The Problem With Assassination
Joshua Foust on Mar 18 2008 at 10:59 am | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Military Matters
Posted first on Registan.net.
Yesterday, I expressed skepticism about the “decapitation” strikes the U.S. military carries out in Pakistan (and also Somalia, Yemen, and so on). One issue I skirted around was the messy problem of sovereignty: in a very real sense, we don’t have the right, no matter who is there, to launch an attack on Pakistani soil. It is an act of war. And I’m certain most Americans would feel uncomfortable about us being at war in Somalia and Pakistan.
The problem, however, is much worse: such strikes, almost by their nature, cannot have reliable intelligence behind them. An AP reporter went to the strike site and found only a man traumatized by the violent death of his family amidst the rubble. Tom Englehardt—granted, no dispassionate voice in the matter—wonders about a very important point:
There are still limits of sorts on such actions. These put bluntly — though no one is likely to say this — are the limits imposed, in part, by racism, by gradations, however unspoken, in the global value given to a human life.
The Bush administration has, so far, only been willing to carry out “decapitation” strikes in countries where human life is, by implication, of less or little value. It has yet to carry one out in London or Hamburg or Tokyo or Moscow or the Chinese countryside, even though “terrorist suspects” abound everywhere, even (as with the anthrax attacks of 2001) in our own country…
When the deeper principle behind such global strikes is mentioned in our papers, in some passing paragraph, it’s done — as in a recent Washington Post article about a Predator strike, piloted from Nevada, that killed a suspected “senior al-Qaeda commander” in Pakistan — in this polite way: “Independent actions by U.S. military forces on another country’s sovereign territory are always controversial…” (Imagine the language that the Washington Post would use, if that had been a Pakistani drone strike in Utah.)
(Emphasis mine). Indeed, it is a curious double standard: we assert the right to behave as judge, jury, and executioner on soil that is not our own, while freaking out over the loss of sovereignty something like the ICC would represent. It is hypocrisy of the worst sort—either sovereignty matters, or it does not. We cannot have it both ways, and only in ways that favor us.
David Case, writing in Mother Jones, says these kinds of actions are “generally regarded as warfare’s answer to laser surgery: clean and accurate, cheaper than waging a protracted ground battle, and less risky for American troops.” He also notes, however, that of an estimated 19 such strikes since 9/11 (the exact number is unknown, since their existence is classified and thus information about them is limited), there are only two confirmed examples of success—the rest have resulted in lots of damage, lots of innocent people killed.
Is that worth it? In a war of ideas and perceptions as much as bombs and guns, can we afford to ruin so many lives in the pursuit of individually nasty men? Let’s take it further: if there is, in fact, concrete evidence that, say, some senior Al-Qaeda is hiding out in a small village just over the border from a FOB in Paktika… is a “surgical strike” by a Predator actually less risky than a snatch-and-grab by a small special forces team? I can’t see how: if we grab him, we can interrogate him for information; we also spare his surroundings from certain destruction—thus lowering the likelihood that everyone who lost a family member in the explosion would then turn into insurgent supporters.
But the problem of sovereignty remains. At the moment, we conduct strikes in Pakistan, and only after inform Pakistani officials. While that may be pragmatic—there are almost certainly ISI agents who would pass the word if we asked for permission—it also is, in a very real sense, illegal. Asserting the right to murder men in other countries regardless of other factors is a dangerous precedent to set—just as we would never want Iran to launch “surgical” strikes against targets in the U.S.
Of course, this would require a far more sophisticated diplomatic effort—something the Bush Administration, and Congress, has so far refused to fund or support. It is troubling. The State Department is systematically crippled, de-funded, and de-populated (each year there are fewer and fewer new diplomats hired due to funding cuts)… right when State should be the lead agency in the GWOT: how else could the world get an image of the U.S. as a non-military, non-imperialist power? I don’t buy into the America As Empire meme… but at the same time I’m dismayed at how often we seem to confirm just that idea by our poorly-thought out actions.
