The Obama administration has launched a sudden effort to keep classified additional parts of a memo outlining the legal justification for the drone killing of an American a mere week after saying it would comply with a federal ruling to release the memo.
In January 2013, a Federal District Court judge decided that the US Justice Department could keep the document classified entirely. That ruling stood until April 2014, when a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ordered the government to publicize key parts of the document that provided the legal rationale for the drone strike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki.
Awlaki was born in New Mexico before moving to Yemen with his family as a child. He returned to the US again to attend college but eventually became a prominent Al-Qaeda propagandist who American intelligence officials have claimed helped plot terrorist attacks. He was killed by a September 2011 drone strike in Yemen that was authorized based on the 41-page memo, dated July 16, 2010.
President Barack Obama praised the strike at the time, telling reporters that Awlaki’s death was a “major blow to Al-Qaeda’s most active operational affiliate.”
The New York Times and American Civil Liberties Union have sought the release of the memo under the Freedom of Information Act.
It has been an issue of contention of late because David Barron, the former Justice Department attorney who wrote the memo, was confirmed by the US Senate by a narrow vote last week as a judge on a US appeals court. A number of senators said they would only vote to confirm Barron if the administration agreed not to appeal the April decision and release a redacted version of the document.
“I rise today to oppose the nomination of anyone who would argue that the president has the power to kill an American citizen not involved in combat and without a trial,” Senator Rand Paul said last week. “It is hard to argue for the trials for traitors and people who would wish to harm our fellow Americans. But a mature freedom defends the defenseless, allows trials for the guilty, and protects even speech of the most despicable nature.”
In a new court filing obtained by The New York Times, however, assistant US attorney Sarah Normand now argues that some of the information the administration pledged to reveal should actually remain secret.
“Some of the information appears to have been ordered disclosed based on inadvertence or mistake, or is subject is distinct exemption claims or other legal protections that have never been judicially considered,” she wrote.
The Justice Department also asked that the court keep the request for parts of the memo to remain secret. That request was denied, with the judge ordering the government to unveil previously secret negotiations between the court and prosecutions deliberating which aspects of the Barron memo would remain in the dark.
“It’s deeply disappointing to see the latest effort by the government to delay even further the release of this memo to the public,” New York Times attorney David McCraw told Politico. “The government reviewed the Second Circuit’s opinion before it was released. The court made redactions in response to that review. The fact that the government then waited five weeks to file a motion – seeking yet another opportunity to review what it has already reviewed – says volumes about the administration’s position on transparency.”
Senator Mark Udall (D-Colorado) was one of the lawmakers who said he only voted to confirm Barron because of the administration’s promise that “redactions to the memo would focus on still-classified information – not the legal reasoning itself,” he told the Times.
“I intend to hold the White House to its word,” Udall added.
May 29, 2014
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | Anwar al-Awlaki, Drones, Information Technology, Intelligence, Law, Obama, United States, USA |
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United States Attorney General Eric Holder has informed Congress that four American citizens have been killed in Yemen and Pakistan by US drones since 2009.
It has been widely reported but rarely acknowledged in Washington that three US citizens — Samir Khan, Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki — were executed in Yemen by missile-equipped drones in 2011. With Holder’s latest admission, however, a fourth American — Jude Kenan Mohammed — has also been officially named as another casualty in America’s continuing drone war.
“Since 2009, the United States, in the conduct of US counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda and its associated forces outside of areas of active hostilities, has specifically targeted and killed one US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki,” the letter reads in part. “The United States is further aware of three other US citizens who have been killed in such US counterterrorism operations over that same time period,” Holder said before naming the other victims.
“These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States,” the attorney general wrote.
The news of the admission broke Wednesday afternoon when New York Times reporter Charlie Savage published the letter sent from Holder to congressional leaders in a clear attempt to counter critics who have challenged the White House for falling short of US President Barack Obama’s campaign plans of utmost transparency. Upon a growing number of executive branch scandals worsened by the Department of Justice’s recently disclosed investigation of Associated Press journalists, Holder wrote that coming clean is an effort to include the American public in a discussion all too often conducted in the shadows cast by the US intelligence community.
“The administration is determined to continue these extensive outreach efforts to communicate with the American people,” continued Holder. “To this end, the president has directed me to disclose certain information that until now has been properly classified. You and other members of your committee have on numerous occasions expressed a particular interest in the administration’s use of lethal force against US citizens. In light of this face, I am writing to disclose to you certain information about the number of US citizens who have been killed by US counterterrorism operations outside of areas of active hostilities.”
The letter, dated Wednesday, May 22, was addressed to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Drone strikes have become a signature counterterrorism tool used by the Obama administration and his predecessor, President George W. Bush, and have been attributed with killing roughly 5,000 persons abroad, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). But under the covert and protective umbrella of the Central Intelligence Agency, little has been formally acknowledged from Washington as to the details of these strikes.
As part of the vaguely defined ‘War on Terror,’ the US has reportedly waged drone strikes outside of Afghanistan where the Taliban once harbored al-Qaeda. In recent years, those strikes have targeted towns in neighboring Pakistan, as well as Yemen, Somalia and perhaps elsewhere.
But despite growing criticism over escalating use of drones, the president and his office has remained adamant about defending the operations.
“It’s important for everybody to understand that this thing is kept on a very tight leash,” Obama said last January, adding that his administration does not conduct “a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly.”
Others have argued quite the opposite, though, and have opposed these drone strikes over the lack of due process involved and the habit of accidently executing civilians in the strikes. When researchers at Stanford University and New York University published their ‘Living Under Drones’ report last September, they found that roughly 2 percent of drone casualties are of top militant leaders. The Pakistani Interior Minister has said that around 80 percent of drone deaths in his country were suffered by civilians.
Earlier this year, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) led a marathon filibuster on the floor of Congress to oppose the CIA’s drone program and demand the administration explain to elected lawmakers why the use of unmanned aerial vehicles is warranted in executing suspects, often killing innocent civilians as a result.
Of particular concern, Paul said, was whether or not the Obama administration would use the 2011 Yemen strike as justification to kill American citizens within the US. For 13 hours, he demanded the White House respond.
