American drone strikes have killed hundreds of civilians in countries that we weren’t even fighting wars in. Only about 10% of drone victims were the intended targets. This isn’t “collateral damage”. This is unacceptable. We are better than this. Our foreign policy should not include murdering innocent civilians.
Do we have any right to do this? I think it should be a war crime.
It doesn’t matter what you or any one else thinks. Since no one can enforce a “war crime” charge on the USA what you think about it is irrelevant.
What about the UN?
How many divisions do they have?
The UN doesn’t have an ordinary judicial arm that handles war crimes. It has the International Court of Justice, intended to resolve disputes among states, but it isn’t really a vehicle for handling war crimes. Prior to the creation of the International Criminal Court, the established way of handling war crimes trials was to establish one-off, special tribunals. We had one for Rwanda and for Yugoslavia, and we sort of started the trend after WWII by having special tribunals to try Germans and Japanese respectively for war crimes.
The International Criminal Court is intended to be a standing body that can do this, but the United States quite deliberately has not joined the ICC, and is not subject to its authority. To force it to be a coalition of countries would have to wage war against the United States and defeat it, and force its captured leaders into the court–something that is as likely as happening as a runaway planet slamming into Earth some time in the next 50 years.
Dead civilians does not a war crime make, something lefties and pacifists have cried about for ages. International law regulating warfare (at least those the United States has signed on to), requires that signatory states do not deliberately target civilians. In a situation where there is one terrorist with one civilian right next to him, it’s legally valid to kill the terrorist even if it kills the civilian. The drafters of these frameworks knew that there were limits to what they could do. If they drafted a framework that made “legal war” impossible, then all wars would be war crimes, and thus the concept of war crimes would lose any meaning. Instead they sought to try and minimize suffering, by establishing that deliberate, systemic killing of civilians cannot be acceptable. But incidental killing of civilians is an unfortunate necessity, and entirely legal as long as not deliberate. Lots of civilians were killed throughout WWII by Allied strategic bombing. Many people then and now have called it a war crime, but it’s never been successfully established that it was.
FWIW, America uses newer missile technology in drones and in cruise missiles and ordinary planes, that are more accurate, and designed to hit a more precise target–so carry a smaller explosive payload, and these are what is typically used in targeted strikes against terrorists. This absolutely does reduce unnecessary civilian casualties.
It didn’t get a lot of press, I guess because Russia has long been a somewhat loved evil country by the type of people who like to scream about every U.S. military action as if it’s a war crime, but when Russia got involved in Syria to assist Assad many humanitarian groups noted that the Russians were using older, less precise, higher payload bombs. Leveling huge areas and killing massive numbers of civilians indiscriminately. Even this didn’t rise to the level of a war crime–at least in part because it’s impossible to prosecute war crimes against powerful countries without conquering them.
I don’t see that 10 percent figure cited in the Huffington post article. All I see is 116 civilians dead per the White House and 200-900 civilians per various NGOs all over a roughly 6 year period. No mention of how many terrorists/Taliban/ISIS/assholes killed though.
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Clearly we need to abandon our use of drones and go back to pre-drone aerially dropped (not nearly as accurate or limited in effect) bombs that are fully allowed by the Geneva Convention. So, ya know, the dead civilians can return to just being “collateral damage” like the gods of war intended!
Yes, drone strikes are awful . . . but they’re a lot fucking better than the alternative, which will be used instead.
CMC fnord!
Hyde, I think you’re dodging the question of whether drone strike assassinations are a crime. The defense of how we assassinate people rests on the assumption that the USA has the right to assassinate people in the first place.
Also, there’s a case for claiming that Obama-era “double taps” are deliberate targeting of civilians, and would still be war crimes under Hyde’s liberal definition of legal force.
This bit of hyperbole ignores the fact that while we don’t drop conventional bombs on nations with which we are not at at war with or in open conflict, we apparently have no problem using drones in any number of nations with which we have no declared conflict, against targets which have not been identified as criminals or terrorists by any international body or according to some transparent process, and with an unacceptible proportion of casualties in people who are completely unaware that they are in a battle zone and therefore have no warning or means to flee or seek shelter. Futhermore, details of the US armed drone strike programs and in particular the program run by the Central Intelligence Agency, which is notionally an intelligence gathering and interpretation agency, have extremely limited public visibility which virtually ensures that in the case of an erroneous stike, no person is actually identifiable as thr culpable party. Even military strike programs are increasingly moving toward using contrators to support and potentially even execute strikes, and the use of private contractors to provide turnkey armed drone services–essentially, civilian mercenary strikes–is in discussion as the Air Force finds increasing difficulties recruiting and retaining drone operators. The distinction between state-supported terrorist groups and “military contractors” performing extrajudicial termination without even executive-level direction is so thin even Kate Moss couldn’t fit in between them.
