Assassination of a State's Citizens by that State

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One could label this thread "drones," I suppose, but I don't think that really gets after the things that deeply concern me at this time.

Before I get into it, let me preface: I have spent time in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq (over 27 months there), and Qatar in support of U.S. national security objectives. I have physically participated in multiple U.S. operations against insurgents and terrorists in Iraq. I have planned and participated in training U.S. forces to conduct counterinsurgency operations in the Middle East and SW Asia. My master's degree (from a Tier 1 institution) is esentially an advanced regional study of the economics, history, religions, anthropology, and politics of "the Middle East, Africa, and SW Asia." I do not consider myself a "softy" when it comes to threats against U.S. interests in the ME; however, I am also somewhat educated and even sympathetic in some ways when it comes to the nuances of the perspectives and conditions that exist in that region and which inform those threats against regional U.S. interests (i.e., don't even get me started on Israel!). Nor, I must note, am I Constitutional scholar or lawyer, despite numerous classes and briefs which I have sat through due to the legal scope of my duties.

That being said, I have no sympathy for Anwar al-Aulaqi himself, in his persona as an al-Qaeda propagandist and, reportedly, an operational planner. He drew himself into a corner where the U.S. or other states would inevitably target him with lethal operations; neither would I like to see (more?) victims of his vitriole.

However, I am disturbed over the direction the U.S. has taken over the past 12 years in pursuit of anti-terror and counterinsurgency objectives across the globe (i.e., the "War on Terror"). Anwar al-Aulaqi, who was assassinated via drone strike in 2011 in Yemen, was a U.S. citizen. He was never charged by the U.S. government with a crime related to his alleged al-Qaeda affiliation (that is, he was found guilty of other charges in his life--solicitation of a prostitute, for instance--but those have nothing to do with his career as an AQ propagandist. I don't even know if those things were crimes or misdemeanors). His citizenship was never revoked (my understanding is that there is indeed a process by which the gov't can do this but they didn't have the evidence or organizational skills to actually execute this course of action). Apparently detailed, valid, and correct intelligence could be gathered on him (in the hinterlands of mountainous Yemen) and relayed back to the U.S. (or not--I mean, one would think the very best, specific intelligence would have been gathered on him in order to justify the assassination of a U.S. citizen, but we have no evidence to indicate that actually was the case--other than that, eventually, a rocket struck his car and killed him), but he couldn't possibly be detained or arrested (never mind being charged with a crime) because conditions were too difficult for either U.S. military or law-enforcement personnel to ID and detain him in Yemen. According to recently revealed arguments regarding "imminence," he may have participated in planning operations against the U.S., and therefore, in the interests of U.S. national security, he was a valid target for deliberate death--apparently, because he might have been planning something significant. (My problem with the Obama administration's definition of "imminence" is that it appears unimportant as to what someone could be proved to have been doing, versus what he might be hypothesized to be doing). A few weeks later, al-Aulaqi's 16-year-old son was killed in a drone strike (the target of this strike was a different individual, so basically al-Aulaqi's son was collateral damage, though I have come across statements where the Obama administration has characterized his son as a "senior operational AQ leader." I personally doubt al-Aulaqi's son had significant influence in the organization nor to do I believe "decision-makers" in the Obama administration really believe this; that is, that a 16-year-old American may have that influence in such an organization seems irrational).

Overseeing this entire process are decision-makers utilizing a secretive process (which still hasn't been fully or arguably even partially disclosed) residing in the executive branch of the government.

So, here we are. U.S. citizens, who have not actually been charged with crimes, are targeted for assassination by the executive branch of the U.S. government because, absent specific intelligence which doesn't matter because, essentially, everyone understands that they are "bad guys," and they therefore may pose threats to the very existence of the U.S. government, the government is killing them to ostensibly protect the security of the greater citizenry. I may be over-simplifing and possibly snarkily, sarcastically mis-characterizing this process, but on the other hand, there is little empirical proof to disssuade me from these notions. This process is not subject to legislative or judicial review; it is overseen by a classified process residing in the executive branch (i.e., a "secret court").

I find this entire scenario extremely problematic. I thought U.S. citizens had rights to trials by peer, to face their accuser, to due process, to be treated as "innocent until proven guilty," to public courts, etc. I am not concerned about al-Aulaqi; I am concerned about the rights of all U.S. citizens. Will we target members of unofficial state militias next, based on the word of anonymous informants, and approved in secret by high-level bureaucrats in the executive branch?

