Image Credit: Susannah George for The Washington Post
Drone Warfare and the Implications of Self-Defense
On August 29, 2021, the U.S. military fired a hellfire missile from a drone, striking a car supposedly filled with explosives and driven by a member of the ISIS-K terrorist group. U.S. military officials claimed the explosives in the vehicle were designated for the Kabul Airport where the U.S. was commandeering one of the largest airlifts in history. While the military claims this was a successful, targeted operation that eliminated a terrorist, investigations by The New York Times and The Washington Post say otherwise.
Analysis of the events undertaken by The Times and The Post included a thorough examination of background information, security footage, satellite imagery, and interviews with a physicist and bomb technician. They found that the "terrorist" killed in the drone strike was Zemari Ahmadi, a worker at a California-based NGO dedicated to fighting malnutrition in Afghanistan. The explosives? Supposedly containers holding water Ahmadi had been distributing to those in need as well as his family.
In this "targeted" operation, multiple untargeted members of Ahmadi's family were killed, including seven children and two others. While there is conflicting evidence as to what indeed occurred and who Zemari Ahmadi really was, these events bring up the question of how much Executive Power should be used in the name of defending national security.
When representatives at the Constitutional Convention drafted the framework for the different parts of government, they explicitly tried to limit the Executive Branch's power. Having just fought a revolution against a monarch, they worried about a tyrannical leader. That is why they put several checks in place against presidential power, such as the power for Congress to override a presidential veto and remove a president who oversteps their boundaries. However, the various crises the U.S. has gone through, from the Civil War to the Great Depression to 9/11, have inspired a gradual increase in Executive Power. Nowadays, Presidents frequently justify unilateral actions, especially those done by the military or intelligence organizations, in the name of national security. For example, despite their sometimes far-reaching effects, drone strikes on suspected terrorists are often ordered by members of the Executive Branch, without more widespread consideration. Officials have frequently justified these strikes as necessary for the U.S.'s national security and portrayed them as legal use of force for self-defense. However, are most drone strikes really a lawful act of self-defense? U.N. Security Council Resolution 1368 confirms that "the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence" is allowed under the UN Charter. Due to this, the U.S. argues that its drone strikes are legal as killing a terrorist is an act of self-defense. However, officials have yet to adequately clarify what operations are covered under the umbrella of self-defense. President Obama asserted that the U.S. takes action against terrorists who pose an "imminent" threat to the United States. However, leaked Justice Department documents have clarified that the U.S. military doesn't require concrete evidence of such a threat in order for them to use lethal force. While there is no question that eliminating an actual terrorist is often a necessary operation to prevent the loss of innocent lives, there should be evidence to prove that the person being killed is indeed an actual terrorist so an innocent person isn’t killed by mistake.
While it would be ridiculous to attempt to address the complex legal and moral issues surrounding drone warfare in one short blog post, it brings to mind the question of how powerful the Executive Branch should be. In numerous instances, such as the use of "enhanced interrogation" (torture) by the CIA, widespread surveillance of Americans' cell phone data by the NSA, and other government undertakings, the legality of actions has been questioned. But in these cases, members of the Executive Branch have justified them as necessary for the protection of U.S. national security and claimed they are acts of self-defense. But what defines a threat to national security and to what extent are military actions justifiable as "self-defense"?
Analysis Questions:
In Federalist 51, Madison writes that "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition." What do you think he was hinting at and what implications does it have for the power of the Executive Branch?
What do you think defines a threat to U.S. national security? And what constitutes an appropriate response to a threat to national security?
Links:
General overview by NPR:
Analysis on the Legality of Drone Warfare:
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2296&context=facpub
Ever Increasing Powers of the President:
https://today.law.harvard.edu/feature/presidential-power-surges/
3 comments:
The American incursion into Afghanistan has resulted in the deaths of countless civilians — 325 casualties from U.S. airstrikes alone in 2018. According to a U.N. report in October, the number of civilians killed or injured by airstrikes has increased a startling 39 percent each year. Afghans looked to American troops for protection from terrorist elements; instead, they were caught in the crossfire.