From John Oliver’s report on drone strikes
Former Defense Department official: “Right now we have the executive branch making a claim that it has the right to kill anyone anywhere on Earth at any time for secret reasons based on secret evidence in a secret process undertaken by unidentified officals. That frightens me.” Fuck yes, it should. This is what repressive authoritarian regimes do without batting an eye.
Stranger
I don’t think the executive branch is making that claim–I think it has that power.
Dating back to the very beginning, it’s known the President is commander and chief and he can order the military to do things.
Point to something in U.S. or any international law to which the United States is signatory that would make the President’s actions illegal. You won’t find anything.
I also kind of laugh at your spurious claim that a lot of these civilians are the equivalent of someone on a stroll in Central Park with their dog, unaware that they are in a war zone or area of terrorist activity. The vast majority of these drone strikes have happened in countries like Yemen, Libya, tribal areas of Pakistan and etc, and have targeted places terrorist groups are residing in in large numbers. The idea that the locals are unaware of these things is asinine. That doesn’t mean “genuine innocents” aren’t dying, or that it isn’t tragic, but the assertion that these drone strikes are happening in countries where the populace is “unaware they might be in a warzone” is ludicrously incorrect.
We aren’t drone striking Germany or South Korea.
Also it’s factually incorrect that we don’t bomb countries we aren’t at war with. We bombed Libya and Iran under Reagan and were at war with neither, we also bombed Iraq during the Clinton administration when we were not at war with it–all with ordinary bombs dropped by planes, not by drones.
I’m not thrilled about this either, but I’m sure you haven’t missed that there are folks, some that have Rep. and Sen. in front of there names that don’t think drones count at all, and we have Presidential candidates talking about “carpet bombing” the “bad guys” where ever they’re hiding and assassinating anyone related to someone who might know someone with the same last name as a suspected terrorist (and they don’t seem to understand that al-cityname isn’t a surname!)
So, I’m kinda forced to give Obama a reluctant pass on this . . . 'cause what could be coming will redefine the Jeopardy category “American War Crimes”.
CMC fnord!
You may laugh all you like at my “spurious claim” and the deaths of hundreds of civilians with no connection whatsoever to any terrorist or insurgent activity, but the fact is that many of the strikes occur in residential areas against suspects that are poorly identified (“We’re convinced it was an appropriate target…we do not know yet exactly who it was,” who turned out to be a scrap collector who was identified as Bin Laden “based on his height”), with little in the way of verification, minimal executive oversight, and virtually no public knowledge or recourse. When we are conducting drone strikes in countries like Yemen and Algeria, it is virtually certain that civilians have no idea that they are actually in a free fire zone, especially since the US has not announced its intention to conduct drone strikes or publicized the results.
You need to retake reading comprehension because what I said was, “…we don’t drop conventional bombs on nations which we are not at war with or in open conflict.” In fact, we had sanctions and warnings against the governments of those nations and had warned that there would be response to their continued support for international terrorist groups such as the PLO, IRA, and Red Army Faction. The contraversial 1998 strikes against Iraq targeted goverment facilities in response to failure of the Hussein regime to adhere to UNSC resolutions and interfering with weapons inspectors. The strikes in soverign nations against poorly identified targets in close proximity to non-combatant civilians, on the other hand, is not following a duty to prevent unnecessary civilian deaths. You may argue that the actions are not technically illegal (and when it comes to so-called “international law” there are few actions that are unambiguously illegal) but these are the actions of an executive regime which is playing lip service to the notion of human rights while pursuing a “War on Terrorism” that seems to be largely just generating the next generation of insurgents and terrorists.
Stranger
In the real world might makes right. The real world doesn’t settle differences by logic and pointing out the other committed more logical fallacies or didn’t have cites from approved sources. In the real world, carriers, drones, bombers, and jets are how you settle differences.
