Tag Archives: drones

To kill Americans

Let’s make this short and sweet.

senator rand paul

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul [Image credit]

For around 13 hours yesterday and into this morning, Kentucky senator Rand Paul (R) conducted a filibuster in the United States senate chamber. Ostensibly a delay to the probable confirmation of John Brennan as CIA chief, Paul allowed numerous times his main purpose was to draw attention to the targeted killing program operated by the Obama administration. Said program is primarily carried out by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, commonly known as “drones.”

While some may argue the necessity of drones in wartime, even considering the differences of the “War on Terror” (I do not), Paul’s argument with the administration was different. Currently, the Obama administration, via Attorney General Eric Holder, holds to the position of possible killing of American citizens on American soil without due process, without charge, without trial.

The 5th Amendment to the U.S. constitution reads:

In ALL criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to BE INFORMED OF THE NATURE AND CAUSE OF THE ACCUSATION; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. [EMPHASIS ADDED.]

All of these rights are set aside in each and every case of targeted killing. The nature of targeted killing is secrecy, not openness. It’s a secret list, a secret process, secret decision making, secret rules, secret records, and secret secrecy.

To put it another way: There is no due process when the charge is on the business end of a missile in your morning latte.

The Constitution must protect the worst of us if it is to protect the rest of us. No matter how strong the evidence against a person, a “day in court” is a constitutional guarantee. It is this guarantee that has historically separated the Republic from banana republics. Violation of this right by any president or administration is not only unconstitutional, it is uncivilized.

I take issue with Bush, Rice, Obama and Brennan that drone warfare is legitimate or the “collateral damage” acceptable. I also take issue with Holder that Americans may be killed by the government based on little more than circumstantial evidence. Murder by suspicion is not a comforting thought.

The years since 9/11 bear witness to the hurricane force erosion of the 4th Amendment. It appears the shores of the 5th will be the next to wash away.

Newsnippets, February 9, 2013: Drone edition

newspaper newsnippets articles
From The Atlantic: Obama unaccountable when drones kill innocents

Set aside the question of whether President Obama should be empowered to order the killing of Americans. Instead, let’s ask, “What happens after he orders an extrajudicial assassination?” So long as drone strikes happen in secret, nothing happens. A kill order is given, a Hellfire missile fired, and it doesn’t matter if the human blown limb-from-limb is an Al Qaeda terrorist, an innocent Muslim man, or a five-year-old girl. Even if the target is killed far from any battlefield, in a place where he might easily have been be captured, and the kill order could’ve been postponed without putting national security at risk, the president won’t be investigated or arrested or tried in court or punished.

There is no mechanism for it to happen.

From John W. Whitehead: How a Nobel Peace Prize Winner Became the Head of a Worldwide Assassination Program

The President of the United States of America believes he has the absolute right to kill you based upon secret “evidence” that you might be a terrorist. Not only does he think he can kill you, but he believes he has the right to do so in secret, without formally charging you of any crime and providing you with an opportunity to defend yourself in a court of law. To top it all off, the memo asserts that these decisions about whom to kill are not subject to any judicial review whatsoever.

From Salon: Fact checking Brennan and Feinstein on civilian drone deaths

[A]s WaPo [Washington Post] points out, with U.S. drone bases maintained in West And East Africa (not to mention the recently revealed base in Saudi) as well as strikes in Afghanistan and Somalia, “it’s plausible that the civilian casualties would be even higher than the Long War Journal and New America Foundation stats reflect.” The BIJ’s most up to date statistics, looking at strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, suggest that up to 1,128 civilians have been killed in drone strikes. But as Brennan’s hearing made clear yesterday, evidence of trauma and civilian casualties caused by U.S. drones will continue to be a counter-narrative to the prevailing, drone-loving sentiment in Washington.

