This essay is a compilation of research done for a prepared debate at St.Paul's in 2012.
From ‘The Moral Case for Drones’ NYTimes, Scott Shane
We say that we are fighting Al-Qaeda more efficiently- they strike with precision and identify targets better, you say.
However, we must also consider the psychological effects of drone warfare on the Pakistani people. People in Pakistan who see their current antagonistic situation with the United States as a jihad will be even more distanced and feel like the United States is even less of a sympathetic force if they no longer have contact with real people- the face of the U. S. in this war against al-Qaeda will become even further from a humanitarian one- quite literally- but instead one that seems distant, aloof, and uncaring, which the U. S. is not; it wants stability in Pakistan, and the U. S., with its current use of drones, is sending the wrong message.
The general excuse is that drones kill fewer civilians than other modes of warfare. But the point here is not to choose the lesser evil. We are determining whether drone warfare is legally and ethically correct for use by the United States or not. The point is that drones are killing innocents in despite of the United States’ euphemizing that drones “minimize” civilian casualty numbers.
Furthermore, how can you trust the casualty numbers that our government-led agencies feed to us? Four studies of drone deaths in Pakistan have respectively reported that 4 percent, 6 percent, 17 percent, and 20 percent of all deaths by drone in Pakistan have been civilian ones. These are wildly varying reports, and in all likelihood understated if anything, considering our current administration’s love for drone use in war zones- and, as we will soon see soon enough, what are not war zones.
Drones threaten to lower the threshold for our great nation’s tolerance for lethal violence.
According to Daniel R. Brunstetter, a political scientist at the University of California at Irvine, “In the just-war tradition, there’s the notion that you wage war only as a last resort. [However, these drones are becoming] a default strategy to be used almost anywhere.” We need to start asking the big questions that everyone is tippy-toeing around- Does drone warfare normalize warfare? Does drone warfare have adverse psychological effects, both on the soldiers that man them from perhaps thousands of miles away to the American citizens who see reports of drone attacks and assassinations almost every single day in American media? In a world in which the public’s threshold for violence is already testing its lower boundaries, where do we stop?
There have been hundreds of terrorist suspects killed under President Obama, and of them, only one has been taken into custody overseas.
Thus, it is no surprise that there has been some debate as to whether drones are becoming not a more precise alternative to bombing, but instead a more convenient alternative to capture.
Are Drone Strikes Murder? National Journal
There is also the question as to whether assassination of foreign individuals in nations with which the United States is not at warfare is permitted by international law.
Consider this situation, outlined in the National Journal about the 2009 assassination of Baitullah Mehsud, the commander of the Pakistani Taliban:
On August 5th, two Hellfire missiles shot from a Predator drone that was piloted by someone at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., hit Mehsud’s father-in-law’s house in a village in Pakistan’s South Waziristan province while Mehsud was lying on the roof. His wife was there, as was his uncle, who was administering an inintravenous drip, probably for Mehsud’s diabetes or kidney condition. The drone missile killed everyone on the roof and in the house; his mother-in-law, father-in-law, and eight others, including Mehsud’s bodyguards, died.
This was the fifth (but evidently, first successful) attempt to kill Mehsud.
This was a cause of celebration on the part of American administration officials and journalists, who greeted news of his death as another victory for the United States.
Putting aside the morbidity of the fact that we as a nation would consider the death of any individual to be a cause for celebration, we need to consider the facts first:
The CIA, not the military, killed Mehsud in Pakistan, a nation with which the United States was not at war. He was the commander of the Pakistani Taliban, not the Afghani Taliban, which is indeed a group with which the U. S. was engaged in armed conflict.
Furthermore, Mehsud was not in combat, but receiving medical treatment at the time of death. Even if the U. S. was not then engaged in war with Pakistan, was Mehsud’s death still permissible under the laws of war? Or was it simply murder?
Many of Obama’s senior administration would have been quick to point out that drone warfare shares a legal history with the much publicly condemned Bush-era programs of interrogation and detention, which many contended were in violation of the Constitution, that document which has been since its conception so sacred to the American government and public.
