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Why Obama's 'Targeted Killing' is Worse than Bush's Torture
Both are legally prohibited but speciously justified by the White House. The difference? Obama's policy kills innocent bystanders
By June 2004, it was confirmed that the US was using torture at secret detention sites and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It was in that month that piles of "torture memos" were released to the public. Torture did not officially end until President Obama took office in January 2009.
An unmanned Predator drone of the type operating along the Afhanistan-Pakistan border. (Photo: Rex Features/Sipa Press)
A similar story is emerging with respect to targeted killing. The Obama administration has produced its own infamous memo; like many of the torture memos, it was written by lawyers in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel. It concerns something that many consider worse than torture: the memo apparently seeks to justify "targeted killing".
Calls have gone out for the release of the memo, but there really is no need. We did need to see the torture memos, but not because anyone with legal expertise on the subject would be enlightened by the analysis – torture is absolutely prohibited. The legal analysis could only be specious. Rather, prior to mid 2004, the use of torture, rendition and secret detention were only rumored. The fact of the memos gave credence to speculation.
In the case of targeted killing, the world can see what is happening. The memo need not be published to confirm the fact. And, as with torture, the memo will not contain a persuasive legal argument respecting the fundamental human rights and humanitarian law at issue.
"Targeted killing" is the killing of certain individuals away from battle zones using military means, including missiles, bombs and commando raids. The missiles and bombs are often delivered by drone aircraft. Given the munitions, it is the rare attack that spares the lives of bystanders – over 2,200 persons are estimated to have been killed in the three years of the Obama administration in Pakistan alone. We have no estimates for deaths in Yemen or Somalia, the other scenes of relentless attacks.
"Targeted killing" has become the euphemism du jour. Remember "harsh interrogation"? The conduct discussed in the killing memo was once simply referred to as assassination.
More and more people are pushing back against the policy. They are reacting, no doubt, to the fact that President Obama has authorized many times the killings that President Bush did. Obama apparently authorized the killing of an American in Yemen, and he is now engaged in the building of drone bases to continue the campaign of assassination. Greg Miller of the Washington Post notes that "no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation's security goals."
In 2001, the US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, stated on Israeli television in connection with Israeli targeted killing of suspected terrorists:
"The United States government is very clearly on the record as against targeted assassinations. They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that."
The US did not support such killing for fundamental reasons of law and morality. Fundamental principles of law protect the human right to life and due process of law. Unlike torture, which is never permitted, states are permitted to allow designated authorities to carry out the use of lethal force in certain limited situations. In situations of armed conflict hostilities, lawful combatants will not be prosecuted for killing that complies with international humanitarian law. Today, under the international legal definition of armed conflict, the United States is involved in such hostilities in one country only: Afghanistan.
Beyond Afghanistan, any use of lethal force by designated authorities of the United States must follow the normal human rights limits on peacetime resort to lethal force. Authorities may engage in lethal force when necessary to save a human life immediately, if there is no alternative. In other cases, an attempt to arrest is required, followed by a fair trial within a reasonable period.
These restrictive international legal rules on killing are derived from moral principle, just as the rules against torture are. Torture and targeted killing have more in common, however. Neither is an effective means toward the ends sought by those who employ them: torture is an unreliable means of information gathering; targeted killing is ineffective on dealing with the challenge of non-state actor terrorist or militant groups.
But even if there was any data at all about assassination having a long-term positive impact on suppressing terrorism – which there is not – the data would not change the law and morality against it. Indeed, the president criticized the assassination of a nuclear scientist in Tehran. Drone attacks outside of armed conflict zones are committing the same wrong – though usually more bystanders are killed than was the case in Iran.
President Barack Obama's 3 January 2011 letter introducing his national security strategy for the coming decade states that America's overriding goals are "security", "prosperity" and a "just and sustainable international order where the rights and responsibilities of nations and peoples are upheld, especially the fundamental rights of every human being." Impressive, even inspiring – but for the fact that the president's campaign of assassination is denying many hundreds of individuals their right to life. The security strategy looks set to dramatically ramp up the number and deployment of attack drones from new permanent bases around the world.
Neither torture nor targeted killing will accomplish the goal of a "just and sustainable international order where the rights and responsibilities of nations and peoples are upheld". Human rights advocates, legal scholars, religious leaders, occupiers and voters are again pushing back against a practice carried out in our names that must end.