Update: Buried in this hyperventilating piece on Counterpunch is a disturbing statistic: at the Battle of Musa Qala this past December, when Coalition forces wrested the town back from 10 months of Taliban rule, NATO was proudly claiming hundreds of dead insurgents and no dead civilians—a truly remarkable achievement considering the intensity of the fighting. However, the body of only one insurgent was ever produced, and locals claim 40 innocents died.
While it was vital the town be taken back, there surely is a better way of doing it than simply calling in the B-1s. What good is victory if we leave nothing but rubble in our wake?
Sphere: Related Content20 Responses to “The Problem With Assassination”
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So, anyone find it odd, that in countries where we presumably would have assets on the ground, or a friendly government willing to do the work for us, we don’t use bombs or missiles to take someone out of the picture.
The use of and effects of violence are always relative. And the exact conditions on the Afghan/Pakistan border, what is allowed, the ROE, and who gets informed and when, are all secrets. We may be doing this with full, but blanket secret authorization from Pakistan. We just can’t know about it.
And how likely is it that if we did strike an al-Qaeda nest in Pakistan, AQ would be and clean up the evidence of their presence, leaving only “innocent” victims of the US. So, the AP reporter who’s on the scene hours later, may not be seeing the whole truth.
Without forensic examination, their story should be considered with as much suspicion as our own, if you were going to be intellectually honest.
So it’s all a big game the Pakistani government lodges official protests each time we bomb their territory? I’m not buying it.
And saying Al Qaeda is just inventing or sanitizing these areas to make it look like civilian casualties is edging dangerously close to blaming the victims themselves for being in the way. If there was a cell of leaders, would only their bodies be pulled from the rubble and spirited away? And do you really think the locals there wouldn’t complain about how the Arabs are bringing destruction upon their heads, as they have elsewhere in Afghanistan?
It all seems too fishy. A much simpler (and plausible) explanation is just that we’re just sloppy.
Why is it hard to believe that Pakistan might lodge official protests to something they’ve given a nod of approval to behind doors?
I’m not saying that’s the case but certainly it’s a logical possibility.
Whatever the reality is the last thing I’d expect any government in Pakistan to do who wanted to stay in power is appear cozy with the United States. If we’re giving them the option of some deniability I think that’s smart.
As for pulling only terrorist cell leaders from the rubble… wow. That doesn’t make sense to you? Heck, I wouldn’t put it past some of these people to go get bodies from the morgue and add them to the rubble. And keeping secret who got killed by hiding the bodies of important people? I’m bad with names but some Japanese warlord was decapitated by his own people… and I don’t think he was even all the way dead yet… just so that he body could never be identified. Removing the victory if at all possible is a vital element of any sort of warfare. Why do people think that the enemy has never studied war?
So, yeah, if those targeted could be removed while leaving all the “civilians” then absolutely a great deal of effort would be taken to do it. Wow. Turn a defeat into a victory right there wouldn’t it? Not only would the world see that America didn’t kill the bad guys, we just killed innocents… what’s more our intelligence can’t be trusted and our technology is worthless. *That* is where war is fought for the most part… in perceptions. Does the US come off looking dangerous and overwhelming? Or does Al Qaida come off looking invincible?
Sometimes locals complain and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they keep their mouths shut because even if they blame the terrorists among them for bringing down the wrath of God because what are they going to do? Confront them? Oh, that sounds like a wonderful plan. They should do that.
In situations where we’ve seen that to be the case the locals had attained some measure of strength and security before it happened.
I think that our lack of acceptance of surgical strikes from Iran is a really poor example of anything.
We’re not supposed to do to anyone else what we don’t want them to do to us? We can’t go after our enemies because we would *mind* if someone bombed a house in Grand Junction?
Nor is the ICC anything like an equivalent violation of sovereignty. In the one case we sell our own autonomy. If some other country goes after their enemies on our soil we haven’t sold anything. We can get as pissed off at them as we like. But we haven’t sold ourselves to an outside authority.
