# Is the drone program a war crime? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 2, 2016, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910 "2016-07-02T06:34:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![boffking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/858c86/32.png) [@boffking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boffking)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/21 "2016-07-03T06:26:04Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > 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. Have you ever heard of Blackstone’s Formula? It might be legal to do this, but it shouldn’t be. Why should an innocent bystander be served the death penalty for a crime that somebody else committed? And what ever happened to due process? Even monsters like the Boston Marathon bomber stood trial. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/22 "2016-07-03T06:41:29Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > Have you ever heard of Blackstone’s Formula? It might be legal to do this, but it shouldn’t be. Why should an innocent bystander be served the death penalty for a crime that somebody else committed? And what ever happened to due process? Even monsters like the Boston Marathon bomber stood trial. What? You don’t serve arrest warrants in a war. Shit, we’d still be fighting for Iwo Jima with your philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![boffking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/858c86/32.png) [@boffking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boffking)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/23 "2016-07-03T16:55:29Z")
> [@XT](#): > > 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? How does killing civilians make us any different from the terrorists we are trying to stop? By definition, terrorists kill innocent civilians. Your response to them is that we need to kill innocent civilians in order to stop the terrorists? Have you read about the weddings that were bombed by American drones and none of the victims were terrorists? That’s like something a Batman villain would do. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/24 "2016-07-03T17:21:01Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > How does killing civilians make us any different from the terrorists we are trying to stop? By definition, terrorists kill innocent civilians. Your response to them is that we need to kill innocent civilians in order to stop the terrorists? Well, one important distinction is that our objective is to kill terrorists, while their objective is to kill civilians. Intentions matter, a lot. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/25 "2016-07-03T17:53:22Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > How does killing civilians make us any different from the terrorists we are trying to stop? By definition, terrorists kill innocent civilians. Your response to them is that we need to kill innocent civilians in order to stop the terrorists? > Have you read about the weddings that were bombed by American drones and none of the victims were terrorists? That’s like something a Batman villain would do. These questions are well-taken, IMHO. But the issue of collateral damage is as old as the hills. The real question now is this: What difference does it make whether the vehicle is manned or not? Why do we suddenly have this new category of “drone strikes”? An airstrike is an airstrike, and to somehow think it’s something new and different because the vehicle is unmanned is stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/26 "2016-07-03T19:00:35Z")
To repeat–under laws of war, intentions matter. There’s no widely accepted international law or agreement that criminalizes incidental killing of civilians. This again, is because it would functionally criminalize all war. Hey–I get that from a pacifist moral standpoint criminalizing all war sounds pretty damn nice. But international laws of warfare are crafted from a more realistic perspective–the tacit acceptance that States are going to conduct wars, and trying to minimize their cruelty and harm. If you structure these rules so that it is literally impossible to conduct war without committing war crimes, then states will simply commit war crimes. They will not agree to participate in international tribunals and the whole concept of “laws of war” get weaker, not stronger. Repeating instances in which civilians were killed and then saying “we’re like a Batman villain” and “no better than terrorists” ignores intent. Intent is actually incredibly important not only in domestic criminal law, and international laws of warfare–but it’s important morally as well. Weapons of war are frequently only capable of a certain degree of precision, if you’re trying to legitimately kill a bad person and mess up, you haven’t committed an evil act–you’ve committed a tragic, terrible accident. It’s entirely possible that United States has committed war crimes in fact we know some soldiers have–they’ve been arrested and prosecuted for crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and even Vietnam, but they’ve been sanctioned by the UCMJ’s process and not sent to an international tribunal–the conventions we’re party to actually allow that a state punish its own bad actors. But just saying “haven’t you heard about this wedding that got bombed” doesn’t tell me much. How do you know for sure it was a wedding? How do you know there weren’t actual terrorist leaders there? How do you know it even happened? How do you know what the intention was? Not saying this random anecdote you just mentioned isn’t possibly a war crime, but a lot more needs to be demonstrated before we should assume it is. ---
