ACLU Sues Over Legality of "Targeted Killing" By Drones 776
MacAndrew writes "The ACLU has sued the United States Government to enforce a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for 'the release of records relating to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles — commonly known as 'drones' — for the purpose of targeting and killing individuals since September 11, 2001.' (Complaint.) The information sought includes the legal basis for use of the drones, how the program is managed, and the number of civilian deaths in areas of operation such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. The ACLU further claims that 'Recent reports, including public statements from the director of national intelligence, indicate that US citizens have been placed on the list of targets who can be hunted and killed with drones.' Aside from one's view of the wisdom, effectiveness, and morality of these military operations, the inclusion of US citizens suggests that summary remote-control executions are becoming routine. Especially given the difficulty in locating and targeting individuals from aircraft, risks of human and machine error are obvious, and these likely increase as the robots become increasingly autonomous (please no Skynet jokes). This must give pause to anyone who's ever spent time coding or debugging or even driving certain willful late model automobiles, and the US government evidently doesn't want to discuss it."
Oddly Enough (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome to the 21st Century Courtroom (Score:2)
It's The Robots versus The Lawyers. Death Rays versus Briefcases. Titanium Alloy versus Brooks Brothers Suits.
Sounds like an even match across the board...
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Re:Oddly Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
The defense's response was merely a motion for discovery of the plaintiff's latitude and longitude.
Why is this "insightful". Shouldn't this be "funny"? Or, possibly "sickly funny"?
Probably because this joke sums up the problem very well:
If remote execution of terrorists without trial or public knowledge is acceptable, then how do we know that only terrorists are executed?
Or, if I need to spell it out:
How do we know that people aren't executed, simply because they are a PITA and use the Freedom of Information Act against those in control of the drones?
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The problem is that this isn't war. It's a police action. It'd be war once congress declares war.
This is a state actor (US Military) fighting against a collection of non-state-actors/civilian groups without a formal declaration of war (including all the formalities that come with a declaration of war between state actors).
So really, this is (foreign) law enforcement. There should be due process. If congress can't be bothered to issue a declaration of war then we should still be bound by civilian conventions
Re:Oddly Enough (Score:5, Informative)
Congress has declared war. A bill doesn't have to have the title "Declaration of War", it simply has to authorize the use of military force in a foreign nation. We've done that for the conflict in Afghanistan. It is a declared war. Wars do not have to be on "state actors" - wars between a nation and a group of brigands or pirates used to be somewhat common.
Further, non-state militaries have less rights, not more, in the traditions of armed conflict as recorded in many treaties. Brigands and pirates (ie.e, unlawful combatants) captured by a military are not even considered "prisoners of war", and may be summarily executed. Whether we're stretching the definition of "unlawful combatant" is a whole different argument, but members of non-state militaries have fewer rights than members of state militaries, and for good reason.
But the Taliban in Afghanistan is, at least loosly, a government, and whether you consider their warfighters "soldiers" or "unlawful combantants" is mostly a matter of how much you think uniforms matter. They certainly aren't "civilians". Hiding among civilians while fighting a war doesn't make you a civilian, it makes you scum.
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Re:Oddly Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
When we declared war on Germany, did that apply to fighting German troops in Africa?
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We're talking about military gear, they aren't going to get a court order for every set of coordinates they hand to the artillery team
And they're not targeting individuals with artillery shells either. They're targeting strategic emplacements, enemy strongholds, and so on. Once you start targeting individuals, it's assassination. Assassinating enemy leaders is a valid tactic. Assassinating your own citizens, generally, is not.
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Assassination in wartime is "normal military work".
They even have guys that specifically specialize in this sort of thing.
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Well, hint. For the majority of the world population, the US is also just foreign soil. You just defended 9/11, right? I mean, I'm almost sure that at least one person killed during the attacks had been a serious criminal by some foreign country's definition of serious criminal, and the rest where just collateral damage. As some supporters here already argued, they should have kept better company. (Sounds slightly different, when applied in reverse, doesn't it?)
Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Informative)
I can almost guarantee that the information sought is either classified or at least FOUO (For Official Use Only) which means it's exempt from the FOIA.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Informative)
Because there are some US citizens that are actively working with the Taliban. If US citizens are working as enemy combatants then they should be eligible as targets as well.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
No. We didn't arrest Confederate combatants in the American Civil War, nor did they set out to arrest Plains and Southwest Indian combatants who left the Reservations and treaty lands during the Indian Wars.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
We also sent Americans to concentration camps and performed medical experiments on Americans without their consent. So you position is that if we did or didn't do it before, that's justification and absolution for doing it now? I would think that wrong is wrong, but you must have a much different sense of morality that other people.
That said, if American citizens are actively engaged in hostilities toward American citizens in war, their citizenship status should not protect them from harm at that time. If they are just sitting around and can be apprehended with minimal risk, then of course arrest, charge and try them. But to put them on a government-sanctioned "hit list" just because you can isn't right. That same government can also put you on that same list for no particular reason. That wouldn't be right either.
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Since the article states that the attacks have been carried out in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen, I think that apprehending them with minimal risk isn't going to be an option.
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If they are just sitting around and can be apprehended with minimal risk, then of course arrest, charge and try them.
The majority of the hits thus far (at least those reported in the media) have been in either Taliban-held territory in Afghanistan or in the autonomous regions of Pakistan, in both cases definite no-go for arrest operations. At that point, military action becomes the only way of getting at them. If they can be captured, so much the better, but sometimes a remote-kill switch is the only way
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:4, Insightful)
Prior to 9/11, if I, as a US citizen, had walked into a US embassy somewhere in Africa and started shooting everyone, would I have been called a terrorist and taken to a secret CIA prison, or brought back to the US and charged as a criminal?
We both know I would have been charged as a criminal in the US, with a lawyer at my side. Post 9/11.. its hard to say.
The civil war was an officially declared war, with uniforms. This new "war on terror" makes no sense. You can't declare a war on an ideology. You can't have a perpetual war who's members are unknown and replenished with each generation raised on hating xyz about the US or its allies.
How will we know when we've "won" this war on terror? We can't. There is no end. And if there is no end, no victory condition, it can't be a war. And if it is not a war, attacks against us are of a criminal nature, not military nature. And criminals, by the USA's laws and morals, deserve their day in court.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:4, Insightful)
The US didn't formally declare a state of war in Korea, Vietnam, the Plains Indian Wars, the Southwest Indian Wars and that didn't stop the bombardment, detainment and killing of enemy combatants and leaders.
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Rules yes. But not lawyers and laws about what is acceptable as a weapon and not.
For example the combat shotgun has been repeatedly criticized since the 1890s - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_shotgun#History [wikipedia.org] - usually by nations that didn't deploy them in combat (Ottoman Empire, Germany, United Kingdom).
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the detainees don't fall under the Geneva Conventions because they are not uniformed combatants (and they have had enough time to settle on a standard uniform is they so desired).
That is in fact a reasonable arguement. The Geneva Conventions never applied to non-uniformed partisans (or spies as they used to be called).
Q: Why do you think the Vietcong wore 'black pajamas'?
A: So the Geneva conventions would apply.
When they went 'plain clothes' they were on occasion legally, summarily executed. The example that springs to mind was the photographs taken of the dude getting his head blown off during Tet. That was a legal summary execution. Not that anyone will teach you that in US history. Legal, smegal. It was unpopular and helped end the US involvement in Vietnam.
'They' have rewritten many international treaties in the last 20 years however.
On the face of it it seams they have outlawed the effective practice war (how can any nation wage ware and respect all the 'rights of children' recently pulled from some idiots backside.)
Funny how reality routes around the law.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
What a load of crap. Have you even read anything of what you are talking about or just got your information from Fox news?
The Geneva convention covers both civilians or fighters (under a variety of names).
Regardless, you do not have to wear a uniform to be covered by the convention. And you cannot be summarily shot. What a ridiculous crock of shit.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod this guy up.
Firstly, the Geneva conventions cover civilians who take up arms to defend against an invader (e.g. the Norwegian rifle club which set up a roadblock and annihilated an entire German airborne unit in 1940),
Secondly the convention requires the capturing power to ask questions first and do their executing later - by implication the Geneva conventions do not authorise summary shooting of anyone, ever. You want to shoot someone who you've captured? You have to prove (if necessary to the satisfaction of his side's courts when you lose) that he's not entitled to the protection of the convention.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Informative)
However, with these drones, they are specifically targeting people.
