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
BitchinDog here, sitting in for BarkinDog who had to go to the vet for heartworm treatment. I looked at that photo of Dresden with all the bodies up there at the article here and can not find the Kitty. Find the Kitty was part of the exercise here was it not?
Otteray Scribe,
You compare, presumably, the village in France and the villages in Pakistan.
My answer below is addressed to all readers here. Not specifically as a rebuke to you, but to ALL OF US, THE WHOLE USA.
Was it to maintain that the crimes committed in the French village were true war crimes compared to our “defensive” justified killings in Pakistan?
Let me compare them:
The Nazi event was better organized, and better investigated, and recorded for scrutiny by humanity.
The one in May Lai, my choice but we have many to answer for, was not investigated as well, nor as well-organized. We do know that it was done in accordance with orders from battalion level and continuously reported and directed at battalion level, and that the scapegoat was only that—a scape goat, and a measly Lieutenant to boot.
The ones in Pakistan were in no way a case of troops or their local commanders doing inhumane deeds.
It is our President who stands each week and passes imperial judgement, out of sight of the intended victims and the collateral calculated victims. How many collateral ones after we take away the ones we pre-define as combatants, we’ll never know either. Nor their names, occupations, orphaned children, parents deprived of sustenance due to their death.
No we will never know them: names, faces, details—for that might make us hesitate in supporting further killing of the “victims of war”. Efficient propaganda effect by denying knowledge.
Any dispatched investigative team, NGOV, UN, free Pakistani, would all risk being droned while there.
And what do we do. Nothing. We concur in our silence.
We are guilty of killing people by acceding to
their death based on scurrilous motivations given of their being a threat to our nation. We are co-defendants to committing war crimes.
Does no one see this? Does no one not see the big picture? The one where our long term (decades) intent to take over the sovereignity of that part of the world not claimed by China and Russia, and to a decreasing degree the other so-called sovereign nations.
Do you not see that drone attacks within the “sovereign” nations will be the first step when “negotiations” fail and will be used to make clear our intent, our power to force the issue, and our complete indifference to their sovereignity.
That’s where we are going. And frankly, our government made the decision long ago. Will we ever be able to pinpoint a date? Was it a domino effect? Was it a slippery slope? Was it a quagmire which drew us down? OR WAS IT SIMPLY A RESULT OF SOME CORPORATE THINK TANK, A LONG TERM PLAN.
I don’t expect any answers to this. Why? Because it is simply too big. Too monstrous. Too far from our self-image dearly acquired in our lives as Americans, Anerica: the savior of the world, the defender of freedom, the place where baseball originated, the American way of life…………..!!!
Realization that we are victims of Propaganda 101, and who knows what 102 will reveal.
We know some channels—in fact all are controlled by one form of cooperative entity or another.
But so many exist with so many fine names.
So everywhere you look there is no truth to be found. Only you may be able to use your mind and such principles as “cui bono” as your guide.
Good luck.
Hmmm, look out America. It reminds me of the Nazis refining the Blitzkrieg on Spain…..
Mesposer,
Only in your sociopathic world would any of the authorities you cited agree that war between nations can be equated with war against slogans and euphemisms.
FYI,
We did not declare war on the Nazis; we declared war on the country Germany by virtue of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the Tripartite pact.
Great article mespo…
So HOW do we get in these wars? Usually by LIES!!!
The Spanish American war was started after a ship of ours blew up. Randolph Hurst printed in his papers that Spain was the blame, but now it’s generally accepted that the ships boiler just blew up or it hit a mine.
We were drawn into the War of the Nations (World War I) when the Germans sunk the Lusitania. Sixty years later we learn it was packed with munitions making it a legitimate target. (The British did it deliberately, knowing that German spies were in the docks, and were just hoping that Americans would be killed to draw us into the war on their side.)
WWII, its generally known now that the attack by Japan was anticipated. Since we had frozen Japanese assets and provoked Japan into an attack. Our President wanted to intervene to help Britain and Britain’s prime minister helped conspire to bring it about. (Not that this is a bad thing, I would have hated to see Germany complete the heavy water experiments and perfect the V-2 rockets!!)