**Author:** ![boffking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/858c86/32.png) [@boffking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boffking)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/27 "2016-07-03T19:13:04Z")
Here is a[wedding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deh_Bala_wedding_party_airstrike) that was bombed in 2008, killing 47 civilians. No combatants were present at all. Yemeni wedding [bombed in 2013](http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/12/world/meast/yemen-u-s-drone-wedding/), killing 14 civilians, again with no enemy combatants present. [Another](http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/09/28/wedding-party-death-toll-jumps-131-us-backed-coalition-denies-wrongdoing) Yemeni wedding was bombed in 2015, killing over 100. All of these were real weddings, without terrorist leaders present. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/28 "2016-07-03T19:22:50Z")
Clearly, these people have not been keeping up on _Game of Thrones_ and don’t understand what happens at weddings. I personally only attend weddings now with full Class III body armor with trauma plate and enough firepower to make a _Commando_-era Arnold Schwarzenegger gasp in awe. And I usually take the overwatch just to be outside of the primary blast zone. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/29 "2016-07-03T19:24:08Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > Here is a[wedding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deh_Bala_wedding_party_airstrike) that was bombed in 2008, killing 47 civilians. No combatants were present at all. > Yemeni wedding [bombed in 2013](http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/12/world/meast/yemen-u-s-drone-wedding/), killing 14 civilians, again with no enemy combatants present. > [Another](http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/09/28/wedding-party-death-toll-jumps-131-us-backed-coalition-denies-wrongdoing) Yemeni wedding was bombed in 2015, killing over 100. > All of these were real weddings, without terrorist leaders present. Martin Hyde is providing excellent answers. Are you skipping those or where he talks about intent? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/30 "2016-07-03T19:40:37Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > Here is a[wedding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deh_Bala_wedding_party_airstrike) that was bombed in 2008, killing 47 civilians. No combatants were present at all. > Yemeni wedding [bombed in 2013](http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/12/world/meast/yemen-u-s-drone-wedding/), killing 14 civilians, again with no enemy combatants present. > [Another](http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/09/28/wedding-party-death-toll-jumps-131-us-backed-coalition-denies-wrongdoing) Yemeni wedding was bombed in 2015, killing over 100. > All of these were real weddings, without terrorist leaders present. Yeah, I’m not 100% sure you’re reading, or maybe you’re choosing not to accept intent and laws of war as they stand today. You just seem upset bad things happen. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s human to be upset that bad things happen. But none of those links tell me enough (or you enough) to know if they are war crimes. The first one, in Afghanistan, [which wasn’t a drone strike–I only mention because you seem interested in drones, I personally view drones and normal aircraft strike to be ethically the same] I don’t really see any information on why the wedding was bombed so I’m not sure if there was ever a U.S. investigation (there most likely was) and if its results were published. The Afghan investigation didn’t appear, at least from the wiki article, to speculate on motive, it just stated a wedding party was killed. The second incident, in Yemen, suggests pretty strongly to me it _wasn’t_ a war crime. Yemeni intelligence said it was a “tragic mistake” and that they had erroneous intelligence that it was an al-Qaeda convoy. The third one I’m not even sure at all what happened. It looks like it was first reported as U.S. strike, but the U.S. later said it wasn’t, and that it was the Saudis who actually bombed that wedding. Then there’s a Saudi claim it wasn’t them and the wedding was targeted by militants. I have literally no clue what happened in that instance, or if the United States was even involved, and just based on that article you couldn’t either, so I can see no mechanism by which you could conclude it was a U.S. war crime. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/31 "2016-07-03T19:44:29Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > To repeat–under laws of war, intentions matter. There’s no widely accepted international law or agreement that criminalizes incidental killing of civilians. This again, is because it would functionally criminalize all war. Hey–I get that from a pacifist moral standpoint criminalizing all war sounds pretty damn nice. But international laws of warfare are crafted from a more realistic perspective–the tacit acceptance that States are going to conduct wars, and trying to minimize their cruelty and harm. If you structure these rules so that it is literally impossible to conduct war without committing war crimes, then states will simply commit war crimes. They will not agree to participate in international tribunals and the whole concept of “laws of war” get weaker, not stronger. > > Repeating instances in which civilians were killed and then saying “we’re like a Batman villain” and “no better than terrorists” ignores intent. Intent is actually incredibly important not only