What I'm confused by is why the media has not made a bigger deal out of this. There are tepid outcries this week, but regardless of the memo the Obama adminstration released this week, in reality, there is little revealed now that was not disclosed last year or the year before.

Your thoughts, ideas, criticisms, and attacks? I'm particularly interested in what those outside of the U.S. have to say about how they believe (and have been educated to believe) their governments are obligated to treat their citizenry. And of course, the opinions of Americans regarding their rights (and especially, my possible misreading of our rights) are always appreciated.

 

In WWII there were many of German descent in the US (US citizens) who went back to the fatherland to aid in the war of Germany. These men were shot and killed just like any other German soldier and received no special dispensation as prisoners-of-war due to US citizenship.

Once a person joins the enemy they will be treated like the enemy. Anwar al-Awlaki chose his path -- his decisions made him a valid military target. Had he entered the US he would have been arrested and taken through the courts. I'm not sure if he would have been treated differently than the prisoners at Guantanamo but I think he would have been just due to his citizenship.

Traitors, when caught, are given trial but I do not believe the government should be required to target a traitor any differently than any other enemy. I personally would rather see the attack by drones than putting the lives of SEALs or Marines at risk for the capture of a valid military target.

 

I'm not particularly well-informed about this stuff, but generally I dislike the policy for the reasons dogsoldier stated. Seems pretty draconian, but of course no one consulted me first. Funny how the gears of government run that way.

 

If someone goes overseas and joins a terrorist group, I consider them fair game for being killed in a military operation. I mean, I just cannot imagine the following scenario:
__________________________________________________________

Colonel Jones: General, we have positive confirmation that the camp I told you about in Afghanistan is a terrorist training camp. We also have solid evidence that indicates the 55 terrorists will be carrying out an attack on a nearby US embassy. They have enough C4 to kill all 313 American workers inside that embassy.

General Veers: Launch a drone strike and kill the bas****s. Isn't it great that we can take them out without risking any of our soldiers?

Colonel Jones: Oh, by the way, we also know that Achmed al Sallah, who was formerly known as Jason Pine, is there. You remember him, right? He's the American citizen who left Kansas 5 years ago to join Al Quada? He left that 30 page manifesto on why he hates America and wants to kill all the Americans he can before he dies. We think he's good for the rape and murder of those American backpackers on the Iran / Iraq border in 2010, but we don't have much evidence.

General Veers: Oh, dear God, no! He's an American citizen! Cancel that drone strike. We now have to risk the lives of 200 patriotic soldiers so that we can kill the 54 non-American terrorists but capture Pine -- I mean, Sallah -- alive. Make sure every soldier we send out has a Miranda card on him, and for God's sake don't violate his civil rights!

_____________________________________________________

I mean, come on! It's not like they are mounting military operations against compunds on US soil. For these sorts of traitors, going in, flashing a badge, and then having a trial is not an option. They have joined an enemy of the country and have to deal with the consequences of that.

If we are talking "unofficial state militias", I can see your concern, but again, if they have flat out said they want to take down the US government, and the intelligence on them is solid (more than anonymous informants) then I don't think the government has a requirement to treat such groups with kid gloves.

 

As a slightly leftist European (I suppose), I'm not much a fan of army stuff and I know very little about it. Also, I'm not all too familiar with American policies and whatnots. But if this mofo is in a hostile area, cooking up something pretty damn foul, you don't send an officer to arrest the culprit. You bomb him.

The fact that he's an American citizen shouldn't matter. If the man was Dutch, things might be a bit more complicated, because you'd have to deal with a foreign citizen. But then too, if the man was obviously a terrorist, he should know what to expect.

If he was walking the streets of Washington, Amsterdam or London, bombing his brain would have been nasty. That's not hostile territory. Yemen isn't necessarily hostile, but I doubt a terrorist infested camp or city would be welcoming you or offer you their cooperation.

 

"Shoot first and ask questions later ... know what I mean."

 

For me, it is simple:

which is cheaper? A drone strike or an investigation that may still lead to a drone strike?

 

I,as european, do not think the drone strikes are a good idea.

Morally speaking I think it should be "hard"/"inconvenient"/require a considerable amount of risk/effort to kill someone. It just shouldn't be easy, all that imminent threat stuff is making this tool in my eyes to abuseable (a slippery slope so to say).

From a strategic viewpoint, I am rather convinced that a dronestrike creates/motivates more enemies than it removes.

I dunno I just don't think that you can solve terrorism by killing "everyone" of being suspected of it, in other words attacking the motivation for terrorism seems to me a lot more fruitful than attacking the current spokesperson.

