who did no wrong to them, is criminal ab initio.
One can’t change the criminal nature of that criminal process by arguing that since the techniques used to commit the crime are necessary for success, that magically transforms a criminal misadventure into a holy war.
The friggin’ national leadership has gone snot flinging nuts, seemingly without hope of a valid system of treatment and healing, at least in the present circumstances.
A drone by any other name is a drone. No pilot to shoot down and torture for five years like the Japanese did. It targets an enemy and inflicts collateral damage. Those last two words mean that innocent and not so innocent civilians get killed. Of course the target of the drone was technically a civilian because he/she was not in uniform and maybe was about to bomb a civilian place himself as a self described terrorist. But drone bombings are not Hiroshima or Dresden. Now, having said that, when are we going to bomb Iran and stop them from building nuclear weapons? When is Iran going to stop sending missles into Israel? When is this blog going to take on Iran for sending missles into Israeli civilian zones?
This is becoming a Vote Willard blog.
DonS.
“…. including enhancement of Al Qaeda recruitment.”
Let’s take a BIIIGGGG cui bone step. Let’s just suppose the purpose of it all is to start and contiunue in eternity a state of war. That the real
mission of the CIA includes ones like doing thisgs which improve and incite recruitment to Al Quaeda and allied or other organizations who oppose our policies.
Sound wacko? Not to me.
And Mespo’s assertion that drone attacks will lead to the extinction of the Taliban and/or Al Quaeda is pure wishful thinking. Give us something that backs that up.
Sounds like the promises that come out of MIC and the Pentagon and the many HQs from Vietnam and on through Iraq and Afghanistan. Next year we will win…..
Shit, they don’t want to win. They are all doing fine on our dime and our sons/daughters’ lives.
How many higher that a Major has ever died in these wars?
The arguments are just getting more simpleminded than ever.
These people are united in religion, culture, ethnicity. You can kill them, but kill them all. Because the sons will revenge the fathers.
So did the first Chinese Han emperor. He killed all of worst tribe fighting him for that reason.
But, the MIC just wants to milk us, not win. Heaven forbid.
“But does six instances of secondary attacks obscured by the fog of war prove that the US has a policy of targeting innocent rescuers?
That is six instances that have been reported in the media. One could logically conclude that there have been more instances of secondary attacks/double-taps that haven’t been reported.
DonS 1, June 10, 2012 at 1:09 pm
We are obviously not going to agree on this … While we are arguing the legal, theoretical, philosophical, and moral dimensions of the drone program …
=======================================
Exactly.
The diagnosis determines the treatment.
Wrong diagnosis means wrong treatment.
The economic crisis has been diagnosed as having been caused by professionals who suffered mania in a paper printed in a journal.
Yet the diagnosis heretofore has been based on economics, crime, and anything else other than psychology.
When war is diagnosed as a sickness in most cases, then the proper treatment can be given.
I used to respect Mark Esposito’s contributions but now he’s morphed into a shameless Obama apologist defending some of the most repugnant policies of a generation of swine.
ARE,
says,
“and the people of that region have basically not only declared war on the US, but also on the Pakistan government as well.”
Waziristan was the aree mentioned, I believe. The people of Waziristan are part of the NW Tribal zone.
The people historically until 5 years ago have been friendly hosts fo a constant stream ov adventurous western tourists. That is the truth.
Their own local leadership is now dead, or under the subjugation of the Taliban. They have no other alternative but to submit or die at the hands of the Taliban. No government or NGO camps, nor relatives in other parts of Pakistan. Also proven and known by the CIA.
To identify them as a group who have declared war of USA and Pakistan is a fine display of both prejudicial thinking and nonsense. The taliban have, but not the people of Waziristan.
Now if you were talking of the relationship between the folk of Balukistan and Pakistan, then you could be right. But they were starved to submission, just as we did with the American Indians. by killing all livestock. So simple it was