41 Comments so far
Show All"Torture did not officially end until President Obama took office in January 2009."
Officially ending something and actually ending something are not the same thing ... but it does sound good if you are an Obama apologist.
Obama is Evil Obama is Evil Obama is Evil Obama is Evil. . . .
Many unhinged CD commentators, such as Caleb Abell, will not be satisfied until every article on CD consists of nothing but the repetition of the above phrase. Here we have an entire piece devoted to criticizing Obama's assassination regime--arguing that it is worse than Bush's torture policy!--but that is not sufficient to protect its author from the ludicrous accusation that she is "an Obama apologist."
The up-is-down, black-is-white world in which some of these commentators live exactly mirrors the totally-detached-from-reality world of the extreme right.
Of course, the alternative is that Caleb Abell didn't read beyond the sentence he quotes--i.e., the third sentence of the article. After all, why bother to read an article before you dump on its author?
Either way, the only reason to read many of the comments on here is to get a good laugh.
Quite right, but what's being done by the establishment now won't lead to "just and sustainable international order where the rights and responsibilities of nations and peoples are upheld" even if the technique of torture was not used.
What torture will do is continue the desensitizing of those who do the torturing, those who order it and those who know it's going on. It will re-enforce the belief that these are "dangerous times" that call for "no b.s. getting tough." Once the crime is done, the incentive to suppress any flickers of guilt is there and a defensive clinging to the rationalizations will be enhanced.
This is the rationale. It's from the 1954 Doolittle Report presented in secret to President Eisenhower (whose later oft quoted comments about the "military industrial complex" didn't stop him from using it and believing in it) and was the underpinning of the anti-internal communist persecution of the so-called McCarthy era. It's pretty much what the folks in charge believe about today:
"It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, longstanding American concepts of 'fair play' must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and more effective means than those used against us."
That is how they think. So when they say how much they love our "freedoms," our "due process" and "civil liberties," they are only spinning justifications because they know the public demands euphemistic excuses for the abuses. They think the U.S. is and should be the policepersons of the world, that we should be "Marshall Dillon," a good guy who can out draw and out shoot the bad guys, or Mickey Spillane's over-the-top violent ubermacho detective Mike Hammer who, in "One Lonely Night," claimed to be the evil that is set against other evil so the good can go on with their lives.
Since this is such a psychological empowering ego-stuffing point-of-view, they can't be expected to change their minds and see the error of their ways. Only continuing publicizing of the abuses, hitting the citizenry in the same emotional place that makes them upset when animal abuse instances are outed, letting what it really is be as widely known as possible, has any chance of cutting back on the use of torture and all the other extralegal techniques they are using and want to use more of.
The silence of the democratic party especially its so called progressive caucus is a disgrace and proves how useless it is to vote for this corrupt party that has supported Obama's wars like the good little sheep they are. The creation of a new progressive party is a necessary step towards restoring democracy and the rule of law in America,
War is always the excuse for the abuse of War.
Do we focus on the abuse (the symptoms) or ending the cause (The Root).
It is impossible to end this kind of abuse or war crimes in general without first ending the War.
The War Racket is the ultimate disease.
Doctor Jim
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J. Glover,
Excellent point! All this discussion about torture, drones, secret rendition, all of it is just a subset of the larger picture - the endless wars on countries and innocent civilians. What happened on 9-11 is no excuse to go berserk for 10 years and far into the foreseeable future - but it was a convenient one, perhaps even a planned one. We'll never really know. Since then, the US has killed at least a million innocents. No country, no team of terrorists even comes close. What have these people done to us that they deserve this terror in their lives? To make things even worse, our Liar in Chief, Oblahblah, makes jokes about drones ... and everyone laughs, they think it's so funny. How callous they must be. Surely, the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers of those innocent people killed fail to see the humor.
rvrwalker....you and J. Glover make good points. The following is an excerpt of a comment I wrote but didn't post yet in response to a different article. I think my thought process applies here as well.....when it comes to the pounding of the war drums that the US has become so noted for...and when it comes to the methods and human beings utilized to do the dirty work.