But hey, if your constituents demand immediate action for you to get voted.. uff

 

I have problems with the Germany example. It has been offered as an example by many who support the suspension of Constitutional rights, but when I attempt to investigate it further, I run up against the reality that as near as I can tell the U.S. military or foreign diplomatic corps spent little to no time actually documenting the realities of German-American forces. There is little empirical proof or historical evidence, that I have been able to find, that actually lays out what the U.S.'s policy was towards German prisoners-of-war, in either official, systemic, or unofficial capacity. There is anecdotal evidence pulled from some autobiography in which a second-hand source comments that "thousands" of Americans fought on the side of the Germans, and there are anecdotal examples, here and there, where someone knows or even met an American who surrendered or was captured on the battlefield (the "Band of Brothers" example is widely cited, for instance).

I have looked through my university library and there is no scholarly recounting of this phenomenon and even on the WW2 websites and forums there is little specifically laid out about it. (There is so little organized that it occurs to me it may be a good thesis project for my second master's). I poked around a number of websites and can find examples of cases where U.S. forces detained German forces, seperated the U.S. citizens from the rest of the Germans, and shipped them back to the U.S., where they spent several years in special detention camps set up for tens of thousands of German-Americans in places like Alabama and Iowa. In at least one case, an individual who did propaganda for the other side was captured, brought back to the U.S., tried in a civilian court, and sentenced to something like 60 years for treason (http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=58686).

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I agree.

 

I do not pretent to be the expert on military matters that you are, dogsoldier, but here's my take as an educated layperson:

A main goal in a military engagement is to eliminate as many enemies as possible while taking as few casualties as possible. Now, "eliminating" can well mean killing them or otherwise damaging them, but it could also mean isolating them or even making allies out of them -- the value of negotiations! However, the other side of that equation is the preservation of as many of the soldiers under your command as possible while still achieving your objective.*

In that sense, if a target is located, I see drone strikes as a fabulous option, because no friendly troops have much chance of being injured, let alone killed. In that sense, assuming the intelligence is good and your not just shooting at anything that looks funny, drone strikes are a great option.

* Mechanized warfare made this a nasty proposition. I was once talking with my father and saying what a stud I thought Churchill was, and he agreed, but pointed out that Churchill was a vicious bugger in terms of not really giving a damn about the number of casualties the Allies took as long as the objective was achieved.

 

I don't see that it is possible to attack the motivation, the motivation is religion, as long as people don't hold their faith they will kill them.

To me we need to think of terrorism like cancer, you study it all you want, watch it develop despite your best efforts, ultimately, you've got to cut out the tumors.

 

Oh, I'm no expert. In fact, as I know from hard experience, very often the people who have more experience and/or education regarding a certain subject can easily make predictions, and when those people come to expect certain things, they will be often surprised. I'm very often not even particularly interested in the nuts-and-bolts of warfare, and find things like culture, law, language, economics, technology, politics, etc, to be much more interesting. Especially since, as I've aged, I'm less interested in what happens during the fight than how one got there in the first place--and how they might get out of it.

I don't disagree. That's a smart way of looking at the process.

My problem is with the deliberate targeting of U.S. citizens and the apparent suspension of the rights that citizenship entails.

There are a number of other problems with this entire situation that we haven't even scratched the surface of. For instance, what is "war"? Are we really at "war" with al-Qaeda? I mean, legally, mechanically, have we met the criteria our nation as well as international standards hold as legally sufficient? (Because, for all we say, how can you be at war with an ideology? Jeesh, how do you decide when you've "won?") Do strikes all across the globe, whether a state approves it or not, consistute legal warfare? Can the military participate in conducting military strikes against U.S. citizens? What does "imminence" mean and regardless of the White House's position, is it actually legally defensible? According to the White House, it currently, essentially, means you could be thinking about conducting an attack. That's good enough for suspending Constitutional protections and shooting a missile at a citizen? I don't understand the idea of feasibility of capture, either: how can one have intelligence good enough and precise enough to take out a target with a missile, but lack the ability to physically arrest them or even put together a packet to charge them with a crime first? My understanding is that President Obama himself approves the targets on these target lists (according to an interview I heard on NPR yesterday), though the reporter couldn't, of course, get an interview with President Obama, get the original actual legal defense of this program, or get an outline of how the process works.

I just seems bizarre to me that the American people are apparently expected to trust the President as he uses a secret process to approve the assassinations of U.S. citizens who haven't been actually charged with any wrongdoing.

