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The 'Obama Doctrine': Kill, Don't Detain
George Bush left a big problem in the shape of Guantánamo. The solution? Don't capture bad guys, assassinate by drone
In 2001, Charles Krauthammer first coined the phrase "Bush Doctrine", which would later become associated most significantly with the legal anomaly known as pre-emptive strike. Understanding the doctrine with hindsight could lead to a further understanding of the legacy that the former administration left - the choice to place concerns of national security over even the most entrenched norms of due process and the rule of law. It is, indeed, this doctrine that united people across the world in their condemnation of Guantánamo Bay.
Some CIA officials want to extend the controversial drone campaign to include tribal areas in Pakistan. (Photograph: James Lee Harper Jr./AFP/Getty Images) The ambitious desire to close Guantánamo hailed the coming of a new era, a feeling implicitly recognised by the Nobel peace prize that President Obama
received. Unfortunately, what we witnessed was a false dawn. The
lawyers for the Guantánamo detainees with whom I am in touch in the US
speak of their dismay as they prepare for Obama to do the one thing
they never expected - to send the detainees back to the military
commissions - a decision that will lose Obama all support he once had
within the human rights community.
Worse still, a completely new trend has emerged that, in many ways, is more dangerous than the trends under Bush. Extrajudicial killings and targeted assassinations will soon become the main point of contention that Obama's administration will need to justify. Although Bush was known for his support for such policies, the extensive use of drones under Obama have taken the death count well beyond anything that has been seen before.
Harold Koh, the legal adviser to the US state department, explained the justifications behind unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) when addressing the American Society of International Law's annual meeting on 25 March 2010:
"[I]t is the considered view of this administration ... that targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war ... As recent events have shown, al-Qaida has not abandoned its intent to attack the United States, and indeed continues to attack us. Thus, in this ongoing armed conflict, the United States has the authority under international law, and the responsibility to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks ... [T]his administration has carefully reviewed the rules governing targeting operations to ensure that these operations are conducted consistently with law of war principles ... "[S]ome have argued that the use of lethal force against specific individuals fails to provide adequate process and thus constitutes unlawful extrajudicial killing. But a state that is engaged in armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force. Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust, and advanced technologies have helped to make our targeting even more precise. In my experience, the principles of distinction and proportionality that the United States applies are not just recited at meeting. They are implemented rigorously throughout the planning and execution of lethal operations to ensure that such operations are conducted in accordance with all applicable law."
The legal justifications put forward by Koh are reminiscent of the arguments that were used by John Yoo and others in their bid to lend legitimacy to unlawful practices such as rendition, arbitrary detention and torture. The main cause for concern from Koh's statements is the implication that protective jurisdiction to which the US feels it is entitled in order to carry out operations anywhere in the world still continues under Obama. The laws of war do not allow for the targeting of individuals outside of the conflict zone, and yet we now find that extrajudicial killings are taking place in countries as far apart as Yemen, the Horn of Africa and Pakistan. From a legal and moral perspective, the rationale provided by the State Department is bankrupt and only reinforces the stereotype that the US has very little concern for its own principles.
Despite the legalities of what is being conducted, the actuality of extrajudicial killings, especially through UAVs is frightening. The recent revelations by WikiLeaks on the killing of civilians by US Apache helicopters in Iraq has strongly highlighted the opportunities for misuse surrounding targeting from the air. In the Iraq case, there were soldiers who were supposed to be using the equipment to identify so-called combatants, and yet they still managed to catastrophically target the wrong people. This situation is made even worse in the case of UAVs, where the operators are far removed from the reality of the conflict and rely on digital images to see what is taking place on the ground.
Conservative estimates from thinktanks such as the New American Foundation claim that civilian causalities from drone attacks are around one in three, although this figure is disputed by the Pakistani authorities. According to Pakistani official statistics, every month an average of 58 civilians were killed during 2009. Of the 44 Predator drone attacks that year, only five targets were correctly identified; the result was over 700 civilian casualties.