In the case of an absent armed conflict between two parties, the use of lethal force may be justified by the law of self defense, but neither the Obama nor Bush administrations have used this stance to justify the use of drones, and even then it is difficult to see what individuals are permissible to be assassinated by drones.
The United States could not justify all of its drone strikes on the basis of self-defense, Mary Ellen O'Connell, a professor at Notre Dame Law school, contended in a paper, because the United Nations charter permits such violence only if an armed attack has occurred. "That means significant force may only be used on the territory of a state that is responsible for an armed attack.... There simply is no right to use military force against a terrorist suspect far from any battlefield."
The guidance developed by the Red Cross suggests that people who are more than one step removed from combat are not valid targets for drone attacks, but according to Gabor Rona, the international legal director for Human Rights First, the global nonprofit based in New York City and Washington, "The United States uses a much more expansive definition of direct participation than most countries that interpret the laws of war use. In its decisions on targeting, the United States uses concepts of membership, rather than conduct, and uses concepts of support for enemy forces rather than simply participation in hostilities." This makes the definition of a “combatant” extremely fuzzy, while “combatants” are the only targets permissible by the current international stance on the legality of drone warfare.
There is also the gray area of extrajudicial execution by consent of government. In November 2002, the United States CIA fired a Hellfire missile at a travelling vehicle, killing the suspected head of Al Qaeda in Yemen and five others. The Al Qaeda figure was Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, also known as Abu Ali, who had reportedly known Osama bin Laden for more than 20 years, serving once as his bodyguard and then later on as the communications coordinator for the 9/11 attacks.
The Bush administration then had authority from Congress as well as the permission from Yemeni government to fly in its airspace. The argument of self-defense could be easily made here because Abu Ali had a history of antagonism with the United States, as well as posed a threat for future attacks against the U. S. However, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights called the strike a “clear case of extrajudicial killing.”
Why? Well, the United Nations, as well as many analysts who have considered the strike in the years since the attack, has contended that the United States had a legal obligation to capture, rather than kill, Abu Ali. There has been conversation about whether there could have been alternative methods to take Abu Ali alive, and whether this situation has set a dangerous precedent for future drone warfare: Yemen couldn’t apprehend the men, so by permitting the United States to fly in its airspace, it allowed the United States to kill them, using the U. S.’s motivations to meet their own ends.
According to Nils Melzer, the legal adviser for the International Committee of the Red Cross, there is a vital question that the United States has neglected to ask throughout its history with drone warfare. "Is the individual in question a legitimate military target in relation to the surrounding armed conflict, such as the conflict in Afghanistan? If the individual is a combatant member of an organized armed group fighting against the U.S. in Afghanistan, then he is no longer a civilian and can be attacked at all times unless he surrenders, [or] is captured or wounded. If he is not a member of the fighting force," Melzer said, "he's a civilian and can only be targeted while directly participating in hostilities."
Drone Warfare: The Top 3 Reasons it could be Dangerous the U. S.
The Christian Science Monitor- Anna Mulrine
There are studies that suggest that drones may not be so efficient at lessening the number of civilian casualties after all:
A new joint study from New York and Stanford Universities, "Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan," estimates from an analysis of public records that as many as 881 civilians, including 176 children, have been killed since the US covert drone program began.
The report also cites an example from Afghanistan, in which two US troops were killed by drones after being mistaken for insurgents. (I think this partly attests to the dubiousness of the “accuracy” of these drone attacks- considering that the innocent victims here were not even civilians, but United States militants).
In Yemen, 8.5 percent of the more than 530 people that have been killed as of this June might be civilians, the New America Foundation estimates.
We must also consider the fact that the United States is alienating non-militant civilians who see their neighbors, including innocent children and women, being murdered by what seem to be completely unmanned killing machines. First of all, it is terrifying for those on the other end of the “gunpoint” here, whose lives depend on the judgment of those who are thousands of miles away, and second of all, these innocent casualties, especially when brought about by machines, not even hand-to-hand combat which seems to lend itself more in the public opinion to human error, cause even more anti-American public opinion among non-militant citizens of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.