So they know "this is john smith of 1390 mockingbird lane, CA and a U.S. citizen." That's the point of the protest-- known U.S. citizens are being targeted for execution.
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I'd think the ACLU would seek action in a court of law. Or even a framework of laws that define what is correct and what isn't.
We need to consider ending our military's ability to operate completely outside the law. The police don't need that kind of power, nor fire, nor any other government service group. We'd need to redesign the system, but we should consider it.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:4, Informative)
If you can justify that they are military combatants of a foreign nation, or political faction of a nation, they would have have their citizenship revoked as per US TITLE 8 > CHAPTER 12 > SUBCHAPTER III > Part III > 1481 [cornell.edu]. Those persons may still have renounced their citizenship based on how you interpret section b... there's to many commas for my simple mind to comprehend.
Either way, even if they ARE a citizen, and they are pointing a weapon at you and you have reasonable cause to fear for your life, you're covered by Self Defense.
this is simple (Score:3, Interesting)
Look, during hostilities, people get killed. That's what happens. US citizen or not, if they are on the battlefield fighting American troops they will get shot at. But if they are hanging out at the Taliban Tavern drinking a pint of Osama bin Lager with their mates, possibly planning the next 9/11 attack, killing them then is a summary execution rather than an act of war. I think the ACLU has a point that we should investigate, arrest and try them rather than summarily executing them.
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If they are on US soil, I would agree. A US citizen in a foreign country that is hanging around with enemy combatants that the US military thinks might be doing bad things is fair game. I don't care if they are a news reporter either. Those are the risks one takes in a war zone.
War sucks
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Ok.....
You protect your family and country with phallic jokes and pacifism. I will protect mine with bullets.
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Actually, that sentiment is quite old, circa 1209. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:4, Insightful)
/sarcasm/ Yeah, you're right. The last time I happened to stroll across a battlefield, there were referees out there, taking names, and checking that everyone was shooting at the proper targets, preventing anyone shooting at a civilian. This is the civilized way of running a war, after all. /end sarcasm/
Seriously, dude. If you're on a battlefield, anyone with a weapon is either "friend" or "foe", and if you ain't sure, then he's "foe".
As for the ACLU, or anyone else who objects to carefully targetted killing - what do they prefer? Bomb and napalm a village off the face of the earth, and hope that the intended victim died with all the villagers? These drones are a far more humane way to rid yourself of enemies, than using bombers loaded with thousands of tons of bombs.
Do they really want to go back to the days of Dresden and Hiroshima? "Kill them all, let God sort them out!"
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My point is, he's an armed man on a battlefield. He aint' a friend. He's a target. His citizenship means nothing. I have no objections, whatsoever.
As has already been pointed out, a number of those people being targeted have already renounced their citizenship. I do not regard them as citizens, even if they come back and say, "I didn't mean it!".
Oversight. Hmmm. Who should do oversight, I wonder? Congress is the end-all and be-all for military authority. I guess congress has oversight. Do I want t
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Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
If US citizens are working as enemy combatants outside of the US, then they should be eligible as military targets as well.
Just to make it clear that the US military has no business going after US citizens on US soil. We have other agencies for that.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Interesting)
And the changes were repealed in 2008.
It was added in 2006 so the military could help with basic law enforcement after Katrina. When it was no longer needed, it was repealed. Its kind of shocking it was repealed, but it was.
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If US citizens are working as enemy combatants, killing a few defectors won't solve the underlying problem that the nation is spiraling into madness.
Terrorism is not a cause, it's a symptom. People get desperate because they feel wronged and powerless. Whether it's due to religious fanaticism or abusive capitalism, the result is the same: angry people who have nothing left to lose.
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Damn them for being enemy combatants?
Sorry, the moment they become EC's, they lose *all* affiliation with the US, including citizenship, and any protections afforded them by such things as the Geneva Convention...unless they become affiliated with another recognized nation.
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Real1tyCzech, you are an enemy combatant and are therefore not to be afforded any Geneva Convention protections.