What if the reality of war is..........with each violent act against an enemy a soldier's deepest inner self absolutely knows and recognizes this enemy as his or her brother, sister, mother, father, friend...but the training and the duty, the orders from the commander, the propaganda and conditioning that have enabled the soldier to see this other human being as a dangerous inhuman threat to everything she/he has been conditioned to hold dear kicks in? And then you consider that the level of immorality rises with each engagement. Where will we end up?
What will be the final level of damage done to the young men and women following orders to visit hell on another human being, mostly because they've been taught to hate this 'other' as non-human......especially at whatever moment they may come to realize just how unforgivable their soldier actions have been?
How many more and intense breaking points will be reached when these trained killers are returned and expected to resume where they left off...without benefit of an equally grueling and effective deprogramming to train them back into being carefree happy friends, lovers, skate-boarders, brothers, sisters, tv watchers, rock-skippers, employees and/or students, parents...just plain regular folks again?
There probably isn't a program in existence that could completely deprogram killer soldiers or free their minds and souls of the atrocities they've been witness to or have themselves committed.....especially when they begin to realize just how corrupt, unjustified, outright criminal and viciously orchestrated the wars they have helped wage truly are.
How could anyone live, love, work, play or interact with others normally after being taught, encouraged and then directly ordered, as obedient brave patriotic warriors, to create and embrace such outrageous horrors?
I would imagine this scenario would apply to the video game soldiers being ordered to maim and kill from the comfort of their climate-controlled, well-lit, safe and secure work stations, sitting atop their cushioned ergonomically correct battle thrones unleashing death and destruction on the manufactured 'bad guys' via a joystick.
I say the organizers and wagers of war, American style, have got to be some of the most corrupt, evil and dangerous beings yet to walk the earth.
Obama's complicit near worship of Israel and his administration's desire to protect and nurture it like a needy child is nauseating....as is so much of what comes out of his and his crony's minds and mouths as they continue to refine the methods of global devastation so well initiated by their predecessors.
If all this is coming from a president awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and if we know we'll get more of the same if he is given four more years, what will a birth defect like Mitt or Newt, or even the seemingly less offensive Ron do to us...especially if one considers that the president is really nothing more than a flesh covered mouthpiece for the evil behind the curtain? Maybe the citizenry needs to be diligently working on its own means of implementing extraordinary rendition of the repeat or the new puppet and company straight to the hell he or she has helped create.
It would seem to me that the author, and most of this nation is having a bit of an identity crisis. Let us accept what we have finally truly become, and always were...a nation of murderers.
Any U.S. citizen who has knowledge of our assassination program, and is not voicing their dissent, is complicit in the crimes. Anyone who votes for Obama in 2012 is an accessory to the crime.
"Anyone who votes for Obama in 2012 is an accessory to the crime."
Romney could say that too, but what about a vote for the other party that wants a bigger worse war?
If your universe is all evils are equal, I don’t want to go there.
Idiot did you read the headline of this article? Obama's the greater evil.
I agree with you but I cringe when you refer to someone as an "idiot." I happened across a Raw Story the other day and the comment there were vastly ruder than ones here. Maybe I'm just too old to get with the new internet etiquette. It just seems unnecessarily vulgar to me.
Sometime expletives, like in this case, are necessary and deserved. They're legitimate part of the language and internet etiquette becomes a barrier to the message.
With respect Phantom, I don't understand either. How is it that those who claim to be progressive, against war and violence engage in insults and personal invective? Respect Man.
With drones killing innocent civilians, the target killings of American citizens, indefinite detentions, torture it's astounding to see fellow progressives worrying about internet etiquette.
That's why progressives always lose, most have no courage to even use an expletive, let alone fight the oppressor.
In this case, the expletive would have been more appropriately addressed to he that delivered it. Regardless of how much of a disaster Obama is (and he is a doozy of one), to suggest that it wouldn't be possible to do worse--is idiotic.
the idiot was comparing Obama to Romney, which is comparing Jeffrey Dahmer to Ted Bundy, when Lesser Evilism is what got us in the mess we're in.
You can play this Obama Apologist/Dem Part Scare Tactics game all you want, dionski, but you're part of the problem and, yes, another idiot.
Wow, you've got some catching up to do J Gover.