in domestic criminal law, and international laws of warfare–but it’s important morally as well. Weapons of war are frequently only capable of a certain degree of precision, if you’re trying to legitimately kill a bad person and mess up, you haven’t committed an evil act–you’ve committed a tragic, terrible accident. > > It’s entirely possible that United States has committed war crimes in fact we know some soldiers have–they’ve been arrested and prosecuted for crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and even Vietnam, but they’ve been sanctioned by the UCMJ’s process and not sent to an international tribunal–the conventions we’re party to actually allow that a state punish its own bad actors. But just saying “haven’t you heard about this wedding that got bombed” doesn’t tell me much. How do you know for sure it was a wedding? How do you know there weren’t actual terrorist leaders there? How do you know it even happened? How do you know what the intention was? Not saying this random anecdote you just mentioned isn’t possibly a war crime, but a lot more needs to be demonstrated before we should assume it is. Excellent points. And do note, Congress did “Declare War” on Terrorism. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/32 "2016-07-03T19:49:38Z")
All of the good intentions in the world aren’t an excuse for wantonly ignoring the sovereignty of other nations and killing innocent civilians in a bureaucratic clusterfuck of incompetence, obtusity, and the irrational belief that we’re going to stop the scourge of Islamic fundamentalism by indiscriminate killing of non-combatants. These same “intentions” led us to the practice of extraordinary rendition and stockpiling presumed (but frequently totally unverified) insurgent threats that Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp and then torturing them to obtain information, which appears to have yielded little if any actionable intelligence, and has resulted in an embarrassing and untenable problem that no one can seem to figure out how to solve. In the span of 15 years United States went from having the near universal support of the developed nations in aggressively pursuing legitimate terrorist organizations and their supporters to being the world’s hemorrhagic raging asshole, invading one nation and another with bogus rationale and little international support. The drone strike program, which was intended and should be reserved for only attacks on high threat targets in exigent circumstances where a dire threat is imminent has instead become business as usual. “Might makes right” is the justification of a bully, not a nation which ostensibly holds itself up to be the paragon of liberty and democratic freedoms. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/33 "2016-07-03T20:00:12Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > All of the good intentions in the world aren’t an excuse for wantonly ignoring the sovereignty of other nations and killing innocent civilians in a bureaucratic clusterfuck of incompetence, obtusity, and the irrational belief that we’re going to stop the scourge of Islamic fundamentalism by indiscriminate killing of non-combatants. These same “intentions” led us to the practice of extraordinary rendition and stockpiling presumed (but frequently totally unverified) insurgent threats that Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp and then torturing them to obtain information, which appears to have yielded little if any actionable intelligence, and has resulted in an embarrassing and untenable problem that no one can seem to figure out how to solve. I think this thread is about whether or not the drone program is a war crime. Not about whether it is wise or not–I’ve actually said I do think that it’s not wisely constructed. But “being a clusterfuck of incompetence” isn’t a warcrime. And calling the killing of civilians “indiscriminate” isn’t based on facts available, but is just you sermonizing. > [@](#): > > In the span of 15 years United States went from having the near universal support of the developed nations in aggressively pursuing legitimate terrorist organizations and their supporters to being the world’s hemorrhagic raging asshole, invading one nation and another with bogus rationale and little international support. The drone strike program, which was intended and should be reserved for only attacks on high threat targets in exigent circumstances where a dire threat is imminent has instead become business as usual. “Might makes right” is the justification of a bully, not a nation which ostensibly holds itself up to be the paragon of liberty and democratic freedoms. > > Stranger Eh, the U.S.'s standing in the world improved under Obama, and last I checked we haven’t invaded anyone since Iraq in 2003. In fact, Obama has steadfastly tried pretty hard to not get us involved in wars. In both Libya and Syria he was literally bullied/cajoled by a coalition of European states (most of whom rarely if ever show any interest in properly funding their own military forces) to get involved. He was also being raked over the coals for his perceived inaction in Syria against Assad I think you’re possibly letting the spittle fly over residual anger over the Bush-Cheney years and haven’t updated this screed for modern times. The simple reality is the international community not only wants, but has more or less demanded, we bomb most of the people we’re now bombing. ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/34 "2016-07-03T20:07:37Z")