We say that we are fighting Al-Qaeda more efficiently- they strike with precision and identify targets better, you say.
However, we must also consider the psychological effects of drone warfare on the Pakistani people. People in Pakistan who see their current antagonistic situation with the United States as a jihad will be even more distanced and feel like the United States is even less of a sympathetic force if they no longer have contact with real people- the face of the U. S. in this war against al-Qaeda will become even further from a humanitarian one- quite literally- but instead one that seems distant, aloof, and uncaring, which the U. S. is not; it wants stability in Pakistan, and the U. S., with its current use of drones, is sending the wrong message.
The general excuse is that drones kill fewer civilians than other modes of warfare. But the point here is not to choose the lesser evil. We are determining whether drone warfare is legally and ethically correct for use by the United States or not. The point is that drones are killing innocents in despite of the United States’ euphemizing that drones “minimize” civilian casualty numbers.
Furthermore, how can you trust the casualty numbers that our government-led agencies feed to us? Four studies of drone deaths in Pakistan have respectively reported that 4 percent, 6 percent, 17 percent, and 20 percent of all deaths by drone in Pakistan have been civilian ones. These are wildly varying reports, and in all likelihood understated if anything, considering our current administration’s love for drone use in war zones- and, as we will soon see soon enough, what are not war zones.
Drones threaten to lower the threshold for our great nation’s tolerance for lethal violence.
According to Daniel R. Brunstetter, a political scientist at the University of California at Irvine, “In the just-war tradition, there’s the notion that you wage war only as a last resort. [However, these drones are becoming] a default strategy to be used almost anywhere.” We need to start asking the big questions that everyone is tippy-toeing around- Does drone warfare normalize warfare? Does drone warfare have adverse psychological effects, both on the soldiers that man them from perhaps thousands of miles away to the American citizens who see reports of drone attacks and assassinations almost every single day in American media? In a world in which the public’s threshold for violence is already testing its lower boundaries, where do we stop?
There have been hundreds of terrorist suspects killed under President Obama, and of them, only one has been taken into custody overseas.
Thus, it is no surprise that there has been some debate as to whether drones are becoming not a more precise alternative to bombing, but instead a more convenient alternative to capture.
Are Drone Strikes Murder? National Journal
There is also the question as to whether assassination of foreign individuals in nations with which the United States is not at warfare is permitted by international law.
Consider this situation, outlined in the National Journal about the 2009 assassination of Baitullah Mehsud, the commander of the Pakistani Taliban:
On August 5th, two Hellfire missiles shot from a Predator drone that was piloted by someone at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., hit Mehsud’s father-in-law’s house in a village in Pakistan’s South Waziristan province while Mehsud was lying on the roof. His wife was there, as was his uncle, who was administering an inintravenous drip, probably for Mehsud’s diabetes or kidney condition. The drone missile killed everyone on the roof and in the house; his mother-in-law, father-in-law, and eight others, including Mehsud’s bodyguards, died.
This was the fifth (but evidently, first successful) attempt to kill Mehsud.
This was a cause of celebration on the part of American administration officials and journalists, who greeted news of his death as another victory for the United States.
Putting aside the morbidity of the fact that we as a nation would consider the death of any individual to be a cause for celebration, we need to consider the facts first:
The CIA, not the military, killed Mehsud in Pakistan, a nation with which the United States was not at war. He was the commander of the Pakistani Taliban, not the Afghani Taliban, which is indeed a group with which the U. S. was engaged in armed conflict.
Furthermore, Mehsud was not in combat, but receiving medical treatment at the time of death. Even if the U. S. was not then engaged in war with Pakistan, was Mehsud’s death still permissible under the laws of war? Or was it simply murder?
Many of Obama’s senior administration would have been quick to point out that drone warfare shares a legal history with the much publicly condemned Bush-era programs of interrogation and detention, which many contended were in violation of the Constitution, that document which has been since its conception so sacred to the American government and public.
