The way you have edited my post doesn’t make any sense. I said “because x, y.”; you’ve mangled it to “because x.” Obviously I agree with x, but you haven’t shown how y follows. So, once again, how does the fact that drone strikes fuel terrorism support your claim that the point of drone strikes is to terrorize?
I’m also not sure how my educating myself (with your kind assistance) would really help prove your point that drone attacks are somehow intended to terrorize.
I’m not sure that in traditional battlefields people get to just up and leave. I don’t think Germans or Japanese (soldiers or otherwise) could just up and leave to Norway or Switzerland or something, and they certainly didn’t get many chances to protest error.
I would guess that drone strikes are very costly in many respects and that the US isn’t just targeting everyone on super thin evidence. And I suspect that most of their targeting decisions are pretty uncontroversial, but at the same time it’s true that there could be better oversight. A recent BB post links to a report on Obama’s statement saying that perhaps a (secret) court to review those placed on the target list would be a way to add additional oversight. Now, I’m sure you’ll object to the secrecy of the court, but two branches are more oversight than one, and I don’t know how you could effectively do this in open court.
I'm also not sure how my educating myself (with your kind assistance) would really help prove your point that drone attacks are somehow intended to terrorize.
Nevermind then, you’re useless and being purposefully obtuse. Embrace willful ignorance and inanely avoid the real point all you want, I’m out.
Hey, thanks for calling me useless! I appreciate you efforts at rational discourse. And your cool gif was a solid contribution to the discussion, too.
I don’t know how I’m avoiding the real point, unless your real point isn’t the one you opened with. I said the point of terrorism was to terrorize. You replied that that sounded like drone strikes. And the connection between drone strikes and intending to terrorize is that drone strikes turn people towards terrorism. Still not sure how this shows that the point of drone strikes is to terrorize, and you’re not willing to make that connection.
Capital punishment is extremely costly, and yet it’s well documented how many people are executed for crimes they didn’t commit. Drones get cheaper all the time, and the US military gets an inconceivable amount of money it can use on things like them. It is supposed to: we ask them to kill terrorists, and so little do we worry about errors, we don’t even acknowledge that other adult males could be collateral damage.
So calling out costs as a safeguard is laughable. I can think of nowhere in the world where the simple cost of killing someone ensures their rights are represented.
Adding a court review is better if it’s actually another layer of oversight, but there needs to be a way to ensure they do, instead of acting as a rubber stamp. Secret courts have a pretty clear track record in this regard. Suggesting one without any special way to keep it independent, then, amounts to much the same thing as before: asking that we have faith that nobody would be targeted without good reason.
But soldiers do usually go on the battlefield conscious that they are soldiers, and that they need to either surrender or expect the enemy to try and kill them. Probably people who join Al Qaeda know the same, but there is no point someone innocent mistaken for a target has that opportunity. They live their life until they’re killed, and we never learn our mistake so call it a job well done, and wonder why the Middle East is still so hostile.
So again, the only safeguard that you offer their rights is the hope that the executive will take pains not to target anyone innocent, despite there being even less advocacy for their rights than abused prisoners and the condemned on death row have received. And that’s the model we take going forward, as drone strikes become more and more common. I don’t know if you’ll acknowledge it, but that model means mistakes.
So how should we describe those mistakes? Back at the beginning, we heard Obama called
But now we know how wrong and needlessly emotional that terminology is. What’s really happening is remotely killing folk for being probable terrorists - without giving them any knowledge we are at war with them (like soldiers), or chance to defend themselves against that charge (like accused criminals), or advocate for their rights beyond what the same executive decides is important. An important clarification!
Costs are a safeguard. This example is directly related to killing people, but for a long time the cost of surveillance was a very real and effective safeguard against mass surveillance. Following people around took a lot of people, and before you could simply slap a GPS on someone’s car limited government resources meant that these resources would only be expended on important targets. And if cost is not a viable argument, why do anti-death penalty advocates continually use the high cost of executing someone as a reason why it should be abolished, and why are some legislators listening, and [why did New Mexico use it as a reason to abolish the death penalty][2]? Does cost alone ensure that rights are safeguarded? No, but I never claimed that it did: it’s simply one factor.