“I rise today to begin to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination for the CIA,” Sen. Paul said. “I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”
One day after the filibuster, both Attorney General Holder and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney reached out to Sen. Paul to say the president lacks the authority to issue such a strike within the US. With this week’s letter, however, Holder admits that at least four Americans have met their demise due to US drones. He also explains why the administration felt justified in using UAVs to execute its own people.
“Al-Awlaki repeatedly made clear his intent to attack US persons and his hope that these attacks would take American lives,” wrote Holder. “Based on this information, high-level US government officials appropriately concluded that al-Awlaki posed a continuing and imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.”
Later, Holder says the decision to strike al-Awlaki was “not taken lightly” and was first put into plan in early 2010. Additionally, Holder said the plan was “subjected to exceptionally rigorous interagency legal review” and that Justice Department lawyers and attorneys for other agencies agreed that it was the appropriate action to take.
According to Holder, the senior al-Awlaki and Mr. Khan were killed in the same September 2011 drone strike in Yemen. The following month, 16-year-old Abdulrahman Anwar Al-Awlaki was killed in a strike in the same country. Mohammed, a North Carolina resident born in 1988, was killed by a drone likely in November 2011 within a tribal area of Pakistan. Mohammed was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2009 for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons in a foreign country, and was considered armed and dangerous by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both Khan and the older al-Awlaki were suspected members of al-Qaeda and were affiliated with the group’s magazine, Inspire.
Last February, friends of Mohammad told a North Carolina newspaper that they believed he was dead.
“Farhan Mohammed says he heard in November that his friend was killed in a drone strike,” Raleigh’s WRAL News reported in 2012. “Jude Mohammad’s pregnant wife was hysterical about her husband’s death and called her mother-in-law in the Triangle to break the news, according to Sabra. The US government hasn’t confirmed Mohammad’s death, but the people who knew him in North Carolina say it’s probably true.”
Holder declined to explain why either Mohammad or the teenage al-Awlaki were killed. President Obama is expected to discuss America’s drone program at an address in Washington on Thursday.
May 22, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | Anwar al-Awlaki, Central Intelligence Agency, Obama, United States |
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While President Obama, the Pentagon, and the CIA have steadfastly refused to say why they assassinated American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, one thing remains beyond dispute: It wasn’t because Awlaki was trying to take away the freedom of the American people. It was instead because he was opposing the U.S. national-security state’s interventionism in the Middle East and neighboring regions.
The issue is a simple one:
People over there are saying to the Pentagon and the CIA:
Go home. Leave us alone. Close your military bases. Cease your sanctions, embargoes, coups, invasions, occupations, regime-change operations, threats, kidnapping, incarceration, prison camps, torture, and support of our dictators. Just go home and deal with your own problems.
On the other hand, the U.S. national-security state says:
Not on your life. We are the U.S. national-security state. We are a force for good in the world. We are here to help you. We have the right to do so. We have the right to bring you democracy and freedom and order and stability. We have the right to support your dictators, oust your rulers and install new ones, sanction and embargo you, kidnap, incarcerate, and torture you, and assassinate you. We are here to stay. You are free to protest to your heart’s content. But the minute you try to force us to return home, we will bomb, shoot, arrest, incarcerate, torture, execute, or assassinate you and anyone standing near you.
The rumor is that Awlaki had crossed the line from legitimate protest to some sort of “operational” role in attacks on U.S. troops over there. Nonetheless, the basic fact remains — he was killed not for trying to deprive the American people of their freedom but because he was supposedly part of an effort to force the Pentagon and the CIA to exit that part of the world and return home.
Awlaki wasn’t trying to take over the reins of the U.S. government in an attempt to enslave the American people. On the contrary, he left the United States with the sole intent of resisting the presence and activities of the U.S. national-security state over there.
By the way, the same principle applies to the assassination of Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman. The rumor is that the boy was supposedly “collateral damage” from a drone missile fired at some supposed terrorist in Yemen. But like his father and, for that matter, all the other people they have assassinated over there, the supposed terrorist sitting next to Abdulrahman had no intent to cross the Atlantic Ocean as part of some gigantic terrorist army to invade, conquer, and occupy the United States and deprive Americans of their freedom. At most, the supposed terrorist was involved in the effort to oust the U.S. national-security state from that part of the world and force it to return home.
That’s what the assassinations are all about — not about defending the freedom of the American people but rather the “freedom” of the U.S. national-security state to do whatever it wants in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Why is this important? Because when a government is killing people, including both its own citizens and foreigners, it is incumbent on the citizenry to determine the reasons for the killings. Then, if the citizenry conclude that the reason for the killings is an illegitimate one, based on moral, ethical, religious, and spiritual factors, then it is up to the citizens to place the government back on the right track.
That’s where the role of conscience comes in.
Is the U.S. national-security state’s interventionism abroad a valid moral, ethical, religious, and spiritual justification for the Pentagon’s and CIA’s continued assassination of Americans and foreigners? Is it consistent with God’s laws and fundamental laws of morality? Is this the type of thing American Christians should be supporting? Or is it time for the American people to demand that the Pentagon and the CIA stop the killings and come home?
March 31, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Militarism | Anwar al-Awlaki, Jacob G. Hornberger, Middle East, United States |
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The US attorney general has refused to rule out the possibility that drone strikes may be used inside the United States to kill an American citizen.
Eric Holder said a drone strike within the borders of the US and against an American citizen may be carried out in what he called an extraordinary circumstance.
He made the remarks in a statement in a response to an inquiry by Republican Senator Rand Paul, who had questioned the Justice Department on Tuesday if it believed that President Barack Obama had the legal authority to order an assassination drone strike on an American while present on US soil.
Paul said the administration’s “refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening — it is an affront the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans.”
At least three Americans have been reportedly killed by US drone strikes in Yemen, including Anwar al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son Abdul-Rahman and Samir Khan.
Washington uses assassination drones in several countries, claiming that they target “terrorists.” According to witnesses, however, the attacks have mostly led to massive civilian casualties.
In September 2012, a report by the Stanford Law School and the New York University School of Law gave an alarming account of the effect that assassination drone strikes have on ordinary people in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
The report noted, “The number of ‘high-level’ targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low – estimated at just two percent.”