Regardless of the figures used, the case that extrajudicial killings are justified is extremely weak, and the number of civilian casualties is far too high to justify their continued use.
A further twist to the Obama Doctrine is the breaking of a taboo that the Bush administration balked at - the concept of treating US citizens outside of the US constitutional process. During the Bush era, the treatment of detainees such as John Walker Lindh, Yasser Hamdi and Jose Padilla showed reluctance by officials to treat their own nationals in the way it had all those of other nationalities (by, for instance, sending them to Guantánamo Bay and other secret prisons). The policy of discrimination reserved for US citizens showed that there was a line the US was not willing to cross.
At least, today, we can strike discrimination off the list of grievances against the current president. The National Security Council of the US has now given specific permission to the CIA to target certain US citizens as part of counter-terrorism operations. Specifically, Anwar al-Awlaki has been singled out for such treatment, as it has been claimed that he was directly involved in the planning of the Major Hasan Nidal killings and the Christmas Day bomber attacks. Indeed, it is claims such as this that bring the entire concept of targeted assassinations into question. The US would like us to believe that we should simply trust that they have the relevant evidence and information to justify such a killing, without bringing the individual to account before a court.
The assumption that trust should be extended to a government that has involved itself in innumerable unlawful and unconscionable practices since the start of the war on terror is too much to ask. Whatever goodwill the US government had after 9/11 was destroyed by the way in which it prosecuted its wars. Further, the hope that came with the election of Barack Obama has faded as his policies have indicated nothing more than a reconfiguration of the basic tenet of the Bush Doctrine - that the US's national security interests supersede any consideration of due process or the rule of law. The only difference - witness the rising civilian body count from drone attacks - being that Obama's doctrine is even more deadly.
- Posted in
96 Comments so far
Show AllClearly, we will let them do anything.
What's left, after the entirety of the Marquis de Sade's 100 Days is now the law of the land?
Not a peep from Congress. Not a peep from the MSM. The about-to-be-appointed "Justice" I guaranfuckingteee will be down with the Unitary Executive Concept, aka dictatorship.
The American reaction to this has been simply to ignore it, deny it, and definitely excoriate anyone with the decency to point it out, whether at dinner or in the media.
If it's all cyclical, I suspect we're on the heavy end of downward.
My plan is to have as much fun as possible despite everything, and die well, eyes wide open, neither asleep nor shrieking in abject terror.
Then again, I just ran out of coffee.
I remember the ABA made some noise during Bush II, but where are they now?
It would seem that if the ABA organized, it could shut down the legal system in protest therefore forcing some move back into law.
The premises of the current wars, as dictated by the Neocon cabal and the MIC, remain in place. Obama is a tool of these interests, and issues like his disastrous healthcare plan are simply blips of nuance on the radar screen intended to create the illusion of difference and change. The programs and policies of the Project for a New American Century continue unabated. Indeed, Obomber is actually less reluctant to go to war with Iran than Bush was. We need to stop allowing the politicians and media to frame the issues, as they have done with the whole Tea Party phenomenon, which has become little else than a prop for the extreme right wing of the Republican party. It is all part of a divide and conquer strategy. Honest conservatives, liberals, centrists, leftists, anarchists and others must make common cause, throw out the corporate political class and replace it with people who truly represent us. Then we can work out our differences.
"...But a state that is engaged in armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force."...
----------------------
Couldn't Al-Qaeda, then part of the government in Afghanistan, use this same warped legal justification for the attacks of 9/11? (If they were involved.)
Were there in fact members of Al Qaeda in the Afghan government?
Taliban yes,but Al Qaeda?
No. Members of Al Qaeda were working with the US government. For the 9/11 attack, they worked with FBI & CIA, trained on US Air Force bases. http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/lofiversion/index.php?t56.html. Initially, 'the base' was a database of fighters in Afghanistan that trained, with US support, to oust the Soviet Union. Then, later, the US worked with the same forces in Yugoslavia. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=2769
See my reply above at 10:40 am.