It’s a war crime if you are not a permanent member of the Security Council, otherwise you’re policing the world. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/35 "2016-07-03T20:13:36Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I think you’re possibly letting the spittle fly over residual anger over the Bush-Cheney years and haven’t updated this screed for modern times. The simple reality is the international community not only wants, but has more or less demanded, we bomb most of the people we’re now bombing. Yes, thank you for your completely incorrect attribution of my motivations and sensibility. For the record, while the use of drones in a strike capacity was started under the Bush II administration, it has been vastly scaled up under Obama which I regard as a lapse of both judgment and ethics. I don’t regard the use of drones for extrajudicial termination to be a partisan issue that is the responsibility of one party, and it is aptly clear that Ms. Clinton would, if she wins the election, continue and even expand the use of drone strikes. You are okay with the use of these attacks as a normal practice of extrajudicial termination because it only affects brown-skinned people who speak a funny language and live far, far away from you. But if a nation such as Pakistan or Iran were flying drones over the US and killing picnickers and wedding parties as the consequence of an occasional misidentification of a legitimate military or political target, it would be you who would be “sermonizing” and “letting the spittle fly over residual anger” in your entitled since of unfairness because it affects you and your neighbors. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/36 "2016-07-03T20:29:48Z")
I see you’ve entirely dropped the comments about us invading countries and being global pariahs. That is good–considering most major U.S. military activity taken since Obama entered office has been _at the request or under pressure_ from a coalition of European allies. I’m not really sure why you ranted at me about the drone program, I actually said in a much earlier post I consider it unwise as it’s now constructed, but I would favor it for the equivalent of “targeted assassinations” of high ranking terrorist leaders. I don’t think it should be used to “degrade” the operational ability of terrorists in countries where we aren’t actively warring (like Libya and Yemen.) Tribal Pakistan is a more difficult question because Pakistan has willfully allowed that part of their country to basically be part of the Afghan War, in which we are still engaged. Many of our drone strikes in Yemen or Libya haven’t been targeted at high value targets (from what I can tell) but are just attempts to “help” a “side” in a conflict, (Saudis in Yemen, some of the pro-Western military forces in Libya.) I think that is an inappropriate use of the drone program as it’s basically an end-run around the “normal” political process of getting deeply committed in a military conflict (i.e. there’s usually some level of congressional involvement), and I also think it gets into the problem of trying to “shoot the terrorism problem to death”, which I think doesn’t work in that context. I think it’s more valuable in Iraq and Syria because we are fighting a terrorist organization that has taken territory and are at war with them, so attacking that territory is appropriate. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/37 "2016-07-03T20:49:07Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > All of the good intentions in the world aren’t an excuse for wantonly ignoring the sovereignty of other nations and killing innocent civilians in a bureaucratic clusterfuck of incompetence, obtusity, and the irrational belief that we’re going to stop the scourge of Islamic fundamentalism by indiscriminate killing of non-combatants. These same “intentions” led us to the practice of extraordinary rendition and stockpiling presumed (but frequently totally unverified) insurgent threats that Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp and then torturing them to obtain information, which appears to have yielded little if any actionable intelligence, and has resulted in an embarrassing and untenable problem that no one can seem to figure out how to solve. > > In the span of 15 years United States went from having the near universal support of the developed nations in aggressively pursuing legitimate terrorist organizations and their supporters to being the world’s hemorrhagic raging asshole, invading one nation and another with bogus rationale and little international support. The drone strike program, which was intended and should be reserved for only attacks on high threat targets in exigent circumstances where a dire threat is imminent has instead become business as usual. “Might makes right” is the justification of a bully, not a nation which ostensibly holds itself up to be the paragon of liberty and democratic freedoms. > > Stranger Might makes right just is. It doesn’t matter how any of us feel about it. This is why, regardless of words uttered, the USA spends so much on war fighting potential. And one reason the US can dictate some standards world wide is in large part due to overwhelming might. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/38 "2016-07-03T21:21:07Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > To repeat–under laws of war, intentions matter. There’s no widely accepted international law or agreement that criminalizes incidental killing of civilians. So the defense is “hey, don’t push it, it ain’t no crime, we just don’t give enough of a shit for it to be” ? Would that work for, say, a policeman lobbing grenades at random into a mall because he’s been told there’s an escaped convict in there ? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/39 "2016-07-03T21:57:00Z")
