Using drones: principles, tactics and results (amended title)

[jmm99]

folks like you, ODB, have furthered my education in ways you may or may not imagine. That's my backhanded way of saying, thank you.

On to the task at hand; it may or may not surprise you, but what you say here:

My stance on killing a foreign terrorist in a foreign country is multifaceted:

1. What is the intelligence value gained by conducting a kill/capture operation versus intelligence lost by conducting a drone strike versus a clandestine/covert operation versus continuing to gather intelligence if left alone (this has to be debated extensively based upon potential of future lives lost)?

2. What is the risk versus gain in conducting an operation versus a drone strike? Is the gain worth losing lives over?

3. What are the political sensitivities to conducting an operation versus a drone strike versus other clandestine/covert means?

4. What are the 2nd and 3rd order effects associated with the aforementioned operations?

are also my concerns with, what I'd term, the "wisdom" of the operations (direct actions) or drone strikes.

In formulating my legal position (as opposed to my "wisdom" position) on these and any other military operations (to include T10-T50 joint operations), I have intentionally built in as much leeway as possible into the rules of engagement. My purpose there is a simple one: to keep legal harassment off of our people who are sent (by me and by every other US citizen) to bad places, and then into worse situations. So, my legal framework always has, as its primary purpose, the protection of our people who are sent into harm's way.

I realize that granting a broad hunting license can be used badly in the wrong hands. From my analysis of the past, the wrong hands have usually been with civilian leadership or with military types that don't have to execute the missions. The solution is to get rid of those "dereliction of duty" types, and not restrict the rules of engagement.

I do understand your two points based on the absurdity and hypocrisy of capturing a non-US citizen for purposes of trying him here (with all the rights given US citizens), especially given the vagueries of those trials -

Failed Somali pirate prosecution fuels terror trial fears

The failed prosecution of an alleged Somali pirate — and the fact that that failure could leave him living freely, and permanently, inside U.S. borders — is highlighting anew the risks of trying terror suspects in American courts.

Just a few weeks ago, Ali Mohamed Ali was facing the possibility of a mandatory life sentence in a 2008 shipjacking off the coast of Yemen — an incident much like the one dramatized in the film “Captain Phillips.” Now, the Somali native is in immigration detention in Virginia and seeking permanent asylum in the United States.

Ali, who was accused of piracy for acting as a translator and negotiator for a crew of pirates, was partially acquitted by a jury in November after a trial in Washington. Prosecutors initially vowed a retrial but decided last month to drop the rest of the case against him.
...
In 2009, Obama ordered Ahmed Ghailani — a suspected plotter in the deadly attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 — flown from Guantánamo Bay to New York to stand trial in federal court. In November 2010, a jury there convicted him on a single charge of conspiracy to destroy U.S. property and buildings, while acquitting him of the 284 other charges he faced. He ultimately received a life sentence. ...

and, on the other hand, deciding on a targeted killing of a US citizen in the same country (some speculate that Libya is also the geographic target in the present case).

But, the reason for the USG right hand doing one thing, and the USG left hand another, is that the two hands are not connected to the same brain.

Here's the way I'd look at the two "Yemen" cases - positing that a US citizen and a non-US citizen are involved in an "AQ" group as combatants. We have a host of Gitmo habeas cases, some up to SCOTUS, that define "enemy combatants". Is that enough to order "shoot" ? It is, if one looks solely at my legal position (the broad hunting license); but, I never said that the scope of inquiry should end there. We have to travel from what is legally permissible to what is practically wise as the targeted killing process winds to a decision - shoot or don't shoot.

There we get into your "wisdom" factors:

1. What is the intelligence value gained by conducting a kill/capture operation versus intelligence lost by conducting a drone strike versus a clandestine/covert operation versus continuing to gather intelligence if left alone (this has to be debated extensively based upon potential of future lives lost)?

2. What is the risk versus gain in conducting an operation versus a drone strike? Is the gain worth losing lives over?

3. What are the political sensitivities to conducting an operation versus a drone strike versus other clandestine/covert means?

4. What are the 2nd and 3rd order effects associated with the aforementioned operations?

Those factors would have to be assessed for each case. Reasonable people could disagree on the final decision, without either of them being a war criminal; although one of them might be a stupid SOB for the result reached.

I wouldn't distinguish as such between the US citizen and the non-US citizen in this process (although I'd probably be harsher with the US citizen as a turncoat vs the non-US citizen who is not).

IF all of the facts are same with these two fellows (i.e., all your questions are answered the same for both), why should the US citizen get a reprieve from being targeted for killing, while the non-US citizen does not ? I'm not asking for legal reasoning, just common sense. Two answers seem coherent to me: (1) Both should be subject to the targeted killing process (though either or both may be reprieved by individual factors during that process); or (2) Neither should be subject to the targeted killing process.

What am I missing about a reprieve for the American, but not for the Yemani, who are in exactly the same boat ?

Regards

Mike