And do we ask the military to kill terrorists? It sounds like most people here certainly aren’t. I’m not sure that drone strikes are as popular in the US as capital sentences are, and I’m not sure that politicians support it the way many of them support the death penalty. On the other hand, most people probably don’t care very much wither way. But most people probably don’t care (or historically haven’t cared) about the collateral damage of executing innocent people, either. (I’ve also not seen the administration say or suggest that males can never be considered or acknowledged as collateral damage.)
[2]: http://www.nmrepeal.org/[quote=“chenille, post:46, topic:21215”]
Adding a court review is better if it’s actually another layer of oversight, but there needs to be a way to ensure they do, instead of acting as a rubber stamp. Secret courts have a pretty clear track record in this regard. Suggesting one without any special way to keep it independent, then, amounts to much the same thing as before: asking that we have faith that nobody would be targeted without good reason.
[/quote]
Hey, you’ve also pointed out that regular courts don’t do a great job, either, and when it comes to comparing regular courts with secret courts, I’m not sure the regular courts are much better. For example, wiretap warrants granted through regular court have rejection rates just as low as the secret FISA court: from 2002-2012, [only 7 out of 23,925 wiretap requests were denied by regular federal courts][2]. Independence and avoiding capture is a real concern, but it’s one that also affects regular courts and I’m not sure there is a very effective way to ensure independence while still respecting the need for secrecy in these proceedings.
[2]: Table Wire 7—Wiretap Wiretap (December 31, 2012) | United States Courts[quote=“chenille, post:46, topic:21215”]
But soldiers do usually go on the battlefield conscious that they are soldiers, and that they need to either surrender or expect the enemy to try and kill them. Probably people who join Al Qaeda know the same, but there is no point someone innocent mistaken for a target has that opportunity. They live their life until they’re killed, and we never learn our mistake so call it a job well done, and wonder why the Middle East is still so hostile.
[/quote]
I’ve no doubt true that mass drone strikes are counterproductive and make the targeted regions more prone to terrorism, and are not good policy unless collateral damage is truly minimized (something which gives the military good reason to ensure that collateral damage is minimized and only real threats are targeted), but this kind of efficiency argument is more about whether the strikes are optimal than about whether they are justifiable. It’s about whether it’s a good idea to be a jerk as opposed to whether you have the right to be a jerk.
And I’m not sure what your distinction is. Soldiers know they’re soldiers who can be killed, as do al Qaeda agents. And civilians in wars run the very high risk of being innocently killed in war, just as there is a more limited risk to civilians around al Qaeda members. And it’s not like we don’t learn of the mistakes, as people have cited numerous stories about collateral damage in this thread. I kind of suspect that the military and CIA have even more information than makes it into the press, but it’s clear that I give the military and CIA more credit for their institutional expertise than you do. Nor do I think they are wholly lacking in internal procedures and reviews, or that those making decisions are unconcerned with collateral damage.
There’s no doubt the system makes mistakes. Hell, mistakes in WWII cost millions of civilians their lives, and you’ve already mentioned how mistakes in domestic criminal law results in the execution of innocent people. I’m not sure how a system of advocacy for suspected terrorists would work, and the only reasonable solution (special advocates who do not contact the suspected terrorists and who are sworn to secrecy) would almost certainly be dismissed by you as being insufficient and subject to capture by the court/military.
There are lots of reasons not to target innocent people, from the law, to the cost, to the effect it has on creating new terrorists, to the political impact of such strikes. These are reasons why the government likely does take efforts to ensure that innocent people are not targeted, even though in principle they are justified in performing these strikes.