In the case of an absent armed conflict between two parties, the use of lethal force may be justified by the law of self defense, but neither the Obama nor Bush administrations have used this stance to justify the use of drones, and even then it is difficult to see what individuals are permissible to be assassinated by drones.
The United States could not justify all of its drone strikes on the basis of self-defense, Mary Ellen O'Connell, a professor at Notre Dame Law school, contended in a paper, because the United Nations charter permits such violence only if an armed attack has occurred. "That means significant force may only be used on the territory of a state that is responsible for an armed attack.... There simply is no right to use military force against a terrorist suspect far from any battlefield."
The guidance developed by the Red Cross suggests that people who are more than one step removed from combat are not valid targets for drone attacks, but according to Gabor Rona, the international legal director for Human Rights First, the global nonprofit based in New York City and Washington, "The United States uses a much more expansive definition of direct participation than most countries that interpret the laws of war use. In its decisions on targeting, the United States uses concepts of membership, rather than conduct, and uses concepts of support for enemy forces rather than simply participation in hostilities." This makes the definition of a “combatant” extremely fuzzy, while “combatants” are the only targets permissible by the current international stance on the legality of drone warfare.
There is also the gray area of extrajudicial execution by consent of government. In November 2002, the United States CIA fired a Hellfire missile at a travelling vehicle, killing the suspected head of Al Qaeda in Yemen and five others. The Al Qaeda figure was Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, also known as Abu Ali, who had reportedly known Osama bin Laden for more than 20 years, serving once as his bodyguard and then later on as the communications coordinator for the 9/11 attacks.
The Bush administration then had authority from Congress as well as the permission from Yemeni government to fly in its airspace. The argument of self-defense could be easily made here because Abu Ali had a history of antagonism with the United States, as well as posed a threat for future attacks against the U. S. However, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights called the strike a “clear case of extrajudicial killing.”
Why? Well, the United Nations, as well as many analysts who have considered the strike in the years since the attack, has contended that the United States had a legal obligation to capture, rather than kill, Abu Ali. There has been conversation about whether there could have been alternative methods to take Abu Ali alive, and whether this situation has set a dangerous precedent for future drone warfare: Yemen couldn’t apprehend the men, so by permitting the United States to fly in its airspace, it allowed the United States to kill them, using the U. S.’s motivations to meet their own ends.
According to Nils Melzer, the legal adviser for the International Committee of the Red Cross, there is a vital question that the United States has neglected to ask throughout its history with drone warfare. "Is the individual in question a legitimate military target in relation to the surrounding armed conflict, such as the conflict in Afghanistan? If the individual is a combatant member of an organized armed group fighting against the U.S. in Afghanistan, then he is no longer a civilian and can be attacked at all times unless he surrenders, [or] is captured or wounded. If he is not a member of the fighting force," Melzer said, "he's a civilian and can only be targeted while directly participating in hostilities."
Drone Warfare: The Top 3 Reasons it could be Dangerous the U. S.
The Christian Science Monitor- Anna Mulrine
There are studies that suggest that drones may not be so efficient at lessening the number of civilian casualties after all:
A new joint study from New York and Stanford Universities, "Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan," estimates from an analysis of public records that as many as 881 civilians, including 176 children, have been killed since the US covert drone program began.
The report also cites an example from Afghanistan, in which two US troops were killed by drones after being mistaken for insurgents. (I think this partly attests to the dubiousness of the “accuracy” of these drone attacks- considering that the innocent victims here were not even civilians, but United States militants).
In Yemen, 8.5 percent of the more than 530 people that have been killed as of this June might be civilians, the New America Foundation estimates.
We must also consider the fact that the United States is alienating non-militant civilians who see their neighbors, including innocent children and women, being murdered by what seem to be completely unmanned killing machines. First of all, it is terrifying for those on the other end of the “gunpoint” here, whose lives depend on the judgment of those who are thousands of miles away, and second of all, these innocent casualties, especially when brought about by machines, not even hand-to-hand combat which seems to lend itself more in the public opinion to human error, cause even more anti-American public opinion among non-militant citizens of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.