Beyond UNSC Resolution 1368 mentioned in the blog post, Congress has attempted to establish multiple forms of checks and balances to counteract the military powers of the executive branch. For example, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 was passed in an aim of limiting presidential power of involving the U.S. into any “hostilities” (which is never explicitly defined). However, not only has the resolution been violated by former Presidents, it doesn't even apply to drones as the language of the document does not address unmanned weapons — despite the mass amounts of violence airstrikes cause.
When they laid down the framework of the War Powers Resolution, the lawmakers exhibited astonishing foresight (in regards to abuses of military might by the executive branch), but they could not have envisioned drones playing a part in international conflicts. Because unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are employed from places thousands of miles away from where they are actually used to attack, the President does not need to obtain congressional approval for the use of UAVs in military operations as they technically do not result in hostilities where they are employed.
The root cause of this violence, however, is how the executive branch justifies the use of this violence — relating to the international relations theory of securitization. When rhetoric used by the president construes others as threats, they create these threats to begin with. In particular, some policymakers call Daesh “terrorists,” when in fact the label itself is what creates these “terrorists.” The need to paint differences in populations as “terrorists” leads to the securitization that justifies war. This is then amplified by the use of media to bring credence to its policies, inevitably creating echo chambers that reinforce threats to defend against. For example, Facebook feeds show users stories based on browser history, creating echo chambers and allowing the alt-right to spread fears of a “liberal agenda” and “falling behind” which fueled Trump’s campaigns to drain the swamp, stop ISIS, and repeal Obamacare, despite failure to do any of these. The same applies to the current situation in Afghanistan where the executive branch again otherizes Afghans, justifying the use of excess military force in the region.
- https://www.npr.org/2018/11/09/664360606/entire-families-wiped-out-u-s-airstrikes-killed-many-civilians-in-syria
- https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/10/asia/afghanistan-airstrikes-civilian-deaths-un-report-intl/index.html
The U.S. Military's strategy of "Pre-emptive Self-Defence" has been heavily exercised in the Middle East since the September 11th attack and throughout the War on Terror. The goal being to eliminating any potential threats, it's fallacy lies in the fact that a terrorist must be labelled a terrorist before they commit a single act of terrorism, and sentenced to death on top of that. With the development of UAVs and guided missile systems, the elimination of threats has become safer and surerer while false alarms have become extremely disastrous. While it is fact that airstriking an armed militant avoids any direct conflict, it is also fact that U.S. operatives would not have shot 7 children on a false alarm.
There is historical evidence to back American misconduct with regards to aerial/military strikes, despite intentions to promote safety or to counter terrorism and other perceived threats. While opposing the rise of Communism in Southeast Asia for example, Operation Rolling Thunder (in the mid 1960's) saw the bombing of vast areas of North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, many of which targeted Vietminh strongholds but also civilians. The My Lai massacre conducted by U.S. forces further exemplifies wrongful targeting and extreme brutality in the name of a greater purpose, which at the time was to prevent Communist ideals from spreading globally. After the 9/11 attacks and with the War on Terror emerging, the U.S. involved itself deeply in the Middle East in order to target terrorists and also better maintain peace in the unstable region. Airstrikes earlier this year in Iraq and Syria in response to attacks by militias on American personnel, which bombed storage facilities, were ordered by Biden without much knowledge being handed to Congress prior to the military action. Congress not being informed highlights the (pre-emptive) war power of the executive branch, and poses questions over whether or not this is a fair power to leave in the hands of a President (Does the system of checks and balances adequately regulate this power?). It is important that airstrikes being carried out against terrorism in fact do target the correct individual/s, and not lead to loss of innocent life. Despite the vast databases available to the Pentagon, it seems that there is confusion and uncertainty at times with regards to identity and confirmation of terrorist history/involvement when attempting to engage in "pre-emptive self defense," so it is difficult to say whether or not such operations should be carried out without full confidence in having identified and tracked down the threatening terrorist. As mentioned, this airstrike led to the death of children and family, which is something that should not happen.
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