The Iraq War, the Next War, and the Future of the Fat Man

An anonymous reader writes "The Stanford Law Review Online has just published an Essay by Yale's Stephen L. Carter entitled 'The Iraq War, the Next War, and the Future of the Fat Man.' He provides a retrospective on the War in Iraq and discusses the ethical and legal implications of the War on Terror and 'anticipatory self-defense' in the form of drones and targeted killings going forward. He writes: 'Iraq was war under the beta version of the Bush Doctrine. The newer model is represented by the slaying of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen deemed a terror threat. The Obama Administration has ratcheted the use of remote drone attacks to unprecedented levels — the Bush Doctrine honed to rapier sharpness. The interesting question about the new model is one of ethics more than legality. Let us assume the principal ethical argument pressed in favor of drone warfare — to wit, that the reduction in civilian casualties and destruction of property means that the drone attack comports better than most other methods with the principle of discrimination. If this is so, then we might conclude that a just cause alone is sufficient to justify the attacks. ... But is what we are doing truly self-defense?'"

Comments

targeted killing

[Anonymous Coward]

assassination by any name is just as illegal
so is torture and a war of aggression

Realize this..

[SuperCharlie]

A doctrine of pre-emptive strike allows anyone to do anything to anyone at any time. All you need is to instill some fear and get away (quite literally) with murder.

Re:I thought the Taliban didn't like poppy farmers

[DG]

I was there, right?

The Taliban constantly pressured the local populace to grow poppy and pot. It was how they financed all their operations. Being Taliban has WAY more to do with drugs than ideology (although you cannot separate the Pashtun from Pashtunwali)

That "the Taliban eliminated poppy farming" trope is a myth. The Taliban eliminated COMPETITION in poppy farming.

ISAF left the poppy farmers alone as a matter of policy, because it meant depriving a farmer of what little livelihood he had left. We pushed alternative crops (wheat, grapes, pomegranates) very hard, and where the security situation was good the farmers would happily take up the alternate crops (poppy farming is backbreaking manual labour) the Taliban were always keen t apply pressure to get the farmers growing poppy again.

DG