With regards to war crimes you have to be more powerful to enforce that. Who’s more powerful than the US? The reality is we spend 100s of billions a year on war machinery and salaries of the military and intelligence agencies. That’s not for show. Mrs. Clinton will probably be more hawkish than President Obama. The US is not a place for doves.
Your claim was that this people weren’t even aware they were in a conflict area. To someone sitting happy and comfortable in the United States, saying that about someone living in places that are torn asunder by violence like Yemen, Libya, or tribal Pakistan is frankly absurd. I didn’t contest there was collateral damage of uninvolved persons, I just objected to the ludicrous claim that we were hitting areas where people had “no idea” they might be at risk. People in Yemen’s war-torn countryside or Libya live under constant fear of violence, and I suspect drones would rank among the lower threats to them. Thousands upon thousands have died in those countries at the hands of small arms and other weapons wielded by their countrymen, you inaccurately painted a picture that the President is launching drone attacks against markets and villages that are in some idyllic countryside, unaware that violence is coming to them. I suspect this is to make the drone program look worse than it really is, because if we can bomb some “random place” in Libya who is to say we couldn’t start drone striking the Swiss Alps or some other place. But the reality is the drone strikes have been limited to use primarily in areas that would be described as “war zones.” While were are not actively engaged in war in tribal Pakistan, Libya, Yemen or etc, wars are ongoing there.
We weren’t in “open conflict” with Iran when Reagan attacked them, and we weren’t in “open conflict” with Libya. The Libyan bombing was a response, specifically, to a terrorist attack orchestrated by the Libyans. But we were not engaged in any general open conflict with them. Further, the terrorist attack occurred in the skies over Scotland–not in the United States. Further still, not unbiased body or international commission indicted Libya and proved the claim they were behind the attack. Reagan received intelligence, reviewed it with his staff, and ordered a military strike against a sovereign nation with which we were not at war.
Of course, unlike Iran or Libya we actually are at war with terrorist groups, by every meaningful definition of that term. We have a U.S. law in force that empowers the President to go after terrorists that perpetuated the 2001 terrorist attacks. We’ve gone even further and made it stated policy, publicly, that we will attack terrorists anywhere and everywhere we deem appropriate. Bush stated quite clearly “We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”
We are in a state of open war with “terrorist groups” worldwide.
I’m having trouble believing that anyone was ever targeted solely because he was the same height as OSL.
(Also, how do you tell how tall someone is from a drone camera image?)
Is it possible you’re exaggerating just a little here?
I don’t agree with Stranger’s tone, but there must be some recognition of the valid questions the drone program arises.
For one, much of it is still classified and likely to remain so. What we do know is that there have been many “signature strikes.” These are strikes in which some intelligence analyst analyzes video, maybe some HUMINT/SIGINT sources, and says “this person, whom I cannot identify, but see doing this that and the other, is behaving like a terrorist.” That is then used as justification for a drone strike. So while I doubt anyone was killed by a drone simply for being a certain height, we do know that signature strikes kill unidentified people deliberately based on “patterns of behavior.”
Now, on one hand we can probably agree some patterns of behavior might be “obviously terroristic.” Like we have spy camera surveillance of someone stockpiling RPGs and operating out of a structure where known suicide bombers go to get their equipment. We may not know who the guys are in that structure, but we can argue they’re pretty obviously terrorists. But we also don’t know anything specific about this stuff. So we don’t know if these signature strikes are all “open and shut cases”, akin to seeing a “smoking gun on the battlefield” or are they something else–more open to error. Because the program is so secretive, we (the public) do not have any of the “sources” on the intelligence side. So when we see a drone strike kills 10 people, and the local press reports they were all civilians. Was that a result of a “signature strike” gone wrong? Or was it a normal strike targeting a specific person, but “messed up”, maybe he wasn’t there? Or was he there, and the local press just didn’t report on it? [Since often times in these countries many local reporters are not unbiased sources and may essentially be propagandists for terrorist groups.]
The biggest problem is “we just don’t know.”