Except AQ was never part of the government in Afghanistan, or any other nation state. So the U.S. has thrown its armies against a non-state actor that has no boundaries, no nation, no government. And all the U.S. has succeeded in doing is the equivalent of throwing gas on an oil fire. And in Afghanistan all the U.S. is doing is fighting a civil war against religiopolitical rebels on behalf of a corrupt government, and basically accomplishing nothing against AQ,which, according to U.S. military intelligence, isn't even in Afghanistan. The breadth and depth of the decade long clusterfuck in which the U.S. has engaged leaves rational minds breathless. The crazy minds, especially those in D.C., are merely panting heavily from all their cheering.
"The breadth and depth of the decade long cluster fuck in which the U.S. has engaged leaves rational minds breathless."
But, the wars are for control of oil. Operation Iraqi Liberation comes to mind. And in the book "Taliban," we see that the oil interests in the USA have had a long time dream of building an oil and gas pipeline across Afghanistan.
Karzai was Unicol's president in Afghanistan before the military moved in.
War's and conquest being an uncertain endeavor, the events in Central Asia and Iraq make sense to me.
It just has not worked out like the idiots in Washington believed it would.
I am very curious about the coming federal elections. Will people overturn congress? Will congress be replaced with third party candidates? Will the right wing take over?
I am very pessimistic about the future of our nation. But, the stock market is doing great. So the owners of the country are now very happy.
Sadly, your comments are right on the money. Since most of the imbeciles that comprise the electorate think that the last 9 years have been about 911 rather than oil, the chances of our foreign policy changing are nil.
Except AQ was never part of the government in Afghanistan, or any other nation state.
---------------------------------------
According to wikipedia:
"...Al-Qaeda enjoyed the Taliban's protection and a measure of legitimacy as part of their Ministry of Defense, although only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan."...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda
'AQ' as you so quaintly put it was created, funded, trained, armed and supported by the CIA via Pakistan and it's ISI.
So 'AQ' is an arm of -A- government. Just not Afghanistan's.
The United States is not in legitimate self defense. We were not attacked by Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen or Pakistan. The events of 9/11 were not a foreign terrorist attack on our nation because of our great freedoms that they resent. It was the end of our great freedoms and the fall into fascism in our country.
We must allow the truth of the events of that day to be known. There is ample evidence that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolitions. Our air defenses were in a state of shut down and there is no evidence against any foreign nation invjolved, with the exception of Israel. 9/11 was the Pearl Harbor event to facilitate the collapse of our democracy.
For our President to have a hit list of people, including American citizens, to be killed without trial, is just the latest low point in our fascist government. More to come.
wantrealdemocracy
Very well said. I said basically the same thing you have said, but in greater detail, on a post several days ago and got roundly condemned by someone who appears to be a neoconservative named jakenewton. Like so many neoconservatives [and liberals], he refused to believe, despite great evidence, that the WTC Towers had come down by controlled demolitions. I finally realized that it was useless to engage in any more discussions with him as it became apparent that no matter what I would say, nothing would convince him that that the Bush/Cheney administration had once again lied to the American people.
It is impossible to engage people like jakenewton in any kind of meaningful dialogue because they are so closed minded and dumbed down by the whore MSM that they believe everything they are told to believe, so many people like jake cannot accept the thought that our Government would murder thousands of its own citizens for nefarious reasons. I do not purport to know exactly what happened on 911, but I have a lot of questions that remain and to say the least, the governments conspiracy theory of 911 is very weak; especially since they have pretty much blacked out any facts of nano thermite ect. One thing I would tell people like jakenewton: You cannot believe anything you are told by our Government until it is proven otherwise; because they have lied and given us THEIR CONSPIRACY THEORIES! And that has been proven over and over again and only the most politically, sophomoric and naive would argue that point!
The problem is we have read your "facts of nano thermite ect."
and we also read http://www.debunking911.com/
which has facts about thermite and more and the two sets of "facts" don't mix well.