It actually did work for a policeman returning fire at a sniper…who was holding a baby in his arms. The policeman’s shot killed the baby. The sniper is the one who is guilty of murder in this scenario, not the policeman. If you don’t like the rules, try to get them changed. There are ways for that to happen. But don’t just make up rules that you want, and claim they’re “the law.” ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910/40 "2016-07-03T22:07:16Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > So the defense is “hey, don’t push it, it ain’t no crime, we just don’t give enough of a shit for it to be” ? Would that work for, say, a policeman lobbing grenades at random into a mall because he’s been told there’s an escaped convict in there ? I’m not making a defense. I took this thread at face value, OP asks “is the drone program a war crime.” His reason for suspecting it might be is that civilians are killed by the program. My answer is that _generally_ under extant international law, incidental killing of civilians is not a war crime. Looking back historically, at who has been charged with and prosecuted on war crimes charges, both by domestic courts around the world and by international tribunals it tends to be: 1. High ranking officers who plan and conduct “wars of aggression”, and then their country loses and they are captured 2. High ranking officers and political leaders who conduct policies in which men under their command deliberately and intentionally target civilians 3. Lower level officers who deliberately and intentionally target civilians (think the My Lai massacre.) There’s a long history in recent years of civilians being killed “incidentally” and people calling it a war crime. When Doctor’s Without Borders was inadvertently attacked by a U.S. military plane they maintained it was a war crime, but nothing ever came of that. So with your police man hypothetical, we wouldn’t have to speculate like we are here. A police officer is easily subject to domestic law. He would either be arrested, or not, based on the decisions of prosecuting authorities. He would potentially be sued as well. Those legal proceedings would answer as to whether his behavior was criminal. But I’ll add that a police officer, who exists under the umbrella of domestic laws and police departmental regulations is in a different situation than a soldier, because international law is frankly “less clear.” But in so clear as it is, in terms of the Geneva Convention and other international agreements that have been “incorporated” into the UCMJ, the simplest answer is that “unintentional killing of civilians isn’t a war crime.” Is “wanton disregard for civilian life” a war crime? The Rome Statute offers some guidance here. When Luis Moreno-Ocampo (then Chief Prosecutor of the ICC) was investigating alleged war crimes committed by the United States in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he noted that “the death of civilians during an armed conflict, no matter how grave and regrettable, does not in itself constitute a war crime.” The Rome Statute provides guidelines that you have to weigh “military necessity”, “proportionality”, and that actions which are “excessive” and in which the anticipated civilian damages are vastly out of scale with the military benefit, it could be a war crime. But there’s been very little actual litigation done by the ICC to clarify what situations we could easily say are “excessive.” Note even that an incident with immense civilian casualties, if those casualties _could not have been anticipated_, wouldn’t qualify as excessive. Like the U.S. attack on the hospital in Afghanistan, all evidence we have suggests they thought they were attacking a military target, and did not know until afterward they were not. So while the damage was excessive, the “anticipated civilian damage” was none, because they didn’t know it was a civilian target. A prosecutor in the ICC could argue they did know, but there’d be a requirement to provide a lot of evidence to prove that. Then, of course–the Rome Statute the United States hasn’t ratified. (And we aren’t part of the ICC.) But we have voluntarily incorporated some of its principles into our UCMJ (because our political leadership both during the Clinton Administration and during the Obama Administration were in favor of the ICC, but getting it ratified by the Senate at present is a political impossibility.) But the simplest answer that we have a solid answer to is that if the killing of civilians is not intentional, it’s probably not a war crime, and I don’t know if there’s even a single case under the Rome Statute where someone has been prosecuted for an “unintentional killing of civilians as a result of an excessive action that they’d know would cause large civilian casualties for minimal military benefit.” To go back to Russia, their bombings in Syria have been wildly condemned. Instead of using small, precision guided missiles they were using very heavy bombs, that leveled several buildings or a city block indiscriminately. Many people called those actions war crimes. But even then, we don’t have a clear answer because it hasn’t been adjudicated–and never will be. You’re not going to be arresting Putin or Russian soldiers to find out. So based on actual cases in which people have been found guilty of war crimes for killing civilians, it’s always, to my knowledge been people who perpetuated deliberate programs of intentional civilian killing. If you find that this leads you to believe international law is a nonsensical, toothless irrelevance–well, me and you would be on agreement in that regard. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-drone-program-a-war-crime/758910.md?page=3)