March 6, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Anwar al-Awlaki, Eric Holder, Obama, United States |
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Today the Washington Post (2/6/13) reported some news that it’s known for years, but had decided not tell us until now: The CIA has a drone base in Saudi Arabia.
Their rationale for withholding this information was simple: The government didn’t want them to. And from what the Post is telling us today, they weren’t the only ones.
After explaining that Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by an attack “carried out in part by CIA drones flown from a secret base in Saudi Arabia,” the paper explains:
The Washington Post had refrained from disclosing the location at the request of the administration, which cited concern that exposing the facility would undermine operations against an Al-Qaeda affiliate regarded as the network’s most potent threat to the United States, as well as potentially damage counterterrorism collaboration with Saudi Arabia.
So why did the Post finally report this news today?
The Post learned Tuesday night that another news organization was planning to reveal the location of the base, effectively ending an informal arrangement among several news organizations that had been aware of the location for more than a year.
So there was an “informal arrangement among several news organizations” not to report important news because the government felt that it could make things difficult for them.
It would appear that “another news organization” is the New York Times, which reported today:
The first strike in Yemen ordered by the Obama administration, in December 2009, was by all accounts a disaster. American cruise missiles carrying cluster munitions killed dozens of civilians, including many women and children. Another strike, six months later, killed a popular deputy governor, inciting angry demonstrations and an attack that shut down a critical oil pipeline.
Not long afterward, the CIA began quietly building a drone base in Saudi Arabia to carry out strikes in Yemen. American officials said that the first time the CIA used the Saudi base was to kill Mr. Awlaki in September 2011.
The fact that the Post was keeping something secret was known in 2011, as FAIR noted (FAIR Blog, 7/27/11), quoting the paper:
The agency is building a desert airstrip so that it can begin flying armed drones over Yemen. The facility, which is scheduled to be completed in September, is designed to shield the CIA’s aircraft, and their sophisticated surveillance equipment, from observers at busier regional military hubs such as Djibouti, where the JSOC drones are based.
The Washington Post is withholding the specific location of the CIA facility at the administration’s request.
As FAIR also pointed out then, this was reminiscent of another decision by the Post to withhold news. In 2005, the paper delivered an explosive story about “black sites” where CIA was interrogating suspects–places where, in many cases, the agency could reasonably expect the prisoners to be tortured. The Post’s valuable expose was undercut by its decision not to name the countries involved. As the paper explained:
The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.
This week, a new report from the Open Society Institute documented that more than 50 countries were involved in the CIA “extraordinary rendition” program. It’s certainly possible that some countries might have stopped helping the U.S. government torture people if it had been made known that they were doing so.
Likewise, it’s possible that Saudi Arabia will stop allowing the CIA to use its territory to conduct a secret drone war against a third country now that the secret is out. But the possibility that news might affect the world is not a reason to stop doing journalism. Indeed, it’s the best reason to do journalism.
UPDATE: The Times’ public editor Margaret Sullivan has weighed in on her blog (2/6/13), and what’s most notable is the opinion of the paper’s managing editor Dean Baquet, since it basically confirms the point we were making above:
The government’s rationale for asking that the location be withheld was this: Revealing it might jeopardize the existence of the base and harm counterterrorism efforts. “The Saudis might shut it down because the citizenry would be very upset,” he said.
Mr. Baquet added, “We have to balance that concern with reporting the news.”
So the Times believes that it should refrain from reporting news that people in Saudi Arabia might object to–especially if it wound up complicating our government’s plans to launch military attacks from their country.
February 7, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Anwar al-Awlaki, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, New York Times, Saudi Arabia, United States, Washington Post, Yemen |
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Unlike the bombast that characterized the Bush administration’s assaults on U.S. and international law, the Obama regime tends to dribble out its rationales for gutting the Bill of Rights and every notion of global legality. This president prefers to create a fog – let’s call it the fog of his war against human rights – as he arrogates to himself the power to perpetually imprison or to summarily execute anyone, at any time, anywhere in the world. Obama assures us such authority is constitutionally rooted – it’s in there, believe me, he tells us – but he never produces legal chapter and verse to prove that presidential dictatorship is lawful. Instead, we get dribs and drabs of the administration’s position from lawyers defending Obama’s preventive detention law in the courts, or from informal statements by the attorney general, or even little tidbits gleaned from an Obama conversation with comedian Jon Stewart.
The latest hors d’oeuvre to be dished out comes in the form of a leak. I say “dished out” because leaked documents are commonly placed in public view by the administration in power, to test the political waters. This leaked Justice Department “white paper” appears to have been drawn up after the execution-by-drone of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki, in Yemen. It justifies the killing of anyone occupying a position of status in al-Qaida, or with the ever-changing universe of groups said to be “associated” with al-Qaida. The document stretches the definition of “imminent threat” to cover anyone engaged in activities directed against the U.S., whether or not an actual operation is planned or in progress. Most interestingly, the white paper empowers Obama to delegate the kill-at-will authority to “an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government.” Which has a certain logic, since dictators certainly have the power to delegate the carrying out of their unjust acts to whomever they choose.
Eleven U.S. senators are asking for further clarification of the administration’s legal position. But that is just more fog, since the Congress overwhelmingly passed Obama’s preventive detention law – twice!! – a law based on the same assumption that due process of law does not apply when the president says it’s wartime. Therefore, the commander-in-chief can lock up any American, without charge or trial, forever, or until he declares peace. The U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder, has made the administration’s position clear enough. Due process, he says, does not necessarily mean access to the judicial process – meaning, a trial. The process is whatever the president or the nearest “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government” says it is. Obama had redefined war, itself. The president told the Congress, after bombing Libya for eight months, that by his definition – which is the only one that counts – no state of war exists unless Americans become casualties, even if the U.S. kills tens of thousands, or millions. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was fond of saying that the arc of history bends towards justice. In the long term, that may be true. But Martin’s arc is not bending towards justice under this administration. It bends towards fascism, with a Black presidential face.