Spain has this habit of trying people from conflicts they had absolutely nothing to do with for war crimes. Hey, good luck with that. Ignore a situation, sit on the sidelines, and point fingers afterward. Moral high ground, what a pleasant fantasy. But if they, or any “international” organization wants to have the right to judge they need the power to enforce their judgment. But they can’t. Not on anyone. Certainly not on the US. But not on anyone else either. What are they doing to do? Send armies? Build prisons? That takes money and money needs a productive tax base to produce it and extra-national courts or whatever the heck organizations don’t have that. Only nations do. So those extra-national judgmental bodies have to be funded by those they pretend to have power over. But they can’t have power over even the smallest nation without the voluntary selling of autonomy and sovereinty… or a hammer provided primarily by America.
Or maybe they’ll send French troops who have strict instructions not to actually fight anyone.
They still can’t pay their own bills.
I see, so every time we lob 1000 pound bombs and the locals complain that innocent people die, it’s all a big shell game for al-Qaeda.
How nice that it also absolves us of responsibility in targeting, reconaissance, and intelligence.
So we have the right to bomb any territory, kill anyone, violate anyone’s rights… simply because we have the ability to do so.
Sounds like a responsible hegemon to me.
First… nothing absolves us of our responsibilities to get the information right. But why do you think that no one would lie? I wasn’t addressing what happened in this instance or not, only that the idea of doing something deceptive, such as removing the targeted individuals and leaving civilians, would be a very good plan so why scoff at the mere idea?
For the simple reason that there is no evidence to support that claim. None. You don’t even see stories like that from the large segments of the population in those areas that don’t like the Arab or Uzbek militants.
And I don’t mean to scoff. It just, absent any evidence beyond our imagination, seems like grasping at straws we don’t know are even there.
Second… what exists in the space between nations?
What is there in that space?
Nations make treaties with each other and ought to keep their word if for no other reason than when there is no law the value of a person’s word or nation’s *word* is all anyone else really has to go by.
It may be comforting to imagine that there is a higher authority over nations instead of anarchy and chaos between them but it doesn’t make it true. Giving away our sovereignty and expecting anyone else to give away their sovereignty to some international government body is a true violation of sovereignty. Spain and their presumption is comedy, when we start talking about voluntarily subjecting ourselves to an authority outside our nation and forcing other nations to comply as well, that’s tragedy.
That’s not to say that whatever I, or you, or a nation, has the right to do is the right thing to do. But I think that a fundamental national right *must* be the right to declare war… defensive, offensive, or imperialistic. Saddam had a right to attack Kuwait. Kuwait and the rest of the world had a right to destroy him for it… but they got all tied up in stupid arguments about if they were *justified* in marching all the way to Baghdad or if they were only *justified* in pushing Saddam out of Kuwait.
Where do we get this weird idea that something that is a right must not meet resistance? We hear those arguments all the time. WE have nukes so how can we object to anyone else at all having them? Or that WE should be willing to accept occupation if we figure we’ve got any right to occupy Iraq.
The charges that this war is illegal bemuse me. Illegal? How does that even work in the space between nations? I know how illegal works here. We elect people and they pass laws, we pay police officers, build jails and we fuss about the Constitution. Maybe in other countries a king or dictator declares what is illegal and what is not. But in any case there is an authority or process that applies only to the particular area that authority controls. It only applies within those borders.
That doesn’t make any particular laws *right* however and you know it. And we shouldn’t sit back and say, oh, those people have the right to make whatever laws they want to make and we should *respect* that. They may have the right, as we do, to make whatever laws they want to make but we have NO obligation to respect them.
When we get hung up equating legal with moral and illegal with immoral we’ve made a serious mistake. That’s a fact when we’re talking about domestic laws or these supposed international laws.
Arguments about what we as a nation are *justified* to do as if there is a legal code that defines right and wrong are outright harmful. We end up with the “Bin Laden as criminal” mindset and “War on Terror as police investigation” mindset which is inappropriate for matters of state. We end up confining our responses to what we are justified to do, always and forever reacting to the actions of others… as police are requried to do, and never doing what we must do to pro-actively protect our citizens and our interests.
That in NO WAY says that we ought to go invade everyone… or that we ought to impose our will in other ways that no one seems to care anything about… sanctions or trade based blackmail…
I would like to see us pull back a whole lot instead of trying to run the whole dang world… and I’m disgusted by those who only see war or not-war and suggest that not-war is always pure instead of oppressive and a violation of other nation’s sovereignty.
