Summations Only

Try them for what, and in what courts? People in Pakistan, or any other nation, aren't subject to US law. How could we possibly try them?I mean, I understand the concerns you have about the overreach of power, here, but militaries have always had command authority to determine what is a battlefield and what, or who, should be a target. Your objection, therefore, isn't meaningfully with anything new that's happening, it's with the very idea of nations using their militaries.Well, I agree, for the most part. Military force by it's very nature is outside of a lot of international law and the normal rules of statecraft. That's why war has been called "the last argument of kings." By it's very nature, the exercise of military power says "the law, for the most part, isn't applicable now." That's why war should be an absolute last resort, it's a truly awful thing and inimical to civilization.But while a state of war may not exist between the US and Pakistan, the use of these air strikes to prosecute the objectives of the war on terror was approved by Congress, so I don't see how you could get to a "violation of the separation of powers" argument. So I just don't see where you can say that these strikes are somehow illegitimate. Enemy soldiers don't get a trial before they're neutralized on the battlefield. That's never been the standard.

Yes; the military command of the United States following orders that ultimately stem from the authority of the President in his role as Commander-in-Chief. But it most definitely wasn't any kind of "trial." It was a military-ordered air strike into a combat zone. There's no system of government in the world that requires trials for every enemy or target fired upon by that nations militaries. That's an absurdity - imagine how paralyzed the civilized governments of the world would be if every military response had to be predicated by a full trial by jury. Imagine how impotent they would be in response to a force that operated under no such restriction. And, again, there's still the jurisdictional problem of trying foreign nationals under laws they're not subject to and for things that might not even be crimes under their law. Yes, it's manifestly a problem with war that it cannot really be constrained by a nation's laws or borders. That's all part of its unique horror. How is it not a battlefield when bombs are going off? It becomes a battlefield when the military decides to fight someone there. So what would you rather have? Grand armies marching with fixed bayonets? Dysentery and battlefield amputations? Hundreds of thousands dead to settle political scores? I'm with you on the horror of war right up to the point where you think there's a moral need to make it far more dangerous to be a soldier. And, you know, it's not like it was safe to be a bystander in the bad old days, either. War is a horror. Prosecuting it from the safety of a computer screen, with civilian casualties in the tens instead of the thousands, seems like a pretty clear improvement to me. But then, I'm not saddled with the kind of immorality that demands that millions die just to make war "painful."Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

They're combat zones by the simple virtue of being zones where combat is occurring. And what is a military air strike if not combat? Because a nation's military used military ordinance to attack them? I don't follow. It's nothing more than the dichotomy you've put forward in your posts. Show me a single example from history where we've ever said "here is a place where there can be no battlefield" and had that work. Armies have fought in jungles and in deserts. Snipers fire from church steeples because they're high up; armies fight in and for cities because of their immense value.Everywhere has always been a battlefield defined precisely because a military is fighting there. That's what makes it a battlefield! Drone strikes don't violate any of the provisions of Article 8 of these statutes.

You keep saying "criminal", as though it would somehow be better, more legal, if the United States began acting like all human beings were subject to its laws, regardless of their citizenship or residence, and began enforcing those laws at the point of police firearms.You've not been able to explain how it's more legal for the United States to "try" people not in custody, who are not American citizens, and who are engaged in conduct that may not even be illegal under their own law. I would point out that under those circumstances - the accused being unable to face their accuser, challenge evidence, or present a defense - no "trial" could be anything but a farce. Sadly, accidental, unintended casualties is the name of the game in military intervention. But many less people are dead as a result of drone strikes than would be dead as a result of a military invasion and occupation of Pakistan. Make what illegal?

So do something.

So then, you admit that there's no "due process" violation here, since the people being targeted by air strikes aren't due any process in American courts. What do you think militaries do, deliver flowers? If it's an accident, how could you ever be guilty of it? If you act with reckless indifference and thereby cause an accident, it's no accident at all. About six a month, in fact. My best friend growing up died in one. He was an infantry paramedic trying to evacuate wounded soldiers when his medivac team came under rocket attack from Al Qaeda.

How are they "like criminals" if what they're doing isn't against their laws?

So I thought to myself "you know, I bet Oni has, per usual, used selective quoting to misrepresent his sources", and what a surprise, I was right!

quote:

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Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;

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Drone strikes don't violate Article 8, but you've violated the forum guidelines.

Look, you know you're being dishonest. Adding the "etc" that isn't actually in the material you're quoting is the proof. Why not just stop?

You mean like 9/11?The rules of engagement are certainly important, but it's neither their intent nor the legitimate practice of them for them to be gameable. You can't surround yourself with children as human shields to ward off response. You can't order attacks from a school or cafe. You can't attack Americans, then run into a hospital and claim "sanctuary."Someone who hides among the innocent, either to forestall reprisal or to turn a reprisal into bad headlines for the repriser, is the one responsible for whatever harm comes to them.

What are we supposed to do, say "ollie ollie oxen-free!" and let him go? When the choice is 40 dead children or 4000 dead in his next attack, I don't envy the people who have to solve that moral calculus, but I can understand when they come to the conclusion that they do.Nobody forced that guy to run into a school. Nobody forced these guys to come into where civilians live instead of plotting their attacks from the hinterlands.

It's the part where you've misrepresented your source. Teaching you the intricacies of the English language is outside of scope.

That's a noble sentiment coming from a bunch of slaveholders, but those words are not present in a legal document. A violation of what? By what law do you arrest people who aren't subject to your jurisdiction? By what law do you charge them with activities that, under their law, might not even be illegal? I keep asking and you keep not answering. My friend didn't die in "an attack against an invading army." He died in an attack on a medivac convoy, travelling under medical livery and protected in that endeavor by the Geneva Conventions. I'm not saying that we should be terrorists to fight terrorists. I've never believed that. But drone strikes aren't terrorism.

No, that's exactly backwards. Militaries have the legal right to operate in other countries. Police have no legal right to operate anywhere except their own jurisdictions. I think restrained, surgical strikes against specific targets represent a higher ideal of civilization than the vast destruction and loss of human life that accompanies traditional infantry warfare. To subdue by killing, yes. Soldiers don't shoot to wound, but to kill. Directly targeting key personnel to disrupt enemy organization is a tactic that goes back to Sun Tsu. That's what military snipers do. That's why we killed Yamamoto (and his air crew, and probably somebody on the ground in China.) There's literally nothing new going when drones are used to strike at key enemies.