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
February 6, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | al-Qaeda, Anwar al-Awlaki, Eric Holder, Obama, United States, United States Department of Justice |
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Document Outlines Government’s Claimed Authority to Kill American Citizens Outside Combat Zones
NEW YORK – A Justice Department white paper argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of American citizens that the government believes are affiliated with a terrorist organization, according to the document posted tonight on NBCNews.com. The white paper summarizes a memo prepared in 2010 by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to justify the targeting of U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki.
“This is a profoundly disturbing document, and it’s hard to believe that it was produced in a democracy built on a system of checks and balances. It summarizes in cold legal terms a stunning overreach of executive authority – the claimed power to declare Americans a threat and kill them far from a recognized battlefield and without any judicial involvement before or after the fact,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project.
“But this briefing paper is not a substitute for the 50-page legal memo on which it’s based. When the executive branch seeks to give itself the unilateral authority to kill its own citizens, a summary of its argument is no substitute for the argument itself. Among other things, we need to know if the limits the executive purports to impose on its killing authority are as loosely defined as in this summary, because if they are, they ultimately mean little. President Obama rightly released the Bush-era OLC torture memos and he should now hold his own administration to the same standard by releasing its killing memo.”
Tomorrow, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights will file a court brief arguing against the government’s attempt to dismiss their lawsuit challenging the targeted killing of Al-Awlaki and two other Americans in Yemen in 2011, Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman and Samir Khan.
The OLC memo summarized by the white paper is one of the documents sought by the ACLU’s pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. That case was dismissed last month by a federal judge in New York, and last Friday the ACLU filed a notice of appeal. The government argued that the requested documents cannot be released, despite the fact that government officials have talked publicly on numerous occasions about Al-Awlaki’s killing and the targeted killing program in general.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is currently considering another FOIA lawsuit filed by the ACLU seeking other information on the U.S. targeted killing program, including its legal basis, scope, and number of civilian casualties caused by drone strikes. The court heard oral argument in September.
An in-depth analysis of the DOJ white paper in a blog post written by ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer is at:
www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/justice-department-white-paper-details-rationale-targeted-killing-americans
Information on the ACLU’s targeted killing lawsuits is at:
www.aclu.org/national-security/targeted-killings
February 5, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, Anwar al-Awlaki, Obama, Samir Khan, United States, United States Department of Justice |
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In his essay “A Hanging,” George Orwell recounts, in great detail, the events he witnessed leading up to the execution of a man. It is important to note that before becoming an outspoken critic of the hypocrisy of Governments, George Orwell worked for one. He was a member of the Indian Imperial Police, having served in Burma, a British colony at the time.
The condemned was a small Hindu man who, while apparently resigned to his fate, none the less had irritated the jail superintendent by the fact that he was still alive at 8:00 o’clock in the morning. “The man ought to have been dead by this time” the superintendent said irritably. The slow pace of the execution was disrupting the smooth functioning of the prison, since the other prisoners couldn’t be fed their breakfast until the sentence had been carried out.
We are given a vivid description of how the man walked awkwardly, encumbered by the chains that restrained him, but steadily, to his fate. When the execution party was about forty yards from the hangman’s gallows, Orwell tells us that a most curious thing occurred. The prisoner, in the last few remaining minutes of his life, made the slight effort to step aside as he was walking so as to avoid a puddle that was in his path.
This event shocked Orwell, who candidly reveals to us that until that moment, he had never truly realized what it meant to kill another human being. It took the insignificant act of a man not wanting to get his feet wet on the way to his own execution to make Orwell understand, for the first time in his life, “what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man” and of the “unspeakable wrongness” involved in executing someone.
The US, as part of its “War on Terror,” a war which, conveniently enough, was undeclared and has no expiration date, has been using drones for at least a decade now. And 2013 appears to have gotten off to a spectacular start, with 7 attacks in the first 10 days of January in Pakistan alone. This compares to an average of less than one a week in 2012. One report has as many as 11 civilians being killed so far this year. This figure is, of course, being disputed by U.S. officials. Unfortunately, they declined to provide a figure of their own.
And while their use has grown, President Obama assures us that, “Drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties” and that missile launches have been “very precise precision strikes against al Qaeda and their affiliates, and we have been very careful about how it’s been applied.”
In a direct rebuke to his critics, the President argues, “There’s this perception that we’re just sending a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly. This is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists who are trying to go in and harm Americans.”
One would be forgiven for disagreeing.
On October 14, 2011, a 16-year-old boy, and American citizen, named Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was killed in a deliberate drone strike in Yemen (8 other people were also killed). He shared the same fate as his father, Anwar al-Awlaki, also an American citizen, who was killed in a targeted drone strike 2 weeks prior.
And the boy’s crime? According to Obama senior campaign adviser, and former White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, it was to have the unfortunate luck of being born to a “radical” Muslim cleric.
In an interview with We Are Change, a self proclaimed non-partisan media organization, Mr. Gibbs tells us that the boy “should have [had] a far more responsible father.” It is not clear if by “responsible father” Mr. Gibbs meant someone with a Nobel Peace Prize, a “kill list” and a fleet of armed attack drones at his disposal.
In defense of the dead boy, it should be noted that his father, an accused member of al-Qaeda who was allegedly plotting to blow up US airliners and poison US citizens, had an honor not given to many radical Muslim clerics.
He had the distinct pleasure of being an invited guest at the Pentagon, dining there in the days following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. This is a privilege that not even your faithful correspondent’s father has enjoyed.
But surely the killing of children (even children with horrible fathers or children who were not fortunate enough to have been born American citizens) through drone strikes is something that we can all agree is reprehensible and indefensible, isn’t it?
Not according to Mr. Joe Klein, political columnist for Time Magazine. In comments made on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” on October 23, 2012, Mr. Klein presents us with the thought provoking question of, “Whose four year old gets killed?” He then goes on to advocate the indiscriminate killing of innocent people in the Middle East and Africa with drone attacks (Mr. Klein’s original question implies that he prefers the people killed be four year children), defending his point by stating, “What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.”
To find a similar argument, logic or thought process, I believe, you would have to go back to one of the most morally bankrupt and reprehensible regimes in all of history.
