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UN Warns Obama: Drone Attacks May Violate International Law

O

OCGuy

Lifer
"The US has been warned that its use of drones to target suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan may violate international law.

UN human rights investigator Philip Alston said the US should explain the legal basis for attacking individuals with the remote-controlled aircraft."

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And you wonder why Obama wont go after Bush? I personally am 100% for these strikes, so I am not going after Obama here. But any logical person can see why we will not open to door to prosecuting a US president.

 
Originally posted by: OCguy
"The US has been warned that its use of drones to target suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan may violate international law.

UN human rights investigator Philip Alston said the US should explain the legal basis for attacking individuals with the remote-controlled aircraft."

Text


And you wonder why Obama wont go after Bush? I personally am 100% for these strikes, so I am not going after Obama here. But any logical person can see why we will not open to door to prosecuting a US president.
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Alston's request is hilarious. A proper response is, "Because we want to blow them to pieces and they're 500 miles away. If they were much closer, we'd blew them up with an artillery shell, or with a hand grenade, or with a bomb dropped from an airplane; would that make you happier?"

 
"The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons."
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So his main concern is arbitrary executions and extrajudicial executions. Our response should be that we will stop using drone attacks the moment that the UN establishes a recognized and credible means for apprehending and prosecuting international terrorists.
 
So the UN should be complaining to the other side too since I doubt they are asking for permission to kill one of ours.
 
Originally posted by: OCguy
"The US has been warned that its use of drones to target suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan may violate international law.

UN human rights investigator Philip Alston said the US should explain the legal basis for attacking individuals with the remote-controlled aircraft."

Text


And you wonder why Obama wont go after Bush? I personally am 100% for these strikes, so I am not going after Obama here. But any logical person can see why we will not open to door to prosecuting a US president.
Click to expand...

When we took terrorists into custody instead of killing them via drone missile strike, the U.S. got shit - "close Gitmo!" was the mantra. Now we're killing them via predator drone instead of taking them into custody, and we're still getting shit. Obviously the U.N. wants us to just give terrorists a hug or make them a sandwich and glass of milk or something.
 
What's the difference between a drone attacking someone and a human doing it?

All a drone means is that if the attack fails an American doesn't lose their life, something I am 100% behind.
 
The decision to use the drone to strike is made by humans and is the same protocol a fighter/bomber pilot would go through so the only difference is the method of delivering the payload. There is no real difference and thus no violation of International Law. Funny thing is the enemy doesn't abide by any laws.
 
Afghanistan is the world's largest opium source. I'm for using drones to bomb the poppy fields. Cutting off their drug money may be a far more effective and less lethal way to stop Al Qaeda, the Taliban and any other militants and the drug lords, including Karzi's brother.
 
Where's the apologist? 😛

Seriously, this guy has a few screws loose. I foresee a day when routine air strikes are done by remote. The UN can have a real fit then.
 
This is a subversive effort to move air warfare capabilities from the discretion of a Commander conducting warfare to someone else (like a bureaucratic twit who can't wipe his ass without a consensus from a committee). That effort is tied to the key words in the article "legal basis." It is an attempt to create a fundamental shift from conducting war to conducting judicial process.

A second fundamental shift is also happening - redefinition of terms. Conducting an airstrike against a target is different from execution ... There is an effort in this situation to establish ambiguity in the terms. In law ... Execution is a judicial writ directing the enforcement of a judgment. In the sense of killing a person, that judgment is capital punishment.

Since a military airstrike against an enemy combatant is not an action based on a judicial writ, nor is it a punishment, the attempt to apply the term "execution" to the process is disingenous at best and IMO needs to be examined as a possible hostile information operation, which in my opinion, isn't the first from a UN source.

There is a good book called "Wired for War" by P.W. Singer. Since the US is leading the way in unmanned systems, do we have a duty to establish a "custom of war" for the use of unmanned systems which will stand the test of time?
 
In my mind, there is not a dimes worth of differences between using man or unmanned air power. Both have the same inherent limitations and both have almost equal potential for killing innocent civilians.

Maybe an unmanned drone gives better surveillance capacity over time. But bottom line, such air attacks make it impossible for us to win the hearts and minds battle for the Afghan people because there is always too much collateral damage with either. And if anything the popular Afghan horror factor is higher with drones.

Many experts have been saying that the use of too much air power is counter productive in Afghanistan for years, now our top General McCrystal agrees, as for the rest of you, do you want to win or lose in Afghanistan? So far we have been doing an excellent job of choosing the losing alternative.
 
Lemon law said:
In my mind, there is not a dimes worth of differences between using man or unmanned air power. Both have the same inherent limitations and both have almost equal potential for killing innocent civilians.
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The main difference between manned aircraft and unmanned drones killing civilians is accountability.

How do you hold anyone responsible when you've no proper way of identifying who was controlling that drone, or indeed if it was being actively controlled at all. How does innocent Afghans seek justice after death strikes from above and you might not even have been able to identify the aircraft the bomb or missile came from?

But bottom line, such air attacks make it impossible for us to win the hearts and minds battle for the Afghan people because there is always too much collateral damage with either. And if anything the popular Afghan horror factor is higher with drones.
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Yes.

You can't bomb yourself to victory from the air, it didn't work in Vietnam in the 60s and 70s, it didn't work for the Russians in Afghanistan in the 80s, hasn't worked for Israel in Gaza or the West Bank for decades now (and not for lack of trying!), and it's not going to work in Afghanistan now either.

Every village blown up by drone strikes is just going to turn even more Afghans against any and all foreign troops on their soil. Lame excuses like "it saves American lives" is just idiocy; a soldier that's scared to die shouldn't have joined the armed forces, and a commander that isn't willing to risk his troops is spineless and incompetent. Risking one's life - hopefully in a righteous cause - is a soldier's job. When you start blowing up villagers to save the lives of soldiers then you've already lost the battle.

Also, the people targetted aren't "terrorists" by any legal definition of the word. At best they're SUSPECTS, and proper western tradition is to treat suspects as innocents until proven guilty in a court of law. It's NOT proper tradition to blow suspects to kingdom come just in case they might be guilty of something, together with anyone who happen to stand nearby.
 
FaaR said:
Yes.

You can't bomb yourself to victory from the air, it didn't work in Vietnam in the 60s and 70s, it didn't work for the Russians in Afghanistan in the 80s, hasn't worked for Israel in Gaza or the West Bank for decades now (and not for lack of trying!), and it's not going to work in Afghanistan now either.

Every village blown up by drone strikes is just going to turn even more Afghans against any and all foreign troops on their soil. Lame excuses like "it saves American lives" is just idiocy; a soldier that's scared to die shouldn't have joined the armed forces, and a commander that isn't willing to risk his troops is spineless and incompetent. Risking one's life - hopefully in a righteous cause - is a soldier's job. When you start blowing up villagers to save the lives of soldiers then you've already lost the battle.

Also, the people targetted aren't "terrorists" by any legal definition of the word. At best they're SUSPECTS, and proper western tradition is to treat suspects as innocents until proven guilty in a court of law. It's NOT proper tradition to blow suspects to kingdom come just in case they might be guilty of something, together with anyone who happen to stand nearby.
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Tell that to japan.
 
KK said:
Tell that to japan.
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Lolwut?

That hardly applies in the present case. You tell me why an air war hasn't won a single victory in 60 years, because I assume your intentions aren't to reduce all of Afghanistan to a smoking radioactive glass crater?

*facepalm*
 
FaaR said:
Lolwut?

That hardly applies in the present case. You tell me why an air war hasn't won a single victory in 60 years, because I assume your intentions aren't to reduce all of Afghanistan to a smoking radioactive glass crater?

*facepalm*
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Present case??????? you're the one going back to 60s and 70s. *facepalm*
 
Don't get so caught up in trying to score an easy point that you end up totally missing the point, which is that IF an air war COULD win battles then it would have happened already. And instead, we have high-ranking military officers saying it is the wrong approach.

Only stupidity would drive a person to argue against not only that, but also the historical record.

Japan surrendered because it was nuked. Twice.
 
FaaR said:
Don't get so caught up in trying to score an easy point that you end up totally missing the point, which is that IF an air war COULD win battles then it would have happened already. And instead, we have high-ranking military officers saying it is the wrong approach.

Only stupidity would drive a person to argue against not only that, but also the historical record.

Japan surrendered because it was nuked. Twice.
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FaaR totally confuses a conventional war with a military occupation. yes the US militray won both the Iraq and Afghan wars in brilliant style and in record time.

The FaaR delusion is and remains, winning the peace is a totally different question. As problem number one is often to fill the power vacuum created when the enemy government collapses. If the military occupation forces do not quickly fill that power vacuum, we can always bet a home grown insurgency will.
 
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