I'm not attacking you on this process. I'm also not a lawyer and probably lack all sorts of understandings of the legal aspects of this scenario. But this deeply bothers me and I cannot help but think, 50 years from now, that scholars will look upon this time with deep puzzlement as well as harsh criticism.

In that sense he differed little from many of the most influential and revered figures of history, didn't he?

 

Sorry but the dude entered a war on the side of the enemy. The US government is under no obligation to bring the guy to trial. He's the enemy and a legitimate target -- boom.

 

No, I think you are incorrect. There are uh billions? holding faith with grossly outdated laws in their respective holy books.
I think if you stick people in an environment where murder is rampant, magically, you get more murderers.
To me culture of violence is a lot stronger indicator for violence than faith is, oh it certainly helps as rationalization but by removing faith I do not think you picked the right target to remove.

And in that sense drone attacks don't help, isn't a drone attack oddly symmetrical to a terrorist attack? Suddenly in the middle of you town someones house explodes killing likely some "innocents" standing around (whos standing around an terrorism leaders house is obviously not innocent [sarcasm off]).
Except that with drone attacks only one side has to die...

The tool you use to remove the cancer has an odd similarity with the cancer you are trying to remove.

To give an example for attacking motivation hypothetically, you have the opportunity to grab & bag "mr. terrormaster" (publicly).
Option a: You pick him up and give him a (I guess forced) spa treament [no sarcasm, I'm serious, pedicure, fancy haircut, masks whatever].
Option b: You make him vanish forever.
So what might happen? on option b: "they took mr. terrormaster may we avenge him forever" On option a: either they assume he ratted them out or they just got first hand experience that you are not the villian. (so you might just have created a chasm in the enemy organization for those that believe mr. terrormaster and those who don't. Or weakened their motivation just by not acting like the overlord.)

The trouble is just what if they are wrong. Can't I just fake telephone conversations for meeting "Mr. Uberschlachter" at xy, but at the chosen time xy is instead occupied by my hated neighbor or a group of orphan widow grandmothers (to use as recruitment material).

Problem two is this has no satisfying proof process, no impartial judge and no specification/possibility for amends in case of error.
This whole terrorism thing in effect is just inches away from "an enemy of the state".

I dunno blowing someone up should be the last option, and not the most convenient.

 

If someone is performing an act of Treason, I say drone'em. BUT, it should be prove it first legally, not guessed at. Guessing can be wrong and you could end up droning an innocent let alone any bystanders that also become shrapnel catchers for no reason.

 

There is always that possibility. But I don't think we should shy away from dealing with known terrorists decisively and with extreme prejudice. This guy was a known terrorist -- he recruited actively for our enemies and was involved in planning terrorist attacks. If a government can take such a person without the loss of life, then great. I just do not believe soldiers should be put at risk to capture such a person.

 

To add to T2's point – the fact that such a person is a U.S. citizen makes them even deadlier as a potential terrorist, since, as a citizen, they will have advanced cultural and infrastructural knowledge of the U.S. (and thus - how to hit where it hurts most) that your average Yemeni radical would almost certainly lack. In that sense, a traitor is a far bigger threat than a died-in-the-wool enemy. It is in this that I find the government's definition of such a person as an "imminent threat" more acceptable than I would otherwise.

 

you've taken my point too literally, obviously I was not refering to every religious person, but to the fundamentalists who hold the most extreme views.

were not talking about suspected militants here, were talking about known terrorists.

yes, just like radiotherapy.

You have to bear in mind that these people are not rational like we are, they don't think the same way we do, do you think that when Abu quatada and Abu Hamza came to the UK and got nice houses on benefits their militant brothers thought "oh, they've sold us out" or thought "oh, those white heretics are our friends"? no they continued with "DEATH TO THE HERETICS!!" the only thing you can do with these nut jobs is kill them.

 

Oh I'm sorry then.

What I'm trying to bring across is, America is not exporting due process, respect for human lives/other countries with their behavior but "if you have a problem blow it up".

Yeah, by being excessively nice you are reward the others (abusive) behaviour, that's why my example included the hidden "we know who you are, what you did and we can get you but we chose to be the better man". uff I probably shouldn't get attached to that example it ought to have even more holes in it.

Yes in the sense that you can only kill the enemy soldier in the other ditch, but the aim should be to not even create them.

I agree that you have the right to defend yourself with equal violence, but I don't think that drone strikes will bring that wheel of revenge to spinning slower, it might solve the immediate problem (which I appreciate is probably the most efficient/risk free way) but in the long term :/ .