Come on. You’ve already said that these probable terrorists know “that they need to either surrender or expect the enemy to try and kill them.” And as for your second point, it’s true that they don’t have the ability to defend themselves or advocate for themselves. I don’t think soldiers have ever had this right, nor have targets of surveillance. It’s also true that al Qaeda itself could remove this problem by requiring that their members wear uniforms so that there is no risk of mistaking a civilian for an al Qaeda member. Of course, the very idea of guerilla warfare is to remove the distinction between soldier and civilian to make it difficult to target you, and this obviously places the opponent in a difficult position. Again, it’s difficult to see what an acceptable/viable alternative might be. The idea of a special court (with perhaps advocates for the suspected terrorists) seems to me to be the most realistic option, but you’ve already voiced your objections to this.
And yes,I do consider the distinction in terminology to be important. It’s the difference between sating a fact and imputing intent. It’s the difference between saying someone is wrong and calling them a liar. It’s the difference between calling someone a soldier and calling them a murderer. It’s needlessly polarizing language that obscures complexity, of the kind we would decry if it appeared on Fox News.
No, I said a terrorist would know those things. Someone being targeted as a probable terrorist will be a terrorist some portion of the time, and someone completely ignorant of why they might be about to be killed - quite possibly ignorant that their home has been relabeled a war zone - the rest of the time. The second won’t have a chance to surrender or correct the mistake. They will simply be blown up one day by a robot plane because some army considered it likely enough in their interest.
You keep talking past the existence of those people. All the parallels you’ve made, talking about the rights of soldiers and what al Qaeda could do and so on, are only about actual terrorists. Or you’ve argued that there will not be many, that there because there are reasons not to target innocent people, the US - you know, the country that somehow allowed the abuses at Abu Ghraib for so long - would not allow that to happen. Well, there will still be some, and I think it is clear more often than you are crediting.
So what do you think of the case of these accidentally targeted innocents? Do you think it’s compatible with the right to due process, or do you actually anyone ever has a right to a trial? What do you think it is for, and when do you think it applies? Because in all you’ve written, I see lots about how armies have the right to make preemptive strikes and such, and nothing about what rights you think other people have that need respecting.
Sure, a terrorist will know these things and a civilian may or may not. I assumed that when you divided the “probable terrorists” into those who should be treated under a war model and those who should be treated under a law-enforcement model, you meant the war model to apply to actual terrorists, and the law-enforcement model to apply to innocent civilians. And at any rate it’s clear that a lot of innocent civilians in places like Waziristan do feel that the US is at war with them and they may be killed (which was one of your earlier efficiency-based objections).
I keep talking about them because they do exist, and because they exist there are valid reasons to support drone strikes and killings. You keep talking about accuracy—which is a concern—but does not mean that drone strikes are wrong per se any more than the inaccuracy of the criminal justice system means that criminal trials are wrong per se. And I agree that there should be robust measures in place to ensure that the targets of these strikes are legitimate, but I don’t think it’s either reasonable or practical to expect that these procedures will rise to the level of criminal trials.
And yes, abuses at Abu Ghraib have occurred. And been made public. And been addressed. The torture there occurred over a period of about 6 months, which doesn’t seem like “so long” to me, though it is certainly longer than anyone would like. The issues, however, ultimately came to light and were addressed.
For one thing, it’s unclear if any civilians have been targeted. I mean, it’s possible, but at the moment I’m not aware of anyone saying that the target of a drone strike was not actually a terrorist or a civilian. There has certainly been civilian collateral damage, but that’s not the same as saying that civilians are being targeted.
I’ve said on multiple occasions that the preventative and prospective nature of things like intelligence and counter-terrorism involve a different standard than the retrospective and punitive criminal justice system. When the damage has already been done and there is minimal/no risk of further injury, such as in law enforcement actions, there is little risk to affording people greater rights. But when there is an opportunity to prevent injury, people have relatively less protection of their own rights in deference to the rights of others that they may impinge upon. That’s basically how things operate, whether you agree with it or not.
On the other hand, I don’t think you’ve answered my repeated question about what you think an appropriate response is. Can the US take any action against terrorists overseas, or must they wait until the terrorists enter the US and/or have committed a terrorist act? If they can act, what kind of process is due? The exact same process as criminal defendants receive?