I think what is really hidden is the coverup of those that knew the Planes were coming and who trained and funded the pilots. Unfortunately clinging to a set of contradictory demolition theories distracts from a real investigation.
Jim Glover
What one has to keep in mind is what Barrie Zwicker pointed out in his book Towers of Deception. He listed 26 pieces of evidence, one for each letter of the alphabet, which casts serious doubt upon the official conspiracy theory. The point is that it is not simply how the WTC towers collapsed and that they somehow came down in the unbelievably quick time of 10 seconds. It is also the other 25 pieces of evidence listed by Zwicker that puts the Bush/Cheney fable to shame. All the more reason for an open and honest investigation to take place concerning the events of Sept. 11, 2001 but instead of having a future investigation headed by a Bush insider like Philip Zelikow, a new investigation should instead be composed of people like scientists, academics, intellectuals, professionals such as architects, engineers, physicists, firefighters, airline pilots, air traffic controllers, and the families of those people who needlessly died on 09/11/01.
OK, Lets have a real investigation...
I am going to meeting tonight where a friend of mine is a dedicated truther and an Engineer from my home state of Ohio.
I am going to ask a couple questions like "how many here want a new investigation and have concluded that the buildings were a secret demolition?"
Then I want to know if they were found out to be wrong would these ten years be wasted.
Sure we need a new investigation but how much time should be spent on the varioius Demolition theories and how much on releasing files on who knew what and when they knew it?
There is a lot of truth to learn and documents to find but what if you guys are wrong.... will anything be opened?
anyway please prepare for the investigation and check on the source I gave you about each of your 25 alphabet questions.
Cheers
Instead of taking time to prove or disprove a theory, I like the idea of taking action to solve the problems facing us now, with our militaristic, imperialistic, corporatocracy, government.
Voting out President Obama isn't the answer. Who would replace him? Most likely another hawk! Obama will be with us for a while and we need to hold his feet to the fire in demanding: (1) the end of the illegal, immoral wars of mass murder, mass misery, massive waste of money and resouces, and massive destruction,that fuel futher resentment and hatred of us. (2) REAL campaign finance reform that eliminates the lobbyist's $ from influencing weak politicians. (3) A REAL Nuclear Policy Review that does not leave any "deterrent" weapons or possible use of them against another nuclear armed nation "on the table", but focuses instead on working diligently for the total abolition of these monstrous, nightmare, tools of death and destruction.
I think we need a huge coalition of all peace organizations and groups working for change,for descending on DC to demand these changes. History shows that when enough people gather to demand justice, that's when change actually happens.
...never "open or honest" within the false framework of our devolved government/culture. The compromised Zelikow himself does not know who pulls the strings.
Jim G.
One does not have to read Debunking 9/11 Myths since David Ray Griffin has done a masterful, methodical and incisive job of eviscerating the extremely feeble arguments put forth by that Popular Mechanics book in Ch. 4 of his own book entitled Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory. As David Ray Griffin points out in his book, "It [Ch. 4 of his book] shows that although this book [Debunking 9/11 Myths] claims to have debunked all the major claims of the 9/11 truth movement, it fails to refute a single one of them."
As former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury during the Reagan administration Paul Craig Roberts observes in a blurb to Dr. Griffins's book:
"This new book destroys the credibility of the NIST and Popular Mechanics reports and annihilates his critics."
All any of your 9/11 truth friends need to do is to read Dr. Griffin's book in order to justify the need for a new and genuine investigation to take place concerning what actually happened on 9/11/01.
The State Department statement is filled with weasel words like the last phrase: "in accordance with all applicable law." After all, everything hangs on who decides what is "applicable". The statement is pregnant, and damning, for all that it chooses leave out, in terms of the discussion. Good material for a Critical Thinking class – sixth grade on up.
Sterling150 - Agreed with your statement about 'applicable' law.
And after they finish Thinking Critically, maybe those sixth graders could debate if following the 'applicable law' leads to justice.
Oh but wait! Critical Thinking and Debate classes for USA sixth graders? Would they help those kids pass the next black-white, right-wrong multiple choice test required by NCLB?!
