I assume this decision was made under the assumption that if we aren’t told what our government is doing, we’ll stop complaining about it.
(Reuters) – With debate intensifying in the United States over the use of drone aircraft, the U.S. military said on Sunday that it had removed data about air strikes carried out by unmanned planes in Afghanistan from its monthly air power summaries.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Afghanistan war, said in a statement the data had been removed because it was “disproportionately focused” on the use of weapons by the remotely piloted aircraft as it was published only when strikes were carried out – which happened during only 3 percent of sorties. Most missions were for reconnaissance, it said.
Once the Rubicon had been crossed, it was reported Caesar never looked back. Or as a verse from a popular Pink Floyd song says “it’s just another brick in the wall.”
what i have never understood about the drone strikes is what is the difference between a drone strike and an f16 or f22 or f35 that uses the exact same missile at the same targets and you never hear anything from the idiots in congress about them
Flying an F16 over enemy (or not enemy) territory carries a risk to the pilot and therefore the US, so it’s less likely to be done indiscriminately. Flying drones for either surveillance or sorties gives us the means to extend our hegemony at little risk or cost to us, which is why it’s so dangerous.
The US public has little concern over killing people overseas as long as the risk and cost to us are negligible. So we maximize our distance from the scene of action. But drones aren’t perceived by the targeted population as a light footprint. No one walks around feeling grateful that a drone was sent instead of an F16. The disconnect between the effect that drones have and our perception of that effect is also a problem.
The issue here is targeted assassination without sufficient intelligence or evidence to definitively identify the culpability or the target. And outside the immediate theater of war. The drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia in fact have not been carried out well.
So there are legal issues of sovereignty, which the US asserts that it can violate to eliminate an imminent threat. Apply that principle generally, and people in the US could be legitimately assassinated by other countries.
And there is the assertion that any male of military age within certain communities is Pakistan are automatically “militants”.
And that the President has the authority under Article II commander-in-chief powers to assassinate a US citizen outside the US who has become an ‘imminent threat’ but with ‘imminent’ defined so vaguely as to be laughable.
The fact is that we are not hearing the legitimate issues raised by the idiots in Congress. Rand Paul’s performance last week was transparently an attempt to embarrass the President and hold up a nomination just to be obstructionist. One would think the GOP would be all over the legitimate issues–except for the fact that they are complicit.
There is no difference between using a Hellfire missile on a drone or firing it from an aircraft platform. The big issue is the reversal of the post-Watergate policy of not assassinating people.
Their patented solution, drones don’t kill UK citizens.
Back to reality, drones are used outside war zones to target “top level” terrorists. A nation normally don’t fly F-16s into another sovereign state. Who would care about a tiny drone? As the list of targets has expanded, so the argument for its use has been less convincing. The US mantra is “prove to us the victims aren’t terrorists.”
Reminds me of the body count of Viet Cong fighters: number of US soldiers killed x multiplying factor 10. Male, female, age makes no difference. McNamara had the brains, he had worked for the renowned RAND corporation. Am I allowed to say war criminals?
McNamara had done statistical analysis of the bombing runs in World War II, including incendiary attacks on Tokyo. Only shortly before his death did he acknowledge what he had done.
The “multiply by 10” was William Westmoreland’s signature reporting method.
Back to reality, drones are used outside war zones….
I suppose it would be too much to ask to note that this story is about drones being used in a war zone, and has nothing to do with drones being used outside of a war zone.
After all, it doesn’t appear that the author of the post knows this.
From diary’s link:
“Paul held the Senate floor for more than 12 hours while talking mainly about drones, expressing concern that Obama’s administration might use the aircraft to target U.S. citizens on home soil.”
In unison from far right to liberal left, Rand Paul is their hero. Yeah sure, collective amnesia of Rand’s rubbing shoulders with the conspiracy crowd abour Obama taking their guns away! Rand Paul also warns of the “internment camps” for political dissidents, a typical tin foil hat reaction to a military manual that has been around since before the Internet was invented.
FM 3-19.40. Military Police Internment/Resettlement Operations or version dated 1 August 2001 [large pdf]
In 1996, the United States (US) Army Military Police (MP) Corps restructured its four combat support (CS) missions into the following five CS functions. These functions adequately describe MP capabilities in support of US forces deployed worldwide.
Field Manual (FM) 3-19.40 depicts the doctrinal foundation, principles, and processes that MP will employ when dealing with enemy prisoners of war (EPWs), civilian internees (Cls), US military prisoner operations, and MP support to civil-military operations (populace and resource control [PRC], humanitarian assistance HAL and emergency services [ES]).
From reader response, these manuals have been around since 1970.
Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel): Anwar al-Awlaki is the New Aluminum Tube
Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel): Is Stuart Delery the One Who Flubbed DOJ’s FOIA Response?
Not good when you are not using usual channels. The white paper presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee in the administration’s original response was an atrocious argument.
So the question remains, “What was the evidence that Anwar al-Awlaki was an ‘imminent threat’?”
There was a count of US drone strikes that was over 4000. Are there 4000 “al Quaeda commanders” who are imminent threats? Why is it that the administration will not level on this issue? And now by not providing USAF information, coverage of this issue will depend solely on Pakistani and other media. How does that help the administration’s position?
Isn’t she overdoing it a bit? Come on, deal with it and look at the number of innocent people slaughtered by jihadists in Yemen. This failed state has been at war for many decades, also bred the Bin Laden family. My anguish by far is the botched regime change by western powers in Syria. The 70,000 killed and 1 million refugees will likely double this year.
Of course, the drone hit on Anwar al-Awlaki was a vast improvement over an earlier failed attempt with a cruise missile in Yemen. Many members of the Awlaki tribe were killed. On 24 December 2009, Yemeni forces led a ground attack where it was claimed the preacher had been killed. Coincidental date?