The Gulf of Tonkin, President Johnson orders retaliation bombings for an attack on US war ships…..that never happened!!
(until the next day!)
Washington Post and New York Times reports false official claims in headlines. And so starts the Vietnam War.
But it just points out that time and time again the American people never get the whole story until WELL after the fact. I just keep that in mind. And wonder what we don’t know about these attacks on 9-11.
I remember that on 9/11/2001 President George Dubya Bush took a powder and hauled ass for an underground bunker in Nebraska. No one knew where to locate him for almost an entire day. If that didn’t scare the American people, I thought, then the attacks themselves probably didn’t either. Americans recognized the attacks as a one-off, lucky stunt and pretty much felt safe behind their vast oceans. They just wanted to pound some defenseless nobody if it didn’t cost too much. They still do, but it has actually started to dawn on them that the U S Military doesn’t pound nobodies unless it bankrupts America and wrecks the Army in the process.
Didn’t work in Southeast Asia. Won’t work in the Middle East. But it usually takes Americans ten years to figure out the obvious futility of trying to kill the idea of national independence in millions of foreign heads.
Back in Vietnam, when I used to fly into Tan Son Nyat Airport in Saigon, I would occasionally pass by this old cemetery, overgrown with weeds and with most of the headstones falling over from neglect of any maintenance. On a barely legible sign at the edge of the place I read: “The Vietnamese people will never forget the sacrifices of the French Legionnaires.” Yeah, sure, I thought. I can see that. The sad sight reminded me of a poem about Afghanistan by Rudyard Kipling:
It does not pay for the Christian White
To hustle the Asian Brown.
For the Christian riles, and the Asian smiles,
And weareth the Christian down.
At the end of the fight lies a tombstone white
And the name of the late deceased.
Its epitaph drear: “A fool lies here
Who tried to hustle the East.”
President Obama, like President Nixon, will try to throw up a firecracker air show to cover the retreating American ground forces — not from the locals who would gladly throw them a parade if they would just sign a cease-fire and leave — but from the American people who could cut off the military’s obscene funding for once again getting its collective ass handed to it by some despicable nobodies who wouldn’t simply give up and die. Can President Obama
kill“tap” or “double-tap” enough impoverished Muslims to keep the Republicans from calling him a “wimp” until after the November election? Only time will tell. Nixon pulled it of by having Henry Kissinger come out right before the 1972 election boasting “Peace is at hand.” Three years later Congress just cut off the funding for the interminable disaster. So it looks like a few more years of needless death and destruction ahead. How many, I wish I could say, but I can’t.A fantastic article that seems a bit relevant to the current conversation was posted over at Library of Law and Liberty. It does a good job of discussing the relevancy of morals in analyzing law.
http://libertylawsite.org/book-review/law-and-the-plan-making-animal/
After seeing Obama run Bush’s third term, I see someone is in control, it’s just not us.
9-11 was a unsolved mystery, even if ya believed the twin towers could go down like that, there was NO WAY #7 could!! (And yet it did.)
Then the WMD lies, another war…
Seems like the 180,000+ war contractor’s/corporations/oil companies/special interests are running this war…and they never want it to stop!
The fact that war crimes are being committed while they loot our treasury, seem to bother them not at all.
Somehow I see a disconnect between our prolonged “war on terror”, with the expanded drone phase, and WWII. A big disconnect. Regardless of what one thinks of the carpet bombing in WWII,the nukes, etc., that was a hot war with a hot enemies. Our “war on terror” is a PR war, and analogizing it’s necessity, on the scale and with the methods used, is a distraction and an attempt to claim legitimacy of militaristic policy propping up a whole culture and economy of war.
Mespooo,
Your calling Michael Murry a traitor is fun to see.
Such an open display of stupidity is seldom shown.
The most important PATRIOT is he who would correct the errors committed by his native land. Regardless of where he resides for the occasion, be it Marc Antony in Egypt or in this modern case in Taiwan.
No matter either how much gall charges his message, it is the truth of it that is the only part to be considered.