Besides his drone killings and targeted assassinations of American citizens - and their children! - many of the most prominent scholars of International law and US Constitutional law say that Obama is far worse than Bush on civil rights. He has been busy pulling the claws out of our civil rights laws. So, sorry, you lesser of two evilists can no longer use that as an excuse. Those of us who could always see where that faulty strategy would take us are finally vindicated. We always said: If you fail to hold them accountable, they will only get worse. And how do you hold them accountable when they ignore your pleas? What was all this talk about "holding their feet to the fire?" Nonsense. You must refuse to support them. Otherwise, what's the point of elections? Once the empire's psyops techs know you'll support evil, they have you just where they want you. They can always make the other party sound worse and usually do. It's how they ratchet things up. Now we have a Democrat in the WH who is practically indistinguishable from GW Bush. Nice going.
Hello Jim Glover,
We are already in a universe where all evils are all equal. My question is how do we go somewhere else?
There are times when lesser-evilism is a valid choice, or maybe lesser-badism would be a better terminology. However, there absolutely must be some threshold beyond which evil is evil and must not be supported no matter how bad the alternative is. Would you vote for Mussolini because he wasn't quite as bad as Hitler, or would you find some alternative to support even though support of it seemed futile at the time? Note, I am NOT comparing Romney to Hitler or Obama to Mussolini or vice verse. I am simply here establishing the principle that there is some threshold beyond which one must not be complicit.
That said, Obama and all Republican candidates with the exception of Ron Paul are beyond any decent threshold. True, they aren't as bad as Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin, but they are or would be war criminals. Note also that I don't agree with Paul's market fundamentalism, but in a race between Paul and any of the other declared candidates, I would see him as a valid lesser of bads choice.
it could easily be argued that to be free from any complicity would require the abandonment of the political process altogether. and further, the abandonment of virtually all things a vast majority of supposedly patriotic citizens espouse.
those of us who have thus withdrawn loyal support for the numberless crimes against humanity committed daily - constantly! - by our faithless servants, become faced with the tast of recreating the world, beginning with our own lives.
the challenge is not, " who can i support in this election?" but "how can my own phoenix rise from these ashes?"
Good point.
US America doesn't want war, we don't want to kill anyone. Why won't they just do what we tell them to? No one has to die. Why don't they understand?
Peace, peace, we want peace! A piece of this country and a piece of that country! Isn't American exceptionalism wonderful! And yet, with this publicy known for a couple of years now you still have so called progressive cheerleaders like Thomm Hartmann, Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow hell bent on getting this murderous thug reelected! Go figure.
Evil is an endless spiral into the abyss. Psychopaths always need a more prodigious High. "Worshipping the Golden Calf" - telling depiction of the masses that struck a chord:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ie5c1CPOYM&list=FLRXqi2oX8SxF2Fg6MF2ekLQ&index=1&feature=plpp_video
Ok, you slimy Obama-bots - get out your BS and start flooding this thread with it to defend your fascist little authoritarian murderer. Go. I'm waiting.
Obama is a Fascist liar, and stands with the 1%. Actions speak much louder that words and his words have absolutely no meaning now whatsoever to me nor my family. He is a corporate puppet, and manipulated by Wall Street and the global Oligarchs. But, if he doesn't do what they say, they will JFK him.
Stand with the 99% to take this country back from this dictator and anointed king Hand write in your candidate of choice in as the establishment candidates are all corrupt, bought and paid for.
I agree with you on your first sentence, ddills, but disagree with you on the second sentence of your first paragraph. Obama revealed who he really and truly is when he surrounded himself with people who are holdovers from the G. W. Bush and the Bill Clinton Administrations. Obama's also a closet Republican who has no intention of keeping the promises that he made in order to get himself elected into the White House.
O'Connell: "Calls have gone out for the release of the memo, but there really is no need."
Wrong, the memos should be released to implicate, at least in the court of public opinion and for the sake of documenting in open public records, all those responsible for the "targeted kilings".
The oligarchy keeping the public distracted with their political circus while they fleece us.
Hello Mary Eilen O'Connell,
Your second paragraph needs some improvement to reflect reality in my opinion. A similar story is emerging with respect to targeted killing. The Obomber (Obama) administration has produced its own infamous memo; like many of the torture memos, it was written by liars (lawyers) in the Department of Injustice Orifice of Illegal Countshills (Justice's Office of Legal Counsel). It concerns something that many consider worse than torture: the memo apparently seeks to justify "targeted killing".
Obama makes nixon look like a peace-nick! There is no justice in this world. America has lost all its moral standing and become just another fascist state of mass murders like Soviet Russia or Nazi germany. We are the current serial killers of the world. Imperialism run amok! No more; no less.