(Author’s Note: while your faithful correspondent is neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist, if your thoughts should ever take you to a place where you find yourself justifying the murder of innocent 4 year old children, I suggest you seek the care of a mental health professional immediately)
But all this talk of killed children is surely a moot point, isn’t it? The US government, once more, assures us that drones are used in a responsible manner, and therefore, rarely kill civilians, let alone children. Unfortunately, a study by the Brookings Institute leads us to believe the contrary. It argues that for every “insurgent” killed, there are, on average, 10 civilians killed as well. And the New American Foundation has found that the US government has the habit of repeatedly under-reporting the number of civilians killed and wounded in drone attacks. More troubling still, a study done jointly by Stanford Law School and the NYU School of Law claims that the US government, as a matter of policy, habitually under-reports the number of civilians killed and wounded in drone attacks.
The US is entering its 12th year of war in Afghanistan (longer than the Soviet Union’s campaign). A key component of US strategy in the region is targeted drone strikes. America’s drone policy has reportedly killed between 474 and 881 civilians in the region, including 176 children.
Further compounding all of this is the controversial US policy called the “double tap.” This involves striking an initial target and then, as people arrive to give aid to the original victims, following up with repeated attacks on the same site. It has been reported that, as a result of this policy, innocent bystanders and non-combatants have been intentionally killed. There are also disturbing reports that funerals have been deliberately hit by targeted drone strikes as well. In almost any other case these events would be labelled as war crimes or terrorism. But somehow, in the US, they only raise “contentious legal questions” according to the New York Times.
If we consider ourselves as being part of a just and correct society, Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter should give us reason to pause. It expressly prohibits the threat or use of force by one state against another.
Some proponents of drone attacks have argued that Article 2(4) doesn’t apply, since these attacks are mostly being carried out on militants and insurgents in regions where the rule of law has broken down. Therefore, the phrase “state” doesn’t apply, nullifying that section of the Charter.
This argument is dubious at best. If it were China, Russia, or Iran engaging in this type of behavior closer to US shores, say in the remote regions of Central or South America, there is no doubt that the US government would be in an uproar over the legality, and the morality, of attack drones.
There is also no doubt that we would finally be able to recognize what the killing of innocent men, women and children with drones really is.
Murder.
Tom McNamara is an Assistant Professor at the ESC Rennes School of Business, France, and a Visiting Lecturer at the French National Military Academy at Saint-Cyr, Coëtquidan, France.
Sources
“A Hanging” by George Orwell, 1931
“Abdulrahman al-Awlaki’s birth certificate” The Washington Post. Accessed at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/documents/abdulrahman-al-awlaki-birth-certificate.html
“Anwar al-Awlaki” October 19, 2012, The New York Times. Accessed at:
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/a/anwar_al_awlaki/index.html
“Anwar al-Awlaki killing sparks US travel alert” October 1, 2011, BBC. Accessed at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15140198
“CIA ‘revives attacks on rescuers’ in Pakistan” by Chris Woods, June 4th, 2012, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Accessed at:
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/06/04/cia-revives-attacks-on-rescuers-in-pakistan/
“Critics of US drone programme angered by John Brennan’s nomination to CIA” by Paul Harris, January 10, 2013, The Guardian. Accessed at:
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/10/critics-us-drone-brennan-cia-nomination
“Do Targeted Killings Work?” by Daniel L. Byman, Senior Fellow Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, July 14, 2009, The Brookings Institute. Accessed at:
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2009/07/14-targeted-killings-byman
“Everything We Know So Far About Drone Strikes” by Cora Currier, January 11, 2013, ProPublica. Accessed at:
http://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-so-far-about-drone-strikes#correx
“George Orwell” BBC History. Accessed at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/orwell_george.shtml
“Get the Data: Obama’s terror drones” by Chris Woods, February 4, 2012, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Accessed at:
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/get-the-data-obamas-terror-drones/
“Joe Klein’s sociopathic defense of drone killings of children” by Glenn Greenwald, October 23, 2012, The Guardian. Accessed at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/klein-drones-morning-joe
“Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan” the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic (Stanford Law School) and the Global Justice Clinic (NYU School of Law), September 2012. Accessed at:
http://livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Stanford_NYU_LIVING_UNDER_DRONES.pdf
“Morning Joe: Scarborough: Drone program is going to cause US problems in future” MSNBC, Accessed at:
http://video.ca.msn.com/watch/video/scarborough-drone-program-is-going-to-cause-us-problems-in-future/17yak5xn9?cpkey=2a4bc99a-0f01-4da8-8cdf-8fe4b888a3b4%257c%257c%257c%257c
“Obama Defends Drone Use” by Carol E. Lee and Adam Entous, with a contribution from Jared Favole, January 31, 2012, The Wall Street Journal. Accessed at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204652904577193673318589462.html
“Obama Top Adviser Robert Gibbs Justifies Murder of 16 Year Old American Citizen” WeAreChange.org, video published October 23, 2012. Accessed at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7MwB2znBZ1g
“Qaeda-Linked Imam Dined at Pentagon after 9/11” By Bob Orr, October 21, 2010, CBSNews /
CBS. Accessed at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-6978200.html
“Robert Gibbs Says Anwar al-Awlaki’s Son, Killed By Drone Strike, Needs ‘Far More Responsible Father’” by ryan Grim, October 24, 2012, The Huffington Post. Accessed at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/robert-gibbs-anwar-al-awlaki_n_2012438.html
“The Charter of the United Nations” June 26, 1945. Accessed at:
http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/intro.shtml
“The Moral Case for Drones” by Scott Shane, July 14, 2012, The New York Times. Accessed at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/the-moral-case-for-drones.html?ref=opinion
‘The Year of the Drone: An Analysis of U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004-2012’ The New American Foundation. Accessed at:
http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones
“U.S. airstrike that killed American teen in Yemen raises legal, ethical questions” by Craig Whitlock, October 22, 2011, The Washington Post, Accessed at:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-10-22/world/35277515_1_awlaki-military-airstrike-al-qaeda-affiliate
“U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan on rise for 2013” by Greg Miller, January 11, 2013, The Washington Post. Accessed at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-drone-strikes-in-pakistan-on-rise-for-2013/2013/01/10/d0a204a0-5b58-11e2-9fa9-5fbdc9530eb9_story.html
January 31, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Anwar al-Awlaki, George Orwell, Human rights, Nobel Peace Prize, Obama, Pakistan, United States, Yemen |
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How was Abdulrahman’s targeted assassination initially reported in the media? Some quotes that sound very familiar with the usual semantics of all media coverage on drones and suspects:
“Yemeni officials told reporters that nine members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were killed in the strike near the town of Azzan in southeastern Yemen, including Awlaki’s 21-year-old son…” – LA Times, October 15, 2011
“Report: Al-Awlaki’s son among dead in U.S. airstrike on Yemen al-Qaida militants” – headline from Haaretz, October 15, 2011
“Official: Drone attack kills Al-Awlaki’s son in Yemen… The attacks, carried out in the Shabwa district, killed seven suspected militants, the defense ministry said.” – CNN, October 15, 2011
“Awlaki’s son is also among the 24 militants killed in air strikes targeting al-Qaeda in Yemen, local officials said.” – Al Arabiya News, October 15, 2011
“Three drone attacks in Yemen Friday night killed seven suspected militants including Anwar Al-Awlaki’s son, a security official said. Carried out in the Shabwa district, where the younger Awlaki had been holed up for more than eight months” – Business Insider, October 15, 2011
“U.S. drone strike in Yemen kills nine jihadis, including Awlaki’s son” – Hot Air, October 15, 2011
Lie #1: Abdulrahman is a 16 year old American teenager, not a 21 year old militant.