Geneva Conventions require that the utmost be done to prevent civilian casualities, with an 80% civilian kill rate drone attacks consistently insure violations thus war crimes attributed to Obomber, Congress and USA citizens.
That's why Bu$h and cronies will never be investigated and prosecuted (as with 9/11.) Not only is Obu$ha as guilty of war crimes as the previous regime, most of CONgress is complicit as well. To indict Bu$h would be to indict themselves.
The 'Obama Doctrine' is the 'doctrine' of the mafia and drug kingpins, etc:
Leave no witnesses.
Dead suspects cannot testify about being tortured by the God-blessed citizens of the greatest nation in the entire universe.
The current American government, big business sector, and military, and especially the government and military of Israel, function EXACTLY like the mafia and drug kingpins: intimidation of rivals and enemies alike, intimidation and/or killing of witnesses to their crimes, code of silence (omertà), betrayal of past collaborators, nepotism, loyalty to none except their fellow kingpins.
The mafia metaphor has in fact gained a great deal of currency in the discourse of the last few years, and rightly so. So who's going to be our Elliot Ness?
Lawyers are for sale to the highest bidders.
Well, I know all seems like bad news these days, but don't forget that later this summer, the Iraq war will soon become the "New Dawn". And of course, all the troops will come home by August 31, or at least by Labor Day, the economy will suddenly turn around so it seems like 1955 again, and everyone will live happily ever after.
Yes, everyone will be thoroughly happy and enlightened, and all the dead people from the wars will come back to life; and arms, legs, and brain matter will grow back as good as new, like the way a starfish can do it; and the Iraqis will throw all those flowers we heard about; and we here at home will get all hundreds of billions of dollars that was stolen and then wasted on the wars, and on bailouts, back...
Wait.... Oops. Sorry. I was sleep-writing.
"We become like our enemies"- Isaac Rosenfeld, "Alpha and Omega"
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo (Walt Kelly)
A British program called New Tricks, which is about three British policeman who come out of retirement in order to work on unsolved cases, had an interesting episode last Saturday on PBS. They were attempting to discover why a British citizen had supposedly committed suicide inside a U.S. Air Force base in the UK about six years ago. The British case squad finds out that Peter Edeleman [the man whose death had been ruled a suicide] had gone into the base at night wearing a camoflage suit in order to investigate an explosion that had occurred at night inside the base. The former commander of the U.S. air base [and now a civilian], whom the Brits questioned, claimed that every flight that had taken off that day had been accounted for. But one of the members of the team questioned a former member of the U.S. Air Force who had worked at the base and who said that a plane had crashed that night and that it was actually a CIA plane that had, as its cargo, nine British citizens who were suspected of being terrorists. This military whistleblower [who told the British squad member, Gerry Standing, that he wished to remain anonymous], told Standing that the CIA was attempting to take these alleged terrorists covertly to Guantanamo Bay. The American told Gerry Standing that, in other words, what had happened was an example of extraordinaty rendition. The other team menbers grilled the former commander of the base about this, telling the former commander that British citizens should not have been kidnapped from British soil, but he claimed that he knew nothing about this and that all flights which had left on that day had reached their destinations.
The episode ended with a little bit of ambiguity as it hedged its bets by saying that the unsolved case squad could not definitely say that Peter Edeleman was murdered since the person who made the claim that the plane had contained prisoners who were headed to Guantanamo Bay had decided that he did not wish to testify about what he knew because he did not want to run the risk of angering the CIA. Also the victim, Peter Edeleman, had written a letter before he died in which he said that all the people who had died in the crash had been burned beyond recognition. There was also another witness who was with Edeleman and who also saw the charred bodies but he tried to claim that what he saw were actually aliens from outer space. The head of the case squad thought the CIA had put pressure on him to back down on what he had seen. But I thought that it was quite admirable that a television program would raise the issue of the CIA engaging in the practice of extraordinary rendition and, as to be expected, getting away with it. Now if only there were some American television programs that would have the courage to take on this issue as this British program has done.