The other big problem is I don’t believe there’s strong evidence the “widescale” drone program is necessary or effective. I think when we target very high value terrorist leaders, it probably has utility, selectively. But using it to just blow up low level terrorists hiding out in some country outside of the ones we’re “actively” involved in (Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan) is more questionable. You don’t fix terrorism by killing people, former heads of the CIA have said as much. Now, the fight against ISIS or other groups like the Taliban in Afghanistan/Syria/Iraq is different, when groups control territory we, as a matter of policy, are trying to free and give back to state actors or “preferred non-state actors” (like in Syria) then military strikes on any combatant you can find is more in the norm and can work to achieve those goals (dead soldiers cannot occupy territory.) But outside of those “hotzones” terrorists we kill with drone strikes by and large don’t appear to be of the type that are occupying territory, they’re more of the “hidden low doing bad shit covertly” type. To my mind there’s a decent argument for more of an “international law enforcement” type of response to those.
Giving a pass on American war crimes is why the next President will commit war crimes. Trump wouldn’t be spouting bullshit about how awesome torture is if there was half a chance it would put him in front of a firing squad.
I don’t believe the 10% claim, but leaving that aside, ‘we’ haven’t been at war since WWII. Does that make every instance of the US using military force and causing collateral civilian deaths a ‘war crime’? If so, then does that, by extension, mean that any other country that wasn’t at war (i.e. I assume you mean a formal declaration of war), who did something similar also guilty of ‘war crimes’? If so, then the term ‘war crime’ basically is meaningless…if not, then why not?
Yeah…it is. Those civilians aren’t the target…the people hiding behind those civilians are the target. That’s basically what ‘collateral damage’ IS.
To who? Based on what? If we weren’t intervening, can you estimate what the civilian deaths might be? Would it be acceptable if it simply wasn’t the US doing the killing? Would those deaths be ‘war crimes’ then? And, if so, who would prosecute them? Assad, to give one example, has DELIBERATELY targeted his civilian population. Brutally. Is that a ‘war crime’? I’m guessing the answer is…yes. And so? He’s still in power and likely to remain so, unless he’s assassinated or unless the civil war goes bad for him. What about the Russians? They were pretty arbitrary in their use of force in Syria. Were those ‘war crimes’? I’m guessing your answer is…well, no idea, since they were Russians and you can probably hand wave that away based on Assad asking them or some such. But if they were, then…what?
We are…which is why the body count isn’t a hell of a lot higher. Look at the Russian (or Syrian) operations to see how they could be. But we aren’t gods, and if we are going to go after terrorists in those areas then that’s the price it costs to do so. All that money you and this boards liberals are always whining about the US spending is what keeps the body count as low as it’s been. But as long as the policy is that we aren’t just going to stand around with our thumbs up our asses and watch, there is a price to pay.
Simple question…should we just allow ISIS and AQ and the Taliban to do what they like at this point? If your answer is no, then a follow on question…what would THAT cost in civilian deaths in the region? Do you think it would be less, or more?
Yeah, it kind of does, if ‘murdering innocent civilians’ equates to accidentally killing innocent civilians who are, through no fault of their own, caught in the cross fire. It’s the price we pay in the real world for trying to fight groups like ISIS/AQ/Taliban, etc. And if we didn’t, then those groups would have free reign in the region…and the body counts would be much, much higher. And there would be more ‘war crimes’ that we would just be watching happen. Maybe it would make you feel better if it just wasn’t the US doing the killing, but those people would be just as dead.
The right? Of course we have the right. We are a nation state who is directly AND indirectly threatened by the actions of the groups we are fighting. They have attacked us on our home soil, and attacked our allies, and show zero sign that they will cease and simply slaughter their own people at home…which I guess is ok with you, as long as it’s not the US.
As for your thought it’s a ‘war crime’, what portion of international law are you claiming we have violated with our strikes? And what part of US law do you presume the Obama administration is breaking…and why, if you really think they are, hasn’t the extremely hostile Republican party not attempted to impeach him over it? Can you be specific? Or is it more a gut feeling on your part?
Stranger On A Train is an actual rocket scientist so I am sure he can give you great detail on how to measure height by the length of a shadow or etc. If it’s a technical question of that sort I’d defer to his expertise regardless of the discussion at large.
In any case, I feel the issue is how much do you trust your government? Are they just shooting missiles at random people and claiming wins or are they doing some research we the people will never be privy to? Can such a capability be abused? Certainly. Will it? That depends on the ethics of the people firing the missiles I suppose.