Lie #2: U.S. claimed al-Banna was the actual target. The problem with that excuse is that al-Banna is alive and well, and was never at that site. Since that revelation, the Obama Admin. simply states there is no official record of the death of Abdulrahman, and sweeps the story under the carpet so it doesn’t even have to take accountability that the crime even happened.
Lie #3: The media says Abdulrahman was hiding in the mountains for months. Actually, he left his home a couple weeks before to find out about his father, and even during that time he was living and moving around in the open, far from hiding.
It seems that being a suspected militant is enough to make you a viable target. And the criteria for determining what makes you a suspect is easily adjustable to their convenience it seems.
Barack Obama: the first U.S. president to use targeted assassination against a child.
Taken from: Abdulrahman Anwar Alawlaki – A crime we’ll never forget
January 19, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | al-Qaeda, Anwar al-Awlaki, Human rights, Obama, United States, Yemen |
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A federal judge issued a 75-page ruling on Wednesday that declares that the US Justice Department does not have a legal obligation to explain the rationale behind killing Americans with targeted drone strikes.
United States District Court Judge Colleen McMahon wrote in her finding this week that the Obama administration was largely in the right by rejecting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times for materials pertaining to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to execute three US citizens abroad in late 2011 [pdf].
Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both US nationals with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, were killed on September 30th of that year using drone aircraft; days later, al-Awlaki’s teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was executed in the same manner. Although the Obama administration has remained largely quiet about the killings in the year since, a handful of statements made from senior White House officials, including President Barack Obama himself, have provided some but little insight into the Executive Branch’s insistence that the killings were all justified and constitutionally-sound. Attempts from the ACLU and the Times via FOIA requests to find out more have been unfruitful, though, which spawned a federal lawsuit that has only now been decided in court.
Siding with the defendants in what can easily be considered as cloaked in skepticism, Judge McMahon writes that the Obama White House has been correct in refusing the FOIA requests filed by the plaintiffs.
“There are indeed legitimate reasons, historical and legal, to question the legality of killings unilaterally authorized by the Executive that take place otherwise than on a ‘hot’ field of battle,” McMahon writes in her ruling. Because her decision must only weigh whether or not the Obama administration has been right in rejecting the FOIA requests, though, her ruling cannot take into consideration what sort of questions — be it historical, legal, ethical or moral — are raised by the ongoing practice of using remote-controlled drones to kill insurgents and, in these instances, US citizens.
“The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me; but after careful consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules — a veritable Catch-22,” she writes. “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reason for their conclusion a secret.”
Throughout her ruling, Judge McMahon cites speeches from both President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder in which the al-Awlaki killings are vaguely discussed, but appear to do little more than excuse the administration’s behavior with their own secretive explanations.
“The Constitution’s guarantee of due process is ironclad, and it is essential — but, as a recent court decision makes clear, it does not require judicial approval before the President may use force abroad against a senior operational leader of a foreign terrorist organization with which the United States is at war — even if that individual happens to be a US citizen,” McMahon quotes Mr. Holder as saying during a March 2012 address at Chicago’s Northwestern University. “Holder did not identify which recent court decisions so held,” the judge replies, “Nor did he explain exactly what process was given to the victims of targeted killings at locations far from ‘hot’ battlefields… ”
And while both Mr. Holder and President Obama have discussed the killings in public, including one appearance by the president on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the Justice Department insists that going further by releasing any legal evidence that supports the executions would be detrimental to national security.
While Judge McMahon ends up agreeing with the White House, she does so by making known her own weariness over how the Obama administration has forced the court to rely on their own insistence that information about the attacks simply cannot be discussed.
“As they gathered to draft a Constitution for their newly liberated country, the Founders — fresh from a war of independence from the rule of a King they styled a tyrant — were fearful of concentrating power in the hands of any single person or institution, and most particular in the executive,” McMahon writes.
Responding to the decision on Wednesday, ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer issued a statement condemning the White House’s just-won ability to relieve itself from any fair and honest explanation as to the justification of Americans.
“This ruling denies the public access to crucial information about the government’s extrajudicial killing of US citizens and also effectively green-lights its practice of making selective and self-serving disclosures,” Jameel writes. “As the judge acknowledges, the targeted killing program raises profound questions about the appropriate limits on government power in our constitutional democracy. The public has a right to know more about the circumstances in which the government believes it can lawfully kill people, including US citizens, who are far from any battlefield and have never been charged with a crime.”
The ACLU says they plan to appeal Judge McMahon’s decision and are currently awaiting news regarding a separate lawsuit filed alongside the Center for Constitutional Rights that directly challenges the constitutionality of the targeted kills.