From The Guardian: Obama’s ‘extreme’ anti-terror tactics face liberal backlash

“If Bush had done the same things as Obama, then more people would have been upset about it. He is a Democrat though, and to an extent can get away with it,” said Daniel Ellsberg, who as a government official leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and helped to expose the truth about the Vietnam war. Ellsberg is now one of the plaintiffs in the case against the NDAA and insists that the administration has used the law to give itself widespread and unconstitutional new powers: “We have been losing our guaranteed freedoms one by one.”

From RT: Brennan the perfect director to increase hostility against Americans

Brennan assured that any actions the CIA would take “will be legally grounded, will be thoroughly anchored in intelligence, will have the appropriate review process, approval process before any action is contemplated, including those actions that might involve the use of lethal force.”

One of those skeptical of Brennan’s words is Jayel Aheram, an Iraq War and Marine Corps veteran, activist and writer who, in an interview with RT, expressed his doubt over the possibility and the commitment of the CIA thoroughly to review the situation on the ground from somewhere far away from the United States.

He also questioned the criteria which might be used for such a review, suggesting that “basically anyone over the age of 18 or 16 in a strike zone constitutes a militant. So I could be going to school somewhere in Yemen, going about my day, and if I get obliterated by one of these drone strikes, am I to be considered a militant?”

From Politico: Drones: Tough talk, little scrutiny

Congress’ public oversight of targeted killings has been almost nonexistent. The last hearings on the drone strikes — held by a House national security subcommittee — faded away after the early months of 2010.

And until Thursday’s Brennan hearing, the two committees with jurisdiction over the CIA drone program — the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — have never held a public inquiry on the program. The Senate and House Armed Services Committees, which oversee the military drone program in war zones, haven’t held hearings, either.

U.S. drone use challenged in court

On March 17, 2011 at least 42 people were killed by a United States drone strike in northwestern Pakistan. Four have been confirmed as Taliban members, while the others were civilians, including tribal elders who had gathered for an administrative meeting. Reports the Global Post on October 10, 2012:

Opponents take the stance that these strikes are not part of an armed conflict and the rules of war, thus, do not apply. The armed conflict claim is a legal fiction and the United States is cherry picking the legal framework that protects its conduct under the rules of war, thus doing indirectly what they cannot do directly under international human rights laws. Shamsi contends, “I think the key issue here is that the US is claiming that the laws of war apply in places where they absolutely do not apply.”

Contrary to the US stance, this interpretation holds that, regarding Anderson’s explanation, “There is no war going on in a legal sense, and if there is, it is strictly limited to hot battlefields of Afghanistan. [Drone strikes are] governed by standards of international human rights and domestic law, and therefore any killings that take place under the circumstances are not protected by the law of war and instead are just extrajudicial executions, and frankly murder.”

Meanwhile, the CIA wants to up the number of drones that it denies having. Reports Policymic.com:

While the 2012 presidential election racket focuses on gaffes, Romney’s binders, and Big Bird, the CIA and the Pentagon are currently busy finding ways to increase their military power and influence around the globe. According to the Washington Post, CIA Director David Petraeus wants an increased drone fleet to “bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging Al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots.”

In case you miss the significance here, the CIA is running a covert war using a kill list known to exist but which the president denies. Our “intelligence agency” requests even more drones at a time when the international community is already questioning the legality of how we are using them. In America there is little argument that “intelligence agency” = “paramilitary organization.”

Finally, the Daily Mail reports that two specific Americans could be investigated for murder related to their roles in drone strikes.

A damning dossier assembled from exhaustive research into the strikes’ targets sets out in heartbreaking detail the deaths of teachers, students and Pakistani policemen. It also describes how bereaved relatives are forced to gather their loved ones’ dismembered body parts in the aftermath of strikes.

The dossier has been assembled by human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who works for Pakistan’s Foundation for Fundamental Rights and the British human rights charity Reprieve.

John A Rizzo

CIA attorney John A. Rizzo [Image credit]

Filed in two separate court cases, it is set to trigger a formal murder investigation by police into the roles of two US officials said to have ordered the strikes. They are Jonathan Banks, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Islamabad station, and John A. Rizzo, the CIA’s former chief lawyer.