But bottom line… we do have the RIGHT to chose any of those things.
That didn’t make any sense. I didn’t assert any other authority over the U.S. beyond its own laws, and the Spanish example is a big red herring. We’re not talking about some two-bit European country asserting its right to try our citizens, we’re talking about whether it is justified for us to unilaterally bomb another country using metrics and means only we determine on a case-by-case basis.
Your example of Saddam and Kuwait is a curious one: Saddam had many reasons for invading Kuwait. He felt they were unfairly lording crippling debt over his head, he felt they were “side drilling” to get at Iraqi oil fields, and so on. In other words, he felt he had a moral case for attacking them—a pressing need to pro-actively protect his people and interests, if you will—and you’re right that we had a moral case for counterattacking (and I don’t think it was inappropriate to debate whether or not to push all the way to Baghdad, as the issue was his invasion of another country, not his regime… that’s another curious assertion to make). So I don’t get it.
This doesn’t make sense either. We SHOULD confine out actions to what we are justified to do, unless we are to become a capricious and cruel nation. Justification is not limited to reaction; I assume this is meant to be a dig at the principle of preemption. Preemption is not always unjustified, the problem with Bush’s preemption was that it modified the traditional conception of it from preventing an imminent to eliminating a potential threat before it became imminent. That was a big change, tantamount to prosecuting thought crimes. And since when do the police not behave proactively? They just have to act with justification—we like to call it proof.
No one is saying we don’t have the right to defend ourselves. But do bomb anything in the name of defense is the worst sort of hypocrisy: without proof, you are capricious and tyrannical, which is supposedly what we are opposing. Pro-actively protecting our citizens and interests does not happen when we kill innocent people and then write them all off as aq-qaeda sympathizers while parroting our superior intelligence that no non-combattants were nearby… we only inflame yet more anger against us.
That is the phenomenon at work, whether we like it or not. The lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan is that bombs make insurgents; boots on the ground reduce violence. Our decapitation events do not contribute to a solution—they work against our interests.
Seems to me the Viet Cong were quite adept at removing their wounded and dead from the battle field.
So, the idea is not without some basis in history.
All I’m saying is that there isn’t much first hand reporting from these regions. Why would you trust some second hand report from non-government sources, anymore then you distrust reports from government sources. Treat both with the same skepticism, and you’re left with the fog of war.
I’m not saying it’s not without precedent either, just that we have no evidence of it happening. To assume it does just because it makes us feel better about lobbing bombs across the border doesn’t really fly.
And automatically discounting international press reports, from the scene - whatever problems we all may have with the AP notwithstanding - begins to smack of an impossible standard.
And I have to wonder, do our enemies try to give fair warning to civilians that they will be conducting operations?
And it wasn’t “simply calling in the B-1s.”
And I guess we didn’t just rubble the town.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Musa_Qala
This is the problem with using Wikipedia. There was no way to independently verify the death toll, and ISAF does not release casualty figures for fighters.
But use the basic BS test: does it make sense, with thousands of soldiers and dozens of sorties, that “the town itself” was not damaged? It really doesn’t, unless they’ve invented some new form of combat that doesn’t involve explosives or bullets.
Look, we ought to take most of our sources with a grain of salt.
Unless an event is recorded first hand, and that recording is unedited, we are never getting the unvarnished truth.
However, as far as Wikipedia goes, they often link to the sources…
For instance on the towns damage, from a reporter on the scene…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3043168.ece
Joshua….Allow me to bring you up to date on a few things. Having worked extensively in the areas of the world you bring into question…Pakistan in particular…it seems you are living in a reality vacuum where the entire world is civilized, all sources except for the US government tell you the full and unedited truth and your western concepts of the value of life, decency, respect for the persons and rights of others and ideals of “fairness” are shared by all…except of course the evil hegemon that is the US, which you obviously detest and see as being oppressive to the honest, hard-working, simple, respectable indigenous people of…wherever. You present your arguments as though the US were conducting airstrikes in downtown Islamabad. You seem to think that if it isn’t reported in the media or if released by some government that it can’t be true. The areas in Pakistan and Somalia where the US strikes are conducted are not, in any real fashion, under the control of the Pakistani government and those within Somalia hardly have any government at all.