No, no, stop, stop! I know what you're going to say, so don't even try to protest that you've never engaged in hostilities toward the United States. It doesn't matter. Nobody cares. There's no due process. You don't get to protest this designation in court. The President says that you're an enemy combatant, and that's that.
Any plane you hear approaching now could be the last. Enjoy!
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Oh, wait...no such abuse has yet presented.
Has it? How would you know? That is why the ACLU is filing suit -- to determine whether or not such an abuse has occurred.
I tend *not* to let emotional rhetoric affect my ability to utilize logic and common sense. :)
jagapen wasn't using emotional rhetoric. jagapen was personalizing what the powers the ACLU is suing over ultimately means. If you -- either you personally or "you" in the generic way it is often used meaning "some undetermined person" -- are added to a Predator drone hit list, there is no chance to appeal the decision that you should be assassinated because you
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you seriously arguing that someone who:
1) Goes to another country
2) Fights on behalf of that country or a splinter group within it
3) Fights against the US and/or its allies
deserves protections offered by the Bill of Rights? These people are enemy soldiers, not just criminals. They deserve protections under the Geneva Convention, but that's it.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
Sucks having to follow the law... doesn't it.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
I made this same point a little earlier: the problem is who decides that they have done what you described? Obviously in the heat of combat, the losing side gets killed or captured. But these strikes are strategic - they are killing enemy leaders and disrupting the prosecution of war by the other side. So if a US citizen is determined to be an enemy leader (or similar) who decided? What process was used to decide? And importantly, the person might not even know that such a decision was made so they can't appeal.
If you think secret military decisions are less prone to mistakes than other parts of gov't and military activity, that's one thing, but I think it's safe to say that mistakes will be made in this area. So in effect they aren't stripping rights from one person they're stripping them from anyone they want, without recourse. That seems like a problem to me.
Re:Someone tagged this FOIA (Score:4, Informative)
You're missing something, though. The suit is about "alleged" treasonous scumbags.
If an American citizen moves to Afghanistan, buys and AK-47, and starts shooting at US soldiers, no one even begins to claim they can't fire back and shoot the bastard.
Similarly, if he joins Al Qaeda, is present while the training camp is raided, and ends up killed in the shooting, the soldiers get a reasonable level of leeway that they didn't *know* he was a citizen before they started shooting - they aren't going to be required to check ID's before they can open fire.
This is about the government deciding, through whatever process (even if it is correct), that an American citizen is a terrorist operative, and then taking steps to eliminate that person with no due process.
If they decided that someone in Michigan had been helping terrorists, they can't put a sniper on a rooftop and take him out on his way to McDonald's. If he's a serial killer they can't do it either.
The fact that this is being done with drones is only tangential to the real constitutional problem here. The drones are just an effective and lower-risk form of assassination.
So, is that clear enough? Actively engaged in a terrorist act = blow the fucker up. Suspected of engaging in terrorist actions = due process of law, just like being suspected of rape, murder, or any other horrible a person can do.
Re:They are not Warriors (Score:4, Interesting)
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The perpetrators weren't there, they didn't see it happen
Actually, they do. Unlike missile attacks from jets, drones tend to stick around and see the results. If you kill a wedding party with a missile from a plane, you're flying at mach 2 or above and are a mile or so away by the time the missile hits. If you do the same thing with a drone, you may be in Arizona but you're watching the missile hit. The end result is that there are a lot more cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among drone pilots than amongst pilots of real aircraft.
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Targeted killing isnt ok?? (Score:2, Insightful)
No Skynet jokes? (Score:3, Funny)
Resistance is futile. This article will be assimiliated into the collective conscious of slashdot, and will become subject to Skynet jokes whether you like it or not.
There. A skynet comment and a borg comment rolled into one...
Bet you didn't see that coming, submitter.
US Citizens (Score:5, Insightful)
If US Citizens are employed in the service of enemies of this Republic on foreign soil, then what the hell does the ACLU want? The FBI to paradrop into Afghanistan, slap the cuffs on them and read them their Miranda rights? What the hell?
Next up: ACLU objects to US Military engaging in warfare, suggests borrowing a page from Steven Spielberg and replacing all issued M-16s with walkie-talkies.