[…]

The plaintiff in the Islamabad case is Karim Khan, 45, a journalist and translator with two masters’ degrees, whose family comes from the village of Machi Khel in the tribal region of North Waziristan.

His eldest son, Zahinullah, 18, and his brother, Asif Iqbal, 35, were killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone that struck the family’s guest dining room at about 9.30pm on New Year’s Eve, 2009.

Asif had changed his surname because he loved to recite Iqbal, Pakistan’s national poet, and Mr Khan said: ‘We are an educated family. My uncle is a hospital doctor in Islamabad, and we all work in professions such as teaching.

‘We have never had anything to do with militants or terrorists, and for that reason I always assumed we would be safe.’

History may ultimately adjudge our current drone war on the same level as the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam war.

I’ve also written about America’s drone war in these posts:
The Drone War and the kingdom of God

One former British soldier talks about drone warfare

The drone war and the kingdom of God

A week or so ago results from a recent in-depth investigative report on America’s drone war were released. Despite horrid reviews for President Obama’s involvement in it, several “mainstream” news outlets reported the findings.

A CNN report entitled Drone strikes kill, maim and traumatize too many civilians, U.S. study says states

The report accuses Washington of misrepresenting drone strikes as “a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the U.S. safer,” saying that in reality, “there is significant evidence that U.S. drone strikes have injured and killed civilians.”

It also casts doubts on Washington’s claims that drone strikes produce zero to few civilian casualties and alleges that the United States makes “efforts to shield the drone program from democratic accountability.”

When I wrote about drones in September (“One former British soldier talks about drone warfare”) a linked Washington Post story revealed 92 U.S. drone attacks from January 2011-June 2012 resulted in only five Al Queda leaders being killed. That is 87 misses out of 92 tries.

“Misses” being qualified by saying many people have been killed or injured, just not so much the actual enemy. The surgical precision about which our government likes to brag is akin to using a chainsaw to take out an appendix. The scars being about equal.

In the second of his two broadsides on why he will not vote for either major party candidate, Atlantic staff writer, Conor Friedersdorf, notes this about drone warfare:

Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn’t “precise” or “surgical” as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels.

Forgive me, but the word “terrorizes” is tellingly ironic.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, can be expected to dial up the hubris meter during the election approach. He may even hit 11. To fire up his base he must demonstrate he is even tougher on terrorism than Obama, which, following the most recent 9/11, should not be difficult. But Romney has offered no indication he would scale back the targeted killing program Predators provides.

Just yesterday, October 1, 2012, a Washington, DC, CBC affiliate reported drones will soon be able to seek and destroy on the battlefield without human input.

Ronald Arkin, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, believes that drones will soon be able to kill enemies on their own independently.

“It is not my belief that an unmanned system will be able to be perfectly ethical in the battlefield, but I am convinced that they can perform more ethically than human soldiers are capable of,” Arkin told AFP.

Arkin added that robotic weapons should be designed as “ethical” warriors and that these type of robots could wage war in a more “humane” way.

And we thought Skynet was so far in the future.

drone firing hellfire missiles

A Predator drone fires two Hellfire missiles


Dutifully the military asserts humans will remain involved in drone manipulation, that they will not be autonomous. And we are expected to to believe the military without question. Because the military never lies and the government never participates in cover-ups.

Right.

This post, however, is not primarily concerned with the politics involved with the drone war. My concern is the relationship of its effects to the kingdom of God.

We have been told that drone warfare provides safety to American troops and provides for less collateral damage than other types bombing. Drones are able to provide visuals clearer than a set of latitude and longitude coordinates, I suppose. A Hellfire missile launched from a drone should cause fewer casualties than a Tomahawk fired from a ship. Cleaner shots, better identification, direct hits. All of this adds up to more dead terrorists and a better protected homeland.

