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Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

This description fits almost any action that you can perform when you're at war. So, either you advocate that war courts review cases of all the enemy soldiers before aithorizing an attack, or you have to come up with a more precise definition of what is exactly wrong here.

Clarification: I'm not a fan of CIA assasinations, far from it; but "execution without a trial" isn't logically justifiable complaint: we do it in a lot of situations no reasonable person would argue with.

Edit: my original comment was pointing out errors in someone's logic. Sadly, everybody seems to think that this means that I've taken a certain side in drone debate. This is not the case; please, read my comment and understand what exactly am I saying — and what I'm not — before reacting.

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enemy soldiers

There is a legal obligation in the Geneva protocols 1949 to identify who you're targeting and refrain from targeting civilians.

https://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/9ac284404d38ed2bc125...

"refrain from deciding to launch any attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;"

Article 52 para 3:

"3. In case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used."

The US has taken an extremely lax approach to this with the intelligence-based targeting. Air strikes in the course of combat are probably defensible - if you see someone running into a house carrying a weapon it becomes a military objective - but the intelligence-based targeting lacks that confirmation.

The very words you quote authorise "incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects" as long as it's not "excessive", and the treating of a "place of worship, a house or other dwelling or school" as a military target as long as you're fairly sure it's being used for military purposes.

Obviously you can argue about what is "excessive" and what is a "case of doubt" but whoever wrote these lines was clearly anticipating blowing churches and civilians up and it being within the rules.

I don't say this to make drone killing seem more humane, but to make war in general seem like the everyday insanity that it is.

Most of the deaths in drone strikes have been civilian.

We're talking like 70%+ of the casualties being 'incidental'.

That should warrant a description of 'excessive' I think.

A lot of comments with similar sentiments, so I'll reply just to yours, because it's on top.

Basically, you're making my point for me: there's nothing inherently wrong with remote strikes or drones in particular. It's just a tool; and as a tool, it can be used rightly and wrongly. So, the fact that Clinton used that tool doesn't make her bad. But if you would have information about her using that tool to authorize a strike which she would've known would cause significant collateral damage, and which wouldn't save as many innocent lives as it would take — this would. But the article presents no such information, so all emptional reaction you can have to such a headline is not really justified.

The Reprieve report 'You Never Die Twice: Multiple Kills in the US Drone Program' (November 2014) provided the first estimate of the number of people – including children – killed each time the US attempts to assassinate a ‘high value target.’ For example, drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed as many as 1,147 unknown people in failed attempts to kill just 41 named individuals.

That was a while ago. Things have continued in much the same way and the civilian death toll is much higher, compared to a comparatively small number of jihadis successfully targeted.

Point is, Clinton knows how destructive these things are to the innocent populations in the area they operate.

> For example, drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed as many as 1,147 unknown people in failed attempts to kill just 41 named individuals.

So? If you're trying to make a point that this is a bad situation, this information is not enough — to judge that, we would need to know who these targeted individuals were and how much destruction could they bring.

Also, who are these unknown people statistically? Example to clarify what I mean: if you execute a drone strike on a terrorist training camp, most of the casualties will likely be "unknown", and of course will include innocent civilians as well, but it's reasonable to assume that on average, more of them will be "bad guys" that were just unknown to you than if you execute a strike on a regular village.

Saying that the US is at war with various groups of people in the country side of Pakistan is a rather generous definition of the concept of war, isn't it?

It's more like "the US is blowing up people who may or may not be those intended, but it's kinda hard to tell since they're doing it all by remote control".

Also, congress hasn't declared war since WWII, which is required by law.

No it's not. They came up with the interpretation that the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution allows them to engage into limited armed conflicts without Congress authorization. Which is dearly needed, because that's what they are doing since decades, with the CIA and friends. And several such CIA wars happened even without the President's authorization, but usually the just lie to the president to able to engage in such armed conflicts.

What this War Powers Resolution does not authorize is a formal declaration of war (Clinton did not care) and any engagement voiding the Geneva conventions. All those drone killings are of course war crimes. This is one of the reasons the US does not recognize international law.

They are happy to use weasel words, this is a declaration of war:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/107-2002/h455

There are a number of reasons why this has happened. Some more nebulous than others. There are a number of extra powers granted to the Executive during a time of war that Congress didn't want activated. There are a number of requirements that kick in when war is "legally" declared that Congress didn't want activated as well.

I'm not saying drone strikes aren't shady, but they aren't strictly illegal. This is a case where Congress needs to get it together and start overseeing if they want it to stop happening. Otherwise, we're just left depending on diplomacy or the UN trying to put a stop to it, which likely won't happen either.

> Saying that the US is at war with various groups of people in the country side of Pakistan is a rather generous definition of the concept of war, isn't it?

Nobody's saying that though.

"the US is blowing up people who may or may not be those intended, but it's kinda hard to tell since they're doing it all by remote control".

Sounds like a good description of war to me. It is pretty common in conflict for civilians to suffer higher casualty rates than actual combatants. Mostly leaders don't mean that to happen, