Let's pretend like we could go back to August 6, 2001 and imagine what would have happened if the President of the United States had been warned by intelligence sources that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were planning a terrorist strike in the United States.
Let's further suppose that the President, instead of waiting for that strike on 9/11 and following up by invading 2 countries, had ordered targeted drone strikes on the compounds bin Laden was running in Afghanistan.
If those drones strikes had prevented 9/11 from ever happening, I'm sure the same arguments against such a policy would have been made as we're hearing today.
But would it have been the moral and/or legal choice to make?
Just so you know, my own theoretical answer to that question would be "no." Because I don't buy the "pre-emptive" argument. But in practical terms, that would be a much more difficult question to answer.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible you read my comment as I was writing it? It's on me...
DeleteHah!
DeleteI thought I'd put my opinion in the comments to leave people a moment to think the question through.
I should not make any assumptions about any points you don't explicitly make. But if the point is to suggest an instance where a drone strike would have been a moral choice, I don't think it serves the case.
ReplyDeleteThe morality of a drone strike cannot be determined by its absence in hindsight. The morality of it would have to be determined by how it possibly, not definitely, prevented a terrorist attack or some other loss of life. The problem is, we have certain killing to prevent possible killing. I can't imagine that there's a moral defense for this, taken on its own terms, and given the President's frequent references to Niebuhr, I don't think the President thinks there is, either.
The key for me is that the country is still at war. As long as the country is in a state of war--however dissociated most of the population is, and the media--the state will do whatever it damn well pleases to accomplish ends it connects to the war. I don't think this is OK, but the Bill of Rights has never amounted to s**t in this country when a war has been going on.
We will really know what the President is about on this score when the war is over.
My greater concern with civil liberties relates to how the technology our society uses seems to demand that the executive accrue a type of arbitrary power that's incompatible with a conventional sense of civil liberties. The ability to respond to cyber attacks, it seems to me, seem to demand an executive ability to snoop that's totally at odds with the Constitutional right to privacy as juridical tradition has it. The other option is to tolerate a greater level of potentially calamitous cyber attacks. Likewise terror.
My point is that, as a society, we value technological innovation and the convenience/efficiency it brings, and yet at the same time we become angry that our government accrues power to itself in direct, increasing proportion to the level of technological integration. I don't think you can have modern communication and transportation while at the same time maintaining the type of civil liberties white people had come to expect as normal.
I don't suggest we give up our liberties. I think it would be better to diminish the role of technology in our lives. How to do that is another matter.
I just wanted to use a thought experiment like this to dig a little deeper. Its mostly useful to me in contrasting Obama's approach to Bush's.
DeleteLet's further suppose that the President, instead of waiting for that strike on 9/11 and following up by invading 2 countries, had ordered targeted drone strikes on the compounds bin Laden was running in Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't have mattered since the people who carried out the attack wouldn't have been in that compound, and were already overseas and in some cases already within our borders (and in a couple of cases, previously under sporadic CIA/FBI surveillance). Unless you think the organization would panic after a decapitation attempt and abandon the plot?
All of this would actually seem to indicate that the best practical counterterror measures simply involve denying terrorists access to targets and denying them freedom of transit, rather than necessarily needing to eliminate every conceivable target. Al Qaeda hadn't had a successful international attack since London 2005 even before the drone war.
Did the FBI Assassinate the man in Alabama?
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteThe world of judge, jury, and executioner. What possibly could go wrong? ...
So throughout this whole argument over the of killing a person, USA is saying, USA is above the law, national and international. By this action, a person exercising one's civil rights and human rights, is subject to being killed arbitrarily and with impunity by a government official.
(Do people realize that two weeks after killing the US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, USA murdered the citizen's son?!?!)
Even when, throughout the history of USA, USA faced real enemies that threatened its very existence, USA respected national and international laws, norms, and traditions that did not target enemy leaders for killing. No longer.
There are Constitutionally mandated laws that are being ignored by 'We The People"'s governments today. This memo outlines another step of absolute, and unchecked, power being exerted by government. What possibly could go wrong?
A very sad aspect of this whole idea is that there is no real reason to even contemplate such extraordinary action. Regardless of how much noise Anwar al-Awlaki made about attacking USA; USA and the government of USA were never at risk. By the actions outlined in this and other "SECRET" memos, USA and the people of USA are at risk of losing everything that made USA who USA was.
Ema Nymton
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This comment is totally non-responsive to the topic I've written about here (not to mention full of inaccuracies). I thought about deleting it. But instead I'll just give a warning that future attempts like this will be deleted.
DeleteEma Nymton did not answer my question.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDelete"Ema Nymton did not answer my question."
"Did the FBI Assassinate the man in Alabama?"
No.
Ema Nymton
~ @ : o ?
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