The regions of our attacks in Pakistan are known as the FATA (Federally Administrated Tribal Areas)…areas along the AF-PAK border wherein the traditional tribal structures hold virtually unchallenged sway…the internationally recognized Pakistani government has little influence and virtually no authority here. These tribal structures and leaders are on excellent terms with Al Qaeda and hence provide them sanctuary. It should be noted that this is NOT the first time they have done this. In the early 1990’s a man named Mir Amal Kasi went on a terrorist rampage with an AK-47 in front of CIA headquarters. He then fled the US to the FATA. There he was held in good standing with the tribes (Because in their mind it is a very manly thing to murder unarmed people stopped in traffic on their way to work) and provided sanctuary for about five years until he eventually fell out of favor and was handed over to the US by a tribal elder for the reward.
So…if the Pakistanis do not control the area why are they lodging complaints when we strike a target in the FATA????…..because we no longer tell them before we do…and for good reasons. The Pakistani ISI (Pakistani intelligence service) has long-term deep seated connections to the Taliban and, to a lesser extent, Al Qaeda. This is common knowledge to anyone who has a working knowledge of the Pakistan or Afghanistan. The Pakistani government does not have what would be termed “control”, in the strictest sense, over their own intelligence operatives. In short…we inform them we intend / request permission to conduct an airstrike against a high level target…their ISI inform the target and we miss our opportunity…its that simple. So…we just don’t tell them.
What gets on my nerves is how too many people tend to do half-assed research upon which to base their opinions. Perhaps if those people were to think in three-dimensions they would be capable of seeing through the eyewash and actually see the truth of what is going on the world…such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, East Africa…hell…even the real reason the US military is in Iraq…something the MSM, and neither party have yet to talk about.
“Slayer” (nice pseudonym), you haven’t the first idea what my experiences and background are if you think I’m unaware of conditions on the ground in FATA. I don’t think at all the way you accuse me of thinking, I am simply saying that when evidence is thin jumping to conclusions is a bad idea.
To assume these “tribal structures” are on good terms with al-Qaeda is to greatly whitewash the problem. There are friendly clerics and elders and unfriendly clerics and elders. Up in the Swat valley, very few were happy when Baitullah Mehsud made his move and took over the region; similarly, there have been several rounds of intra-militant fighting in Wana Waziristan, with many innocent people there caught in the middle.
Mir Aimal Kasi fled to Quetta, which is in Balochistan, not FATA. FATA is further north, near Peshawar. And do you think they complain when we bomb them because… I don’t know, BECAUSE WE BOMB THEM? I would certainly complain if a foreigner kept bombing my towns.
Look complaining about “half-assed research” is all well and good, but only if you yourself don’t do half-assed research. Unfortunately, since you won’t reveal who you really are or even just provide a basic body of work (as I have) I can’t comment on your experiences and qualifications. But you brag about a remarkably simplified view of the tribal regions along the Durand Line. Similarly, I can only assume you haven’t read my other work on Afghanistan and Pakistan, which so far has garnered a decent reputation for rigor and accuracy from actual experts on the region.
Rather than blithely telling me how dumb I am while you regurgitate Wikipedia entries, perhaps you could offer a more substantive criticism of my work than mere name calling. Maybe even, dare I ask, step up and write under your own name?
Your level of experience in this sort of matter is evident from your lack of understanding of the working relationships between the players on the Afghanistan/Pakistan scene. Your own words give a huge clue as to your experiences. BTW…dropping a bomb in the FATA, a place where the tribal government openly support Al Qaeda and Taliban militants, is hardly the same as dropping a bomb in Utah. Perhaps I misunderstood your intentions….because it appeared to me there was a good deal of conclusion-jumping occurring in your posts.
You are right…evidence is thin…thats because these operations are classified. They are classified because it would not be advisable to give the enemy any more information than they already have. However, when the enemy has a chance to show off some of the damage, it costs them nothing and some people are very quick to ring the sympathy bell to cause outrage from those who mean well but don’t really understand what is going on. It seems you are quick to believe the reports from tribes supporting militants, Taliban, and Al Qaeda but are reluctant to give the same level of credibility to reports from friendly sources…Why is that?