You are now willingly, and ferociously allying yourself with those committing war crimes.
Cheney would love you.
KF- Please take off your tinfoil hat. It’s blocking my NSA issued mind control ray.
RE: Mespo and team-
There are times for the mentality of total war, for the total merciless calculation of balancing civilian death tolls against the importance of achieving a particular military objective. This is not one of those times. First, because no terror group has the potential to signifcantly harm the US sans WMD. And no, I don’t think the likelyhood of them obtaining a WMD is significant. The reason for that is not the drone strikes, it’s the relative sanity of those who already possess WMD’s. Whoever provides a terrorist with one would have a wee bit of explaining to do. Even countries who hate the US with a burning passion would bend over backwards trying to hand over scape-goats. Our only policy in response to the use of a WMD is the use of our own- and we have a lot more of them, and a lot easier method of delivering them to a target. Secondly, there can be no coherent military objective when the political target is a noun.
Yes, 3000 deaths were tragic, but that was what, a mere 0.0001 percent of the population? Maddening, horrific, beastly, barbaric, yes, but hardly catastrophic in terms of the viability of the US to wage war. Again, I’m not arguing that there should have been no response. No one here is. We’re simply arguing (ad nauseum) that the response has to be meted out with reason and with morals. I have no problem killing terrorists. In fact, the thought of certain extremists meeting up with a missile makes me giggle like a girl. The thought of deliberately targeting those same people with area of effect weapons while there are innocents being enticed into a secondary trap makes me literally ill. I’ve met many of the people over there, and I know for a fact and without equivocation or doubt that the majority of the people in Afghanistan and Pakistani rural areas don’t actually give two shits who ends up winning the war, as long as the fighting stops. They’re the ones in the crosshairs of both the US and the Taliban, and most of them just want to be safe, and there is no rationale at all that can convince me that simple proximity to combatants is a reason to be killed.
When you’re locked into combat with an enemy who has little fear of death, the no quarter policy actually work against a nation, because we’ve lost the one deterrent the use of force provides- fear. The use of force is a means of coercing a certain desired response from an adversary by means of inducing a fear of the continued use of that force, a fear of dying, or of friends and relatives and family members dying. It has a tipping point though, with diminishing returns in terms of effectivness after a certain emotional toll has been taken, and failing completley when an enemy believes that FAILING TO SUBMIT HAS NO WORSE CONSEQUENCES THAN SUBMITTING. Take Count Tilly in the Thirty Years War. His troops butchered the inhabitants of Madseburg, and burned the entire city to the ground- afterwards, no one would surrender, for fear of that same treatment, causing untold millions of additional lives. Without the carrot to the stick, there is no motivation to desist in acts of terror. Why would there be, when we’ve made plain that we consider people of a certain color and proximity and age enemies regardless of any declaration or actions or intent on their side?
As I’ve said before, there are two ways to win a war. The first is by destroying enough of the enemy to so destabilize their societal continuity that any resistance is no longer effective, and that society is completley subsumed and destroyed. The second is by convincing them to conform to the politcal objective the war was started to achieve. Unless we want to employ WMD’s, complete destruction of a religion will never happen. The goal in WWII was the removal of the German ability to fight a war and to force them to surrender. That can’t work in this type of engagement. There are too many people, and there are no pitched battles anymore. The age of Athena has come in warfare. Warfare is about knowledge and movement. Actual combat is only the very sharp end of a huge string of events leading up to it. There is a reason that the vast majority of the MIC is logistical in nature. If we can find you, we can kill you, period. So the need for even a comparatively mild strike from a drone is needless when innocents are likely to be hit- there are alternatives that are just as deadly to the enemy, without creating the negative image of the US as a deceitful, hypocritical bully.
OS,
The Afghanistan and Iraq debacles — I won’t dignify them by calling them “wars” — proceeded from a pack of venal lies sold to the American people by their own government. World War II proceeded from genuine attacks upon the United States by heavily militarized fascist empires. For you or anyone else to try and use World War II — a truly global conflagration — to justify what America has willfully chosen to do to the Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani peoples renders you unfit to lecture anyone on “false equivalences.” I mean, have you no sense of proportion whatsoever?