Getting away with angering the CIA is an art form.
"War Is the Health of the State."---Randolph Bourne
You can not have a ongoing Global War on Terror without loads of terrorists. So if they aren't available you have to create them. Kill a whole lot of innocent civilians and you guarantee years and years of surviving family members who want to commit jihad against America. Oh, what am I saying, they hate us for our freedom, right?
What is Obama going to do when a few of those surviving family members immigrate to the Canada or Mexico and start building their own Predator Drones? Just a thought.
Isn't Al Qaeda supposed to be in 60+ countries? So we reserve the "right" to drop drones on all these countries---in Europe, where ever?
If the civilian deaths involved people with European or English names, such as Jane Smith, this policy would end immediately.
If Anwar al-Walaki's name was James Goodman, his extra-judicial death sentence would never be tolerated.
This policy is inherently racist, just like our corrupt wars.
Good article, but I just have to point out this ironic sentence, which is just one of many cliches centered around the mythological official conspiracy theory of 9/11…
"Whatever goodwill the US government had after 9/11…"
Well, one could rephrase that by saying:
"Whatever goodwill the US government had after 9/11 when the rest of the world was too stunned to realize they had just witnessed an inside job and thought instead that the most powerful military and air defense system in the world had been stymied by a handful of Muslim fanatics with boxcutters and such major pull with the Almighty that they miraculously acquired crack top-gun piloting skills at the moment of taking the controls and were able to suspend the laws of physics and make three enormous skyscrapers turn to dust in mid air."
well said
Clovis
Bingo! Intelligently and persuasively well stated.
Every American citizen and their children are now in our government's cross hairs.
This is worse than Orwell's 1984!
It's not "our" government, it's "theirs." Everyone not of "them" is in the cross hairs.
"our broad mission is clear: we are going to disrupt and dismantle, defeat and destroy..."oourprez speaking to u.s. forces in afghanistan...reminds me of a little guy with a mustache...or at least, of big brother...
"The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something... You don't quit.. The american armed services doesn't quit,..we persevere,,,and we will prevail! I am absolutely confident of that!"...sig heil! sig heil!-definitly the little guy with the mustache...oourprez even wore a bomber a bomb!!er jacket~ another psycho-socio-path at the head of my country 'tis of thee...
yes - indeedeee --- the "USA does NOT QUITE once it starts"......
as in - NEVER quits "doing the same MISTAKE over and over again expecting different results"...Albert Einstein
ya -- that kind of "never quits".
......send the phrase "LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL"
to the ashheap of history. This is OUR failed legacy.
Once again, if everyone here devoted as much energy doing real organizing instead of useless blabbering on here or on their Facebook pages (Facebook has destroyed activism in my town), we might get somewhere.
In this case, organize a mass campaign of US citizens directed at the Norwegian Nobel Comittee to rescind Peace Prize, hopefully to accompanied with blistering condemnation by the comittee and maybe even the King of Norway. The impact of such an unprecedented event would exactly the damaging effect on US foreign policy that we really need right now.
EXCELLENT idea. Any way of putting it into practice?
Ther are various strategies, but one thing I can think of is making use of the international Indymedia Network, which for some reason, is no longer being used to it's full potential like it was during the period from Seattle to Iraq. Pittsburgh Indymedia is currently adrift without a webmaster and filling with spam and activists have instead regressed into an odd sort of private activism anongst facebook "friends". But Insymedia in most cities is still active.
Post a story on Indymedia Global with a link to an organizing site. Get a real open letter and petetion going and organize a mass march on Oslo, I've always wanted to see Norway...
Alternativley, use Znet to get something started.
Good idea. When are you going to get it going, pjd412? Tell us when your story is posted and when the petition is ready to sign.
/cm
pjd412
Those are good strategies....What about organizing massive protests at the bases where the drone operators are based? Apparently, most drones are operated from bases in NV and AZ. Which bases, though? Have there been any protests/organized civil disobedience at these bases?