It also shows that the criminal court in the Hague is a joke. It simply serves Western political interests.
""Targeted killing" is the killing of certain individuals away from battle zones using military means, including missiles, bombs and commando raids. "
No, it is not. It is the targetting of identified individuals, wherever, and by whatever means. In the Revolution, the Americans had a policy of 'targeted killing' that the British objected to - we said 'aim for the guy in the fanciest uniform, kill the generals and officers'. The British generals and officers thought this was ignoble of us.
When the CIA or the Mossad 'arranges' for an Iranian nuclear scientist to die in a traffic accident, or choke on a chicken bone, that is a 'targeted killing'.
"Fundamental principles of law protect the human right to life and due process of law. "
To somehow extrapolate this to mean 'Unless it's in the heat of battle, a current fire-fight, you can only take prisoners and make arrests' is ludicrous.
Our enemies do not engage us 'only on the field of battle'. 9/11 is one extreme example of that. We can not limit our response to that non-existent field.
Darn right, PJM, by God let's lower ourselves to the level of our alleged "enemies!" Take the gloves off, fuck principals and the rule of law! They kill innocent people - then WE kill innocent people! Except they aren't "innocent" because we say they aren't! Mwuahahah! When the U.S. does it, it isn't wrong!
/sarcasm You and your ilk, PJM, are as evil as the fucks running Amereicha. My one consolation is that hell is being prepared for your arrival.
Bush's atrocity is Sadistic Torture. Obama's atrocity is Pre-Meditated Murder.
Don't blame me. I voted for NADER.
Could we please start using the word MURDER and stop cooperating with government media-think use of cleansed words such as "targeted killing" or "assisination" or "execution" etc.
A little appreciation of Uncle Joe! He did win the war. Let's get off this fallacy of the false equation. We haven't seen anything as evil as that mustachioed Prussian in all history. We have a choice. The GOP is likely the better one at the top using strict reverse psychology judgment. Politics in the USA is best done that way. We voted for John F Kennedy and got Richard Nixon or at least the peacenik on the 1960 campaign trail with few knowing where JFK got the phrase "New Frontier." Those who knew on the "left" knew we had our man in this Irishman. The rest voted this way and that. But We got this Nixon as the extension of his president, the peacenik, and at least for a while things worked out. Nixon would advocate no intervention in Cuba in the debates, refuse to talk about a missile gap, and right on through. But then JFK did the 1960 Nixon or Ike special. Now that's a real good deal. In 1968, Nixon was suspect, but after the pressure built on him, he cut a deal in Vietnam and did the old cut and run which he and his vice president attacked the Democrats as wanting. Ike's rhetoric wasn't that peacenik in 1952 but he cut a deal in Korea. Adlai Stevenson didn't make it to the White House, and things still worked out. Stevenson was the real deal too, not like what is now in the White House.
Okay, here's my question, If Obomber was able to drop a bomb so easily on Al Awlaki, WTF couldn't he just as easily have been captured, charged with a crime and given a freaking trial? Obomber is a Fascist if there ever was one. The problem is, so are all the rethug candidates. Were screwed!
2 x 0 = 0
The US is way overdue for some karmic payback for all the awfulness its displayed in the 200 years since its birth. What's interesting now is that its turning on itself.
We've seen other regimes come to a bad end and maybe its our time...we can't escape it. As you've all written there's no choice. So brace yourself for a crash landing and look it in the eye and stop arguing with each other about the eventual outcome.
Do what ever you can individually to make it better
nothing else in history has ever worked any better.
The article implies that torture and murder of the innocent is justified.
It is never justified.
The Lucifer Effect by Zimbardo outlines the process by which normal everyday people commit and allow torture.
http://lucifereffect.com/
It should be remembered that 9/11 bore a striking resemblance to the burning of the Reichstag by "terrorists," which catapulted Hitler into a position of much greater legitimacy, and set the stage for wars of aggression and the disappearance of domestic rights.
We are facing a situation that should raise profound concern, as well as deep self-reflection in the public at large. However, the reality seems to be that Americans as a whole are overwhelmed, highly distracted, and all-too-willing to remain credulous. And in denial.
Understanding what actually happened on 9/11 is essential for understanding what is happening now.