“The government has argued that case should also be dismissed,” the ACLU notes.
In a Wednesday afternoon statement from the Times, assistant general counsel David McCraw says the paper will appeal the ruling as well.
“We began this litigation because we believed our readers deserved to know more about the US government’s legal position on the use of targeted killings against persons having ties to terrorism, including US citizens,” McCraw says.
Although she ruled against the plaintiffs, Judge McMahon, says McCraw, explained “eloquently … why in a democracy the government should be addressing those questions openly and fully.”
January 2, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | Anwar al-Awlaki, Colleen McMahon, Freedom of Information Act, Human rights, Obama, United States, United States District Court |
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Will Americans Speak Out?
On May 29, The New York Times published an extraordinarily in-depth look at the intimate role President Obama has played in authorizing US drone attacks overseas, particularly in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It is chilling to read the cold, macabre ease with which the President and his staff decide who will live or die. The fate of people living thousands of miles away is decided by a group of Americans, elected and unelected, who don’t speak their language, don’t know their culture, don’t understand their motives or values. While purporting to represent the world’s greatest democracy, US leaders are putting people on a hit list who are as young as 17, people who are given no chance to surrender, and certainly no chance to be tried in a court of law.
Who is furnishing the President and his aides with this list of terrorist suspects to choose from, like baseball cards? The kind of intelligence used to put people on drone hit lists is the same kind of intelligence that put people in Guantanamo. Remember how the American public was assured that the prisoners locked up in Guantanamo were the “worst of the worst,” only to find out that hundreds were innocent people who had been sold to the US military by bounty hunters?
Why should the public believe what the Obama administration says about the people being assassinated by drones? Especially since, as we learn in the New York Times, the administration came up with a semantic solution to keep the civilian death toll to a minimum: simply count all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants. The rationale, reminiscent of George Zimmerman’s justification for shooting Trayvon Martin, is that “people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.” Talk about profiling! At least when George Bush threw suspected militants into Guantanamo their lives were spared.
Referring to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the article reveals that for Obama, even ordering an American citizen to be assassinated by drone was “easy.” Not so easy was twisting the Constitution to assert that while the Fifth Amendment’s guarantees American citizens due process, this can simply consist of “internal deliberations in the executive branch.” No need for the irksome interference of checks and balances.
Al-Awlaki might have been guilty of defecting to the enemy, but the Constitution requires that even traitors be convicted on the “testimony of two witnesses” or a “confession in open court,” not the say-so of the executive branch.
In addition to hit lists, Obama has granted the CIA the authority to kill with even greater ease using “signature strikes,” i.e. strikes based solely on suspicious behavior. The article reports State Department officials complained that the CIA’s criteria for identifying a terrorist “signature” were too lax. “The joke was that when the C.I.A. sees ‘three guys doing jumping jacks,’ the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp, said one senior official. Men loading a truck with fertilizer could be bombmakers — but they might also be farmers, skeptics argued.”
Obama’s top legal adviser Harold Koh insists that this killing spree is legal under international law because the US has the inherent right to self-defense. It’s true that all nations possess the right to defend themselves, but the defense must be against an imminent attack that is overwhelming and leaves no moment of deliberation. When a nation is not in an armed conflict, the rules are even stricter. The killing must be necessary to protect life and there must be no other means, such as capture or nonlethal incapacitation, to prevent that threat to life. Outside of an active war zone, then, it is illegal to use weaponized drones, which are weapons of war incapable of taking a suspect alive.
Just think of the precedent the US is setting with its kill-don’t-capture doctrine. Were the US rationale to be applied by other countries, China might declare an ethnic Uighur activist living in New York City as an “enemy combatant” and send a missile into Manhattan; Russia could assert that it was legal to launch a drone attack against someone living in London whom they claim is linked to Chechen militants. Or consider the case of Luis Posada Carrilles, a Cuban-American living in Miami who is a known terrorist convicted of masterminding a 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. Given the failure of the US legal system to bring Posada to justice, the Cuban government could claim that it has the right to send a drone into downtown Miami to kill an admitted terrorist and sworn enemy.
Dennis Blair, former director of national intelligence, called the drone strike campaign “dangerously seductive” because it was low cost, entailed no casualties and gives the appearance of toughness. “It plays well domestically,” he said, “and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.”
But an article in the Washington Post the following day, May 30, entitled “Drone strikes spur backlash in Yemen”, shows that the damage is not just long term but immediate. After interviewing more than 20 tribal leaders, victims’ relatives, human rights activists and officials from southern Yemen, journalist Sudarsan Raghavan concluded that the escalating U.S. strikes are radicalizing the local population and stirring increasing sympathy for al-Qaeda-linked militants. “The drones are killing al-Qaeda leaders,” said legal coordinator of a local human rights group Mohammed al-Ahmadi, “but they are also turning them into heroes.”
Even the New York Times article acknowledges that Pakistan and Yemen are less stable and more hostile to the United States since Mr. Obama became president, that drones have become a provocative symbol of American power running roughshod over national sovereignty and killing innocents.
One frightening aspect of the Times piece is what it says about the American public. After all, this is an election-time piece about Obama’s leadership style, told from the point of view of mostly Obama insiders bragging about how the president is no shrinking violent when it comes to killing. Implicit is the notion that Americans like tough leaders who don’t agonize over civilian deaths—over there, of course.
Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer suing the CIA on behalf of drone victims, thinks its time for the American people to speak out. “Can you trust a program that has existed for eight years, picks its targets in secret, faces zero accountability and has killed almost 3,000 people in Pakistan alone whose identities are not known to their killers?,” he asks. “When women and children in Waziristan are killed with Hellfire missiles, Pakistanis believe this is what the American people want. I would like to ask Americans, ‘Do you?’”
May 31, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Anwar al-Awlaki, Obama, Pakistan, United States, Yemen |
1 Comment
Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have become the centrepiece of the allied military strategy in the “war on terror.”
In 2011 they were deployed in Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine and Turkey.
According to the Economist, drone strikes have increased by 1,200 per cent since 2005. This is equivalent to one strike every four days.