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The ALCU is probably looking for "due process of law".
Somehow I have trouble generating sympathy for anyone who gets hurt standing next to Osama or Im-a-dinner-jacket when they get taken out.
Re:US Citizens (Score:4, Insightful)
If these people wanted due process of law they should have remained on American soil and not enlisted in the service of foreign organizations that are trying to murder American soldiers and civilians
What about the US citizens who are not on American soil, but have not enlisted in the service of foreign organizations that are trying to murder Americans?
Re:US Citizens (Score:5, Insightful)
If US Citizens are employed in the service of enemies of this Republic on foreign soil, then what the hell does the ACLU want?
I don't think the question here is whether it is permissible to attack military enemies, so much as whether it is permissible to engage in the assassination of specific individuals, to say nothing of the accuracy of the intelligence that leads to such assassination missions and the extensive collateral damage that may end up creating more enemies than it destroys. We are, after all, talking about an intelligence community whose failures over the last fifty years would be comical if the consequences weren't so grave.
The failure of the "let's just trust our leaders" model is what spurred us to form a republic in the first place. To have it come up again in the context of the two biggest military disasters of our nation's history suggests that someone isn't paying attention to the reality on the ground, and it's not the ACLU.
Re:US Citizens (Score:4, Informative)
Uh yeah, they were shooting at them 1) with a gun 2) which generally doesn't cause massive collateral damage 3) during a declared war 4) at an enemy in uniform 5) while on the battlefield. Let's see which of those things is the same as the current situation? Oh right, not a goddamn thing.
Re:US Citizens (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not like John Smith was sitting on his Sofa in Madison Wisconsin and a hellfire missle dropped in on his house.
Maybe if that did happen more often, Americans might not be so sanguine about the sloppy work being done by the military overseas, where our targets have included wedding parties, schools, and clearly marked tanks commanded by members of allied forces. Perhaps then, they'd get off their capitalized sofas and learn how to spell "missile" correctly.
Being at war is not an excuse for incompetence, violations of the laws of war, or the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Or so we once argued at Nuremburg. On a purely practical, self-interested level, the wars in which apologists spend the most time defending the indefensible in the name of "doing what's necessary" tend to be the wars we lose. And considering that we've effectively lost most of the wars we've fought in recent years and are in the middle of two more conflicts that have boiled down to desperate searches for a dignified exit strategy, maybe it's time we reevaluated what's necessary.
Re:US Citizens (Score:4, Informative)
If US Citizens are employed in the service of enemies of this Republic on foreign soil, then what the hell does the ACLU want? The FBI to paradrop into Afghanistan, slap the cuffs on them and read them their Miranda rights? What the hell?
Try this article if you're confused about the ACLU's motives
http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion/editorial/columnists/nat_hentoff/article_085a3dc4-2725-11df-afa2-001cc4c03286.html [billingsgazette.com]
Here's the short version of things that are bothering the ACLU:
1. Lots of foreign civilian casualties
2. "nonmilitary personnel including CIA agents [and possibly contractors] are making targeting decisions, piloting drones and firing missiles"
3. we don't know under which American laws and international treaties the President has authorized this program of targeted killings
No matter how the Pakistani Government feels, bombing Pakistani civilians is only going to piss off and radicalize the locals.
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what the hell does the ACLU want?
It's right there in the summary:
If these records show that we're only killing "US Citizens are employed in the service of enemies of this Republic on foreign soil", that would be wonderfu
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"what the hell does the ACLU want? The FBI to paradrop into Afghanistan, slap the cuffs on them and read them their Miranda rights? What the hell?"
Exactly. Like, if I left the USA because I hated it and decided I believed some foreigner's ideology that the west is Evil, and I choose to fly into Paris and plan and attack an embassy, we should certainly use F16s or drones with hellfire missiles to strike my Paris apartment building.........
Now you might say, well of course we wouldn't do that in Paris. Too
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Or do you believe that the US army should be able to execute any American citizen who are not on US soil if the army feels like it?
The US Army can't wipe it's own ass without the permission of the Commander-in-Chief. The question is should the President be allowed to order the US Military to kill Americans who are serving with foreign enemies of this Republic?