“Would somebody please … explain to us American citizens why we should feel safe?” — Karl Friedrich
Easy. Former President George W. Bush — immediately after some unarmed Saudi Arabians politically sodomized him and our vaunted-but-absent military on 9/11/2001– went before the television cameras and told us all to go shopping and buy a few plane tickets to Disney World. “Enjoy what America has to offer,” he invited. That didn’t sound to me like he felt too worried about anything. Certainly not anything that would cause the slightest inconvenience to the typical American. He wouldn’t have gotten five minutes of the “war” he wanted if he had mentioned the word “tax” even once as necessary to fund the hostilities. Americans like their “safety” free but would rather take their chances than pay for it. So I didn’t feel “unsafe” after 9/11, and still don’t. If you did and do, then you’ve got a pretty low fear threshold, to say the least.
Now, dispose of those soiled diapers and clean yourself like your mother showed you. You sound like one of those Americans that Fareed Zacharia recently called “scared, frightened losers.” I’ve heard too many Americans cry
“wolf”“terrorist” too many times over the last decade, so I long since stopped listening.Messpo727272,
You write:
“mespo727272
1, June 10, 2012 at 10:21 pm
OS:
Thanks for seeing my point. Many here believe anything we do in our defense is simply wrong because death will occur. There is no equivalency in magnitude or otherwise between 250 civilian drone deaths and the unimaginable suffering in Dresden, yet many here are ready to paint us as the bad actor both then and now.”
You lack elementary psychology. Dresden involved the killing of large numbers of people in a major air raid, fully propagandized in he media. Nany victims in one raid in a large war equals ho-hum.
In Pakistan we are killing a few, easilh picureed faces in a nominally allied country in a war on the nebulous “war on terror” Few victims over a long period of time with few distractions,
Switch circumstances only
Still can’t stomach it myself.
OS said:
“There have been too damn many false equivalence arguments in this thread. When we compare acts of US and Allied troops in WW-II, does anyone actually think they compared to these acts? Really?”
Perhaps I misunderstand. While aware of the difference between a drone operator and GI Joe with his face in the mud, I still wonder if you think that WW2 was the last noble war, with knights clad in white
with gallant steeds armored and draped.
Randy Jet,
“The US and lots of other countries have taken similar action in the past. In fact, my grandfather was part of Pershings expedittion into Mexico to get Pancho Villa. The Mexican government allowed that one too. When the mission failed, the Mexican government said enough and asked the US to get out which we did.”
Are you congnizant that the Pakistan government is protesting all our missions in Pakistan?
According to the quote above, we should then end our engagement. Or?????
My, my why you folks had an active evening while I slept six hours before y’all.
OS,
it would seem clear you did not declare so tha we should declare all out war and engage fully in Afghanistan and Pakisan. The moral issue is not up for discussion in your comment. That the drone attacks have unsettled moral considerations are not included for discussion. If so, then we clearly know youu POV.
PS, You are the airplane person, but personally doubt that the B-36 missions from US soil could have been a viable way to drive the war if we lost England. Where would the fighter support have come from? Would the surviving B-36 have a return capacity?
The B-36 was only a wind-down project for the MIC to feed on.
KF,
Nice straw man you got there, but again, Jeffersonian democracy wasn’t the point of why I brought him up any more than his personal stand on Tripoli during his lifetime was why I brought him up. Any other arguments I’m not making you’d like to attack? Whether I’d agree with them or not?
Hey people. It’s a fact that our government in the age of the Net, that is pre-911, is going to hire shill plants on the Net. That’s a given for any sentient being. So it stands to reason that POST 911 there’s going to be manifold MORE CIA plants trolling the Net.
The question for die hard Constitutionalists is weeding them out. That’s a hard task to do since they’ll seem like friends, cadres & brothers you’d lay your life down for.
The point is don’t be naive or stupid. Watch out for their contradictions over the long term and their evasions over the short term as careful analysis will expose them & they know who they are.