I’m sure we have a few fair-weather friends in the FATA, but you make it sound like half these tribes are reluctantly going along with it…not so…some of these relationships go back decades. You said “To assume these “tribal structures” are on good terms with al-Qaeda is to greatly whitewash the problem”. We are not assuming anything…with precious few exceptions…they are…and even those exceptions who are not offer no real resistance to them…Have you considered that perhaps these “good terms” are part of the problem?
As the Pakistanis were actively assisting the CIA and the FBI…Mir Amal Kasi was sheltered by elements of the Musah in the FATA. Lets apply your “BS” test from earlier….. Mir Amal Kasi was from Quetta, went to school in Quetta, had numerous friends in Quetta and his family lives in Quetta…Hardly difficult to find or arrest, especially by the Pakistanis, if he is sitting in Quetta…it certainly wouldn’t take four years.
My half-assed research? Wikipedia entries? Quite laughable actually…I don’t need wikipedia to tell me the situation in the FATA…I can respect your knowledge on Central Asian issues and the like… you are certainly no dumb and I don’t recall ever saying you were. But…you are stepping beyond the historical and cultural…beyond the academic. In essence you are stepping into areas on which it seems apparent you do not have a firm grasp….military operations….counterterrorism operations and strategy…etc.
As far as me posting my name…that isn’t going to happen for various reasons. It wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway. However, I understand why you want it. Based on your posting, you seem to live in the academic world. Academia relies upon certificates, dissertations and the like to establish credibility. You wouldn’t have read any of my modest work.
Slayer, again, casting aspersions as to my experiences does not reflect well on you. I do not even have a Master’s Degree, nor am I currently working toward one. I don’t reside at or attend any university, and my contacts within academia are related solely to my writing here — as are my contacts within the defense and intelligence communities. Please don’t pretend I’m ignorant of counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, military operations, intelligence analysis, or combat. It will not help you.
I’m curious as to your experiences now, because local reports do not support the assertion of blanket support for “al Qaeda” in FATA. There is a lot of support for the Taliban and associated movements, but these are quite distinct entities, and should not be confused. Also I am not quick to lend credence to local sources while denying official ones, at least not as ideologically as you assume. I am intimately aware of how the U.S. military spins news and gets borderline lies repeated in the media as fact; there is no doubt many (probably most) militants do the same in their press relations. But what I want is to consider both, and realize that “our side” is not necessarily a reliable source of information.
In a similar note, I am also intimately familiar with how fallible and unreliable on-the-ground intel is in these places, so I find it highly unlikely we have a “God’s-eye view” of who lives where and what they believe. In fact, I will tell you right now that we don’t — most FOBs in Afghanistan have no idea who lives in the village next to them, to say nothing of what someone over the border wants or feels.
Your comments on Kasi don’t make sense. I don’t deny that he was probably supported by the ISI (again, if you were familiar with my work, you’d know my many criticisms of the US Government’s relationship with them), but he was residing in Quetta, a large city where he had a vast network of contacts to hide him. He was captured when he was lured out into the Punjab. I similarly don’t doubt that if the Pakistani government wanted to find and arrest Bin Laden, Mehsud, or Fazlullah, they would. That they don’t speaks more to our tin ear for diplomacy and relations with them than anything else—in particular, we could say, our tendency to unilaterally bomb their territory, then brag about how we’re trying to do so as quickly as possible while Musharraf is still in charge.
This is not the behavior of a country that is sure of its actions and its information. This is the behavior of a country deeply unsure about it.
Anyway, that’s the point I’m making here. Your comments still amount to generalized complaints that I am somehow demonstrating my lack of knowledge of the area and of the U.S.’s role in it, but those complaints still amount to name-calling and assumptions about my background. I’m willing to examine your evidence of this, but I need something to go off of. Right now, it’s mostly ad hominem, and that is something I do not regard kindly.
I’m not ignoring you. I typed up a post and then…my computer “hicupped”. I’ll try again tomorrow. Sorry