Fortunately, our long term ally Saudi Arabia gave permission for a US drone base in the kingdom.
The issue is the failure of the US government to state clearly the authority under which it carried out the killings in Yemen. One suspicion that has to be put to rest is that the CIA sometimes acts as the hit man for rulers like former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Another suspicion that has to be put to rest is that this was retaliation for Awlaki’s association with Hasan, the Ft. Hood killer.
The Hasan story IMO has not been fully aired because he was a psychiatrist who was treated US soldiers returned from Afghanistan and Iraq with PTSD. There is the possibility that Hasan was privy to some stories of US conduct that offended him so much as a Muslim that he went over the edge and that rather than expose that line of causes, the government decided to focus on his ties to Awlaki.
But the fact that emptywheel is pushing is the government’s refusal to state clearly what imminent threat Awlaki posed. That is salient because it indicates how the government makes decisions about who is an imminent threat. Association alone should not be grounds for a death sentence.
One of the things to watch in Yemen is the persistence of a separatist movement in the south that might be using the al Quaeda brand and have no ambitions outside Yemen. The public US analysis of the region seems to me to be simplistic.
I don’t do moral equivalency. I prefer that my country not do the stupid things that other political actors do. And it is not clear to me how the Sanaa bombing is strategic for al Quaeda.
Yes, Syria is a clusterF. So the idea now is for Saudi Arabia and Qatar to promise not to send arms to the jihadis but only to the securlar forces. Does that pass the smell test? And the UK is supplying armored personnel carriers and other protections. How does that help?
But the fact that emptywheel is pushing is the government’s refusal to state clearly what imminent threat Awlaki posed.
In a war situation, people fighting for the other side are presumed to present an imminent threat. You don’t need to show that that particular person was engaged in the moment in an act that posed an immediate threat. Their contribution to the “war effort” is enough.
The problem is that the expediency of not letting a putative enemy know your policies is running up against laws against overseas murder and the US Constitution. And a long precedent of expediency can rapidly become a means of abuse of power down the road. The sort of abuse of power that was expose during Watergate and afterwards.
A democracy cannot function as a garrison state.
No matter how many times you use the word “murder,” it will not become illegal to shoot at the enemy in a war. No matter how many times you cite civil laws against murder, the killing of the enemy in war will not be murder according to the law.
Emotionally-laden language intended to define your way to your conclusion will not eliminate this inconvenient legal reality.
Since when has “letting the enemy know your policies” been a legal requirement for military force?
And since even the relevant, counter-terror drone strikes (that is, not the ones discussed in the post or the story it links to) are being carried out overseas, with absolutely no one suggesting that it would even be legal to conduct them in the US, much less actually suggesting that we do so, the argument about a “garrison state” doesn’t seem terribly on-point here.
There was a count of US drone strikes that was over 4000. Are there 4000 “al Quaeda commanders” who are imminent threats?
The only way you get to 4000 strikes is to count all of the strikes conducted within the Af-Pak theater, which have nothing to do with targeting al Qaeda commanders.
Why is it that the administration will not level on this issue?
They are. You just aren’t listening. This point I keep making about the difference between the Af-Pak theater and the counter-terror strikes has been discussed a million times.
bmaz weighs in on the legal aspects:
18 USC 1119 Foreign Murder and Obama Targeted Kill White Paper
The central claim of that piece – that Awlaki was not killed in a “hot battlefield” – is legally meaningless. Every air strike ever carried out against an enemy airfield was far away from a hot battlefield, and none of the mechanics and air traffic controllers posed an imminent threat (as the term is used in civilian law).
Discussing the legality of an act of war without noting the legal existence of a war is disingenuous.
The argument really is that Awlaki was not killed in a Congressionally-declared theater of war. He was putatively killed pre-emptively under Article II commander-in-chief powers in a putatively friendly country. There has been no evidence of linkage of Awlaki to the “incidents of 9-11” as narrowly defined in the AUMF for the global war on terror.
The second part of the argument is that the CIA is not a military organization under US law, and the relevant statute does exempts only military organizations. Therefore it is illegal for the CIA to kill anyone for any reason under US law, expedient or not.
This, no doubt, is why Brennan wants the drone program moved to DoD.
Congress doesn’t declare theaters of war. They declare war on an enemy, and the executive fights those enemies according to its own judgment.
He was putatively killed pre-emptively under Article II commander-in-chief powers
False. He was killed under powers granted to the executive under Congress’s Article One war-declaring powers.
There has been no evidence of linkage of Awlaki to the “incidents of 9-11” as narrowly defined in the AUMF for the global war on terror.
Both of the points I just reiterated have been discussed over and over again. Why do we always have to go through these pointless preliminaries, retreading long-settled points on old ground?
The second part of the argument is that the CIA is not a military organization under US law, and the relevant statute does exempts only military organizations. Therefore it is illegal for the CIA to kill anyone for any reason under US law, expedient or not.
It’s a little fuzzier than that, but you’re basically right. The CIA has long carried out military operations during wartime, including lethal operations. Like the Coast Guard, its status morphs between peacetime and wartime. Cleaning up this fuzziness is part of Brennan’s argument. The superior oversight and greater transparency of military operations are also important considerations.
The strikes in Afghanistan have nothing to do with the White House “drone program” against al Qaeda figures. They’re just ordinary, traditional air support/recon/tactical bombing missions in support of the ground war. That a some of these missions are carried out by aircraft without pilots doesn’t turn them into anything other than the most traditional use of force, or make them relevant to the ongoing debate about the counter-terror strikes conducted outside of the Af-Pak theater.
Conflating the Afghan War with the counter-terror operations serves only to confuse the issue.