Except it doesn’t.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, reports,

from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228-1,362 individuals. Where media accounts do report civilian casualties, rarely is any information provided about the victims or the communities they leave behind. This report includes the harrowing narratives of many survivors, witnesses, and family members who provided evidence of civilian injuries and deaths in drone strikes to our research team. It also presents detailed accounts of three separate strikes, for which there is evidence of civilian deaths and injuries, including a March 2011 strike on a meeting of tribal elders that killed some 40 individuals.

Also noted in the report is whenever men of fighting age are killed, even if they are completely unknown, and even if their activity is undefined, they are classified as combatants. That is, if a Hellfire missile lands in the middle of 20 sixteen to eighteen year olds playing soccer, they are classified as enemy combatants. Why? Because we killed them in the course of prosecuting a war. Not because they have been or are in a training camp or have plans to join Al Queda.

A quick review: How do we know they were enemy combatants? Because the government said so. How does the government know they were enemy combatants? Because we killed them.

They might as well be since, as the NYT reports, “some in the Obama administration joke that when the CIA sees ‘three guys doing jumping jacks,’ they think it is a terrorist training camp.” Very funny.

The drone war in Asia and the Middle East has become the “War on Terror” equivalent of the bombing of Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

As if this were not enough our drone strategy includes the very behaviors for which we would condemn terrorists: double strikes.

Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves. These fears have affected behavior. The US practice of striking one area multiple times, and evidence that it has killed rescuers, makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims. Some community members shy away from gathering in groups, including important tribal dispute-resolution bodies, out of fear that they may attract the attention of drone operators. Some parents choose to keep their children home, and children injured or traumatized by strikes have dropped out of school. Waziris told our researchers that the strikes have undermined cultural and religious practices related to burial, and made family members afraid to attend funerals. In addition, families who lost loved ones or their homes in drone strikes now struggle to support themselves. Emphasis mine

One report has a drone striking a funeral where mourners had gathered to remember the victims of a previous drone strike.

Additionally the

FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Area] suffers from one of highest poverty rates in the world. The per capita income is approximately US$250 per year, with 60 percent of the population living below the national poverty line. Undeveloped infrastructure and low per capita public development expenditure have resulted in an overall literacy rate of only 17 percent. Most of the population depends on subsistence agriculture, manual labor, small-scale local business, or remittances from relatives working abroad or in other regions of Pakistan for survival. In North Waziristan, chromite mining operations also provide limited contract jobs near the Afghan border. There are only 41 hospitals in the region, and an estimated one doctor for every 6,762 residents.

Who lives there?

FATA is inhabited almost entirely by Pashtuns, a group of tribes that first settled in the area more than 1,000 years ago. The various Pashtun tribes live not only in FATA, but also in large parts of south and east Afghanistan. Altogether, there are some 25 million Pashtuns worldwide, making it one of the largest tribal groups in the world.

Who are the Pashtuns? They are virtually all Muslims who span the border between Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. This means they are not followers of Christ. This means they are being bombed into a Christless eternity.

As a follower of Christ it disturbs me to know my government is randomly, regularly, inefficiently, deceptively, and erroneously killing people with whom we are not at war; targeting first responders and mourners for missile strikes; creating an ongoing situation where bearers of the gospel cannot enter with eternal good news. Why do we who give money for missions, pray for the fulfillment of the Great Commission, long for the day when some from every nation tribe and tongue sing praises to our great God seem so content to have one of those tribes bombed into oblivion? Have we bought so thoroughly into a kingdom of this world it has priority over the kingdom of God? Are we so fearful of what might happen to us we are willing to overlook anything that is happening to people around the world?

My friend Emily said today in a Facebook conversation, “I think we should do our best not to have these conversations in a theoretical moral and ethical sphere that is separate from the Christian narrative. The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ should be the basis for thinking through all of these things, IMHO.” If we are to call ourselves “followers of the Way,” then, I believe, it must thus be.

You can read or download the entire report pdf from Stanford-NYU here.