Slashdot Mirror
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?'"
Why not spin off SlashPol now?
Dark Reflection
assassination by any name is just as illegal
so is torture and a war of aggression
After all, they could grow up to be resentful teen agers that could vandalize my property. So I really had no choice but to slit their throats, chop them up into kibble and feed them to the hogs.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it.
I'll just drop this little gem here. It is quite clear that either most everyone in the government was lying, or it was really believed that he could be a major threat. Al Gore even said in 2002 that he knew Saddam had stores of chemical and biological weapons. Now, whether certain parts of the government deceived other parts is an open question I won't get into, but Saddam himself was doing everything in his power to make it look like he was a threat. Every reasonable examination points to the government as a whole honestly believing he was a major threat in a region that possesses massive amounts of economic resources and in some cases nuclear weapons which could lead to catastrophic disaster should he ever choose to act.
In hindsight, of course, we know better (hence all the "Bush lied and just wanted the oil"... the oil we never actually got, of course: Iraq's production has gone down since the invasion). At the time? No one did. Whether the actions were justified even given what we thought we knew at the time: well, again, I won't get into that, as it is pretty messy. I will just say that retrospect offers amazingly clear vision.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I spent seven months in Kandahar City as part of ISAF. I say this so you know that I have seen the ground truth, not just whatever story comes out of whatever news outlet you care to believe.
The Taliban were providing direct aid and sanctuary to the people who carries out the 9/11 attacks, and then refused to hand them over for prosecution - or indeed, to enforce any limits on their activities in any way. This makes that regime an active accessory to international terrorism and indeed a legitimate threat.
On top of that, I cannot imagine any group of people less suited to govern a nation than the Taliban. During my tour, a couple of Taliban chose to douse a group of Afghan schoolgirls with concentrated acid, killing some, and horribly disfiguring the others - for the crime of attending school. Not a Western-funded school; an Afghan-started, Afghan-operated school teaching girls to read. This sort of despicable and flatly inhuman act was Taliban policy. There is NOTHING good about the Taliban. They are bigoted narco-thugs who actively seek to erase any sign of civilization, law, and order in the attempt to eliminate opposition to their drug farming slavery campaigns. The Afghan campaign was, is, and remains a just war.
The crying shame of the Bush administration was that, instead of applying a full-court-press to Afghanistan following the initial defeat of the Taliban and seeing the country Marshall Planned back to some form of stability, they took their eyes off the ball to go adventuring in Iraq. This allowed the Taliban to re-invent themselves as an insurgency, rebuild, and become a destabilizing force that has slowed reconstruction to a crawl.
Although the world does not morn the passing of Saddam, Iraq was completely unjustified and the diversion of resources away from Afghanistan is, as far as I'm concerned, criminal. Afghanistan is NOT Iraq.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
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.
The point about torture is well taken. Torture is NEVER justified. Not only does it not produce useful information (people will say anything under torture) its use does immense harm to your cause. It is very, very difficult for a torturer to lay claim to the moral high ground.
So we agree there.
But having had first-hand experience with UAV strikes, I am a big fan. Partially because UAVs are very good at minimizing collateral damage; they use precision munitions with a very small footprint. You get orders of magnitude less damage (of all kinds) than you do with big stick munitions like air strikes or cruise missiles.
But the true value of a UAV is that it allows you to be patient, take your time, and ensure that the target really is what you think it is and that conditions - all conditions - are ideal for the shot. I can't tell you the number of times when I saw UAVs with legit targets NOT shoot because the identity of the target was in question or because the risk of collateral damage too great. And with no jet jockey hopped up on amphetamines itching to drop his bombs in the air (and the sole determinant of if he drops or not) you instead get careful and reasoned opinion on go/no go from a panel of experts, legal and otherwise.
With nobody from your side at risk, attacks need not be made on snap decisions in the heat of battle by people scared for their lives. Instead, the decisions are made by safe, clear-thinking minds with more on their minds than just killing.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
For those who are historically unaware, the doctrine of anticipatory self-defense was NOT originated by the U.S. In fact, the U.S. was on the receiving end of the attack by the British known as "The Caroline incident" that established anticipatory self defense as a part of international law. U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster eventually agreed that nations must have a right to take pre-emptive strikes in the event that "necessity of that self-defence is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation".
This is "the Caroline test" used to establish the validity of such strikes under international law, and it's not a trivial standard, as you suppose - simply claiming a need for self-defense is a far cry from satisfying the Caroline test. While this arguably supports actions such as an Israeli bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, it clearly would not support actions such as those Obama took in his recent attacks on Libya. Without a credible threat, it's pretty hard to reach the bar set by the Caroline test...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
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
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book