Modern warfare is transforming and could lead to the deployment of military robots that make attack decisions independently.
Termed as “automatic deletion,” human operators would be taken out of the loop and preprogrammed robots would carry out missions guided by artificial intelligence.
According to Teal Group, a US aerospace and defence analysis firm, investment in the industry is projected to rise to $89 billion over the next 10 years.
Author of the study and director of Teal’s corporate analysis Philip Finnegan predicted that “the UAV market will continue to be strong despite cuts in defence spending.
“UAVs have proved their value in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and will continue to be a high priority for militaries in the US and worldwide.”
Israel is the leading global exporter of UAVs, while other key players in the industry include Canada, France, Italy and South Africa. There are currently 40 companies selling and manufacturing drones, and 50 countries have acquired the technology.
In recent years Britain has been using Israeli drones in Afghanistan which it has rented on a pay by the hour basis from the company Elbit Systems.
British soldiers have also received training in Israel on how to operate the weapons.
Proponents of drone warfare claim that UAVs bring down the costs of war. They argue that civilian casualties are reduced due to higher-precision strikes.
Furthermore, they highlight that robots could make war more ethical, as they cannot act out of malice or hatred which can lead to war crimes or other abuses of human rights.
While the Economist asserts that “claims that drones are constantly blowing up Afghan weddings is wrong,” the fact remains that civilian casualties are rising and protests against their use are intensifying worldwide. In response, savvy industry leaders have mobilised to discuss “how to stop the public hysteria surrounding UAV operations in the 21st century?” and the MoD has committed to implementing a communications strategy to counter negative publicity.
The Bureau for Investigative Journalism has reported that between 2004 and August 2011, 2,347 people were killed by US drones. Between 392 and 781 were civilians, and of these 175 were children.
Other sources state that at least one of these victims was disabled and confined to a wheelchair.
Additionally, six of these victims were British nationals, but the British government has not investigated their deaths.
Meanwhile, of the two US citizens killed in strikes, one was alleged by the CIA to have been al-Qaida’s leader in the Arabian Peninsula.
In September 2011 Anwar al-Awlaki was assassinated in Yemen by a US drone. Two weeks later, in a separate attack, his 16-year-old son was one of nine people killed.
Concerns have been raised by lawyers about the legality of Awlaki’s assassination as a US citizen with no criminal charge.
Against this background the American Civil Liberties Union said: “If the constitution means anything, it surely means that the president does not have the unreviewable authority to summarily execute any citizen who it concludes is an enemy of the state.”
In November 2011, 16-year-old Tariq Aziz and his 12-year-old cousin Waheed Khan were both killed by US drone strikes in Northern Waziristan. Just days before his death, Tariq had attended a meeting organised by the British charity Reprieve.
Tariq had agreed to assist the organisation by taking pictures of the aftermath of Allied strikes.
Mounting civilian casualties and the lack of accountability for these deaths is fuelling anger globally. In November 2011, 2,000 people staged an anti-drone demonstration outside the parliament building in Islamabad, and for the first time Yemeni citizens came together to voice their outrage in Sana’a.
Human rights lawyer Shazad Akbar is suing the CIA for the killing of Pakistani civilians.
Furthermore, legal action taken by human rights groups against Foreign Secretary William Hague could lead to his prosecution for war crimes. He is accused of providing intelligence that assisted CIA-targeted killings in Pakistan.
In April last year a civil disobedience action was staged at Hancock Air National Guard Base in the US. Thirty-eight anti-drone protesters were arrested and some have been put on trial.
Meanwhile at RMT University in Melbourne, protesters disrupted a meeting organised by UAV manufacturers. They urged attendees to reject technological innovations which enable killing from great distance and condemned the use of the weapons as immoral.
Drone Wars UK has demanded the classification of drones as “too cruel to use, like cluster munitions and landmines.” This has been backed by critics who warn that the use of robots to achieve military objectives could amount to a disproportionate use of force.
In future, drones could be developed that achieve superhuman levels of accuracy, reaching a 100 per cent rate of effectiveness. However such capability would break rules of proportionality under international humanitarian law (IHL).
Overseen by the International Red Cross, IHL bans weapons that cause more than 25 per cent mortality on the battlefield and 5 per cent mortality in hospitals.
The question of the legality of targeted killing remains unanswered. The US and British governments either refuse to disclose information about when this policy is applied or deny outright that it is happening. Lawyers state that targeted killings contravene the rule of law and argue that this amounts to state-sanctioned assassination.
Criticising the EU’s silence on targeted killing in Pakistan, analyst Nathalie Van Raemdonck contends that drone warfare could be illegal, and that the EU’s failure to put pressure on the US to explain the legal basis of its policy is due to a lack of consensus caused by vested interests among member states.
She warns: “Even though the analysis of the US’s targeted killing makes it clear that it is a legally and morally controversial practice, it is possible that the EU finds advantages of avoiding the subject to be greater than those of living up to its moral obligation of urging the US to comply with international law.”
Agreeing with Van Raemdonk’s warnings against a backlash, critics argue that robotic warfare could destabilise global security and deepen hostility towards British and US peacekeeping or military interventions overseas.
Robots, they say, would make war easier to wage, as the safety of remote operators thousands of miles away from their targets would make them less concerned about killing.
An adviser to the CIA and expert on robots has emphasised the need for continued human diplomacy to avoid fuelling resentment.
Highlighting Iraq, he said: “Sending in robot patrols into Baghdad to keep the peace would send the wrong message about our willingness to connect with residents. We still need human diplomacy for that. In war this could backfire against us, as our enemies mark us as dishonourable and cowardly for not willing to engage them man to man. This serves to make them more resolute in fighting us and leads to a new crop of determined terrorists.”
As has occurred with all war technologies in the past, the risk of UAV proliferation is high.
Noting this danger, UN Special Rapporteur on Extra Judicial Killing Christof Heyns warned: “The use of such methods by some states to eliminate opponents around the world raises the question why other states should not engage in the same practices.
“The danger is one of global war without borders, in which no one is safe.”
May 21, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | American Civil Liberties Union, Anwar al-Awlaki, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Pakistan, UAV, United States, Unmanned aerial vehicle |
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