I don't think the ACLU is even asking this question. All they want to know is HOW the president was allowed to order the US Military to kill Americans who are serving with foreign enemies of this Republic, via unmanned drones. They'd like to see the legal justification for that decision.
There's no reason the government should be able to keep the legal justification for that decision private. If it's legal, tell the world why and defend it.
English in What? (Score:2)
This must give pause to anyone who's ever spent time coding or debugging or even driving certain willful late model automobiles, and the US government evidently doesn't want to discuss it.
Do they speak English in What? I don't understand the joke or relevance. Can someone hit me with a clue?
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Reference to recent Toyota recall. The cars supposedly accelerated even if you didn't tell them to.
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*picks up ACLU*
*hits e2d2*
This is a pretty stupid thing to be scared of. (Score:5, Informative)
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I am not sure that the main issue is that it is fired from drones. I think the main issue is that it is shooting at US citizen outside of any judicial overseeing and that being done from drones, video records of the operations exist.
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Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
no skynet jokes allowed? (Score:2)
Due Process, dot the i's cross the t's and kill (Score:5, Insightful)
There is supposed to be a legal process where one gets found guilty in a court of law, gets to appeal and then get sentenced to execution. Even then most states have recognized the process has a number of flaws.
Here we apparently have the US government selecting US citizens for death and then carrying out the killing without the involvement of the courts. The ACLU is asking how such operation is valid under the US constitution. Every US citizen should be worried about a process where the government is able to execute citizens without going through the court system. Because the men in black masks might start making local visits.
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Due process and fair trial? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have always felt this method of targeting individuals illegal at best. It may be legal to use force when there is a declared war happening and this is among soldiers.
But such targeted killing of individuals has happened in many countries now, without any trial. In several cases, surrounding civilians also become causalities, even though they may just be passers-by. WTF?
Before al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq, nobody wanted him alive. But that bombing which caused his death also killed civilians including children in that building, who may have had no choice but to be there.
How is a government any better than the terrorists then? Like many say, if such things happen where there is no due process and no care about collateral damage, then the terrorists have already won and there's no difference between us and them.
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Oh jesus christ, get a life. YOU go over there and spend a year on the ground, and see if you come back with that same attitude. Really? You expect us to not shoot at the guy that just shot an RPG at us, run over there and put him in handcuffs, and hope his buddies don't shoot us in the face?
If you are talking about Iraq, I bet Bush didn't get a bunch of letters from ordinary Iraqi citizens asking him to come and wage war in Iraq. I have a life. I didn't go kill people in Iraq. Nobody asked you to "go over there and spend a year on the ground". But I wasn't talking about wars alone. Killings by drones and missiles launched from helicopters are happening in peace time in many countries, such as Palestine, Somalia and Yemen. These are enough.. they set a precedent.
Yes, some of these asshats may have been "citizens" at one point, but when you pick up arms against your own fucking country, all bets are off.
How is using a UAV any different than using an aircraft to drop bombs, other than the fact that it's a more accurate and reliable platform, and the guys running it get a lot more rest, and are a lot more clear headed to make those decisions?
Both are bad. Both cause extra
Former USAF Intel Analyst here (Score:4, Informative)
i was a 1N051 with an above TS clearance during the Clinton years. i taught LoAC stuff.
If a US Citizen is an enemy, they are fair game. Citizenship is a non-issue, enemy combatant trumps citizenship (and rightly so)
Drones/UAVs are NOT ROBOTS, they do not select targets or pull the trigger. By law they cannot.
Targeted killing is fine in combat. Popping a cap in Mrs. Merkel's ass right now would be illegal and a bad idea for many reasons. If we were fighting Germany, she'd be fair game because she is leader of enemy forces (civilian or not). Germany's minister of arts or some such would NOT be.
If the Taliban has a bomb factory (legit target) in a mosque/hospital/kitten orphanage (illegal target) it becomes a legit target, and for good reason. A AAA cannon mounted on the Eiffel Tower would be a legit target.
Civilian != Innocent - If Bob the Plumber makes a pipebomb he forgoes his protection under GenCon and is now an unlawful combatant.
i normally cheer for the ACLU, but i think they are defending the wrong people for the wrong reasons. This smells political.
Re:Former USAF Intel Analyst here (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with you, but your last sentence is a bit of a stretch.
i normally cheer for the ACLU, but i think they are defending the wrong people for the wrong reasons. This smells political.
They aren't defending anyone (yet). They are just asking "what did you mean by that part about US citizens...?"
Re:Former USAF Intel Analyst here (Score:4, Interesting)
Lets take a hypothetical case of a US citizen operating in Yemen who the US government believes to be funding AQ. Is it legal for the president to order the US military to kill this person? It would pretty clearly be illegal to summarily execute them if they were operating out of New Jersey, but frankly is Yemen any different?
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If a US Citizen is an enemy, they are fair game. Citizenship is a non-issue, enemy combatant trumps citizenship (and rightly so). ... I normally cheer for the ACLU, but i think they are defending the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
Who decides whether a US citizen is an enemy (and an enemy of what, I might add)? Who decided they were the "wrong" people? Who proved that they were the wrong people, and to whom? That's the core of the ACLU's point: the Constitution is extremely clear that just because the executive branch says that a citizen is a Bad Guy doing Bad Things does not in fact make it legally so until they've proven that beyond a reasonable doubt to the judicial branch. And it's also worth pointing out that military personnel
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Excellent post, except I think you miss the point of the ACLU's actions. They aren't criticizing or defending anybody or anything--they are merely seeking information to ensure that what you and I as Intel analysts already know is true--we don't indiscriminately kill US citizens. If they get their information, they'll see that's the case and their goal of transparency will be a success.
Not This Time! (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I usually like causes taken up by the ACLU this cause sounds really dumb. Weapons of war always take innocents along with combatants. Make no mistake there were nursing homes and kindergartens at Hiroshima and just about every other city that we have bombed in our various wars.
The real question is whether drones will kill of unusual numbers of innocents compared to other weapons of war. I suspect that drones are part of the notion of kinder and gentler warfare.
As to targeting American citizens in war zones, well sure, if they are aiding the enemy then they are fair game.
And keep in mind that using drones keeps our own soldiers and airmen out of harms way. If we are lucky we may be able to create an entirely robotic military in the future.
That's fine (Score:3, Interesting)
That's fine, we don't have to use the drones for precision attacks, we can keep them in a surveillance only role.
We can just go back to daisy cutters and carpet bombing once the target has been spotted.
Missed Opportunity (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not weighing in on either the pro- or anti- "killing from drones" question.
But I would like to point out that drones create an opportunity that is perhaps in a blindspot for many in and out of the military.
When a soldier goes into a firefight, why must he shoot to kill? Because the other side is shooting to kill him. A remote controlled drone breaks that model. The enemy cannot kill the drone operator, they can only damage the drone - a matter of expense rather than life or death.
In the sort of "war" we're now in, with enemies who hide amongst their own families and neighbors, the chances are very high that you create one new enemy for every enemy you kill, and several for every civilian. So with drones, the military value equation is strongly tipped toward NOT killing, if you can achieve your objective in other ways.
Instead of blowing up that car full of insurgent leaders, disable it in the middle of the desert by blowing a hole through the engine block. Develop knock-out gas bombs, or a fragmentation bomb that injects tiny frozen pellets of a knock out drug. THEN send in your troops, or even a drone "paddy wagon". Taze that guy who MAY have a gun, then have the drone roll over and inject him with a sedative.
Yeah, I know, it sounds all "liberal, peace-nik, kumbaya-ish". But if it does a better job than bullets and bombs, without risking your soldiers - why not? You can always follow up with lethal force if it doesn't work.
Well... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not a US citizen, but I'm pretty certain that Posse Comitatus [wikipedia.org] is violated by such actions on behalf of your government.
Re:Domestic vs. Foreign (Score:5, Insightful)
From the summary:
'Recent reports, including public statements from the director of national intelligence, indicate that US citizens have been placed on the list of targets who can be hunted and killed with drones.'
That's part of the reason why the ACLU would be involved.
Another part is that they're a watchdog group. When the government is keeping secrets from its citizens, watchdog groups make noise. That's what they do. I'm glad for it - too much gets shoved under the label of "national security" and the press is useless if you can't provide them a decent "some say ... while others claim ..." narrative to wrap facts in.
Re:Domestic vs. Foreign (Score:5, Insightful)
'Recent reports, including public statements from the director of national intelligence, indicate that US citizens have been placed on the list of targets who can be hunted and killed with drones.'
Read the summary but somehow totally missed this part. Thanks for the polite response. :-)
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Re:Domestic vs. Foreign (Score:5, Interesting)
The people who are being targeted have done a little bit more than leave the country. They've left the country and joined up with enemies of the country who are actively engaged in the process of trying it do it harm.
And this has been proven in a court of law? Or is based on the hunch of some intelligence analyst who is contracted through a corporation to provide support to the DoD?
Re:Domestic vs. Foreign (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry but if you leave the US, travel to a foreign battlefield and willingly enlist in the service of those who are fighting our country you've committed treason.
Treason is a crime. Crimes are dealt with by arrest, trial, conviction and sentencing.
Responding to purported treason by assassination is a cowardly, banana republic approach.
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Re:Domestic vs. Foreign (Score:5, Informative)
Despite the standard inaccurate Slashdot headline, they're not actually suing over the legality of targeted killing by drones, they're suing over the disclosure of information. Government transparency is a big part of what the ACLU is all about, and they're suing to get the government to hand over the documents. If impropriety is found once/if the documents are released, most likely a different group would actually sue over the abuses, since they are, as you say, not a civil liberties issue.
Re:Domestic vs. Foreign (Score:5, Informative)
The second amendment is important. So are laws against cruelty to animals. Fortunately we have advocacy groups that defend these causes.
The ACLU is a private advocacy group, the get to decide what they advocate for - and they can't do everything.
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Everybody is a hypocrite on something.
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"No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
It seems pretty clear that to many people here, a non-citizen isn't a "person". OTOH, in the US at least, a registered corporation is a "person". So corporations should be protected but visiting tourists shouldn't.
At least that's the idea that many are expressing here.
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Yeah, because an airplane in a few miles with only thermal vision on has the same accuracy than when a sniper is stalking and on a good opportunity targeting and shooting a target.
Re:The Reliably obtuse ACLU (Score:5, Insightful)
And who cares if they are targeting US citizens?
I seem to recall something about having a right to a fair trial if I'm a US citizen. Also, I was hoping I would be considered innocent until proven guilty by a jury of my peers. Yes, I know that's been thrown out the window in some cases but I would still prefer that over "Oh, they killed the Jones' today. Huh, they must have been consorting with terrorists." The ACLU is trying to protect your civil liberties and freedoms whether you want them to or not. Because to them and many other people, things like this are important.
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Re:The Reliably obtuse ACLU (Score:5, Interesting)
If somebody is actively involved in a firefight, this creates both a strong presumption of guilt and a strong practical difficultly in apprehension. Returning fire and killing them isn't ideal; but it is about as good as is practical. And, in such situations, I wouldn't see it as terribly relevant whether the shot is delivered by the forces on the ground, manned air support, or robotic air support.
However, one of the drone roles is the "We believe person X to be in building Y, not doing anything of note at present; but a known enemy on other occasions. Send a drone to blow up building Y." Here, there is none of the immediacy of the firefight scenario. In effect, a "trial" has occurred of citizen X, based on some sort of intelligence data, and now a sentence is being carried out. I'm sure that there are plenty of cases where, by high quality intelligence or by luck, the judgement is correct; but a request for information on how these judgements are carried out seems neither unreasonable, nor equivalent to demanding that soldiers in active engagement undergo absurd risks to take their opponents into custody undamaged.
When drones are used for air support of an active operation, they are generally called that. "Targeted killing", at least historically, always refers to the execution, by military means, of somebody believed to be an enemy in the context of some sort of military conflict; but not immediately engaged in hostilities.
Re:Amicus Curiae (Score:4, Funny)
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I cant really think of many legitimate reasons a US born person should have be wandering around in the tribal regions of Pakistan.
US Born != US citizen. It might surprise you to learn that there are many Pakistan born US citizens. Should going home to visit your family make you a legitimate target for a UAV?
There's also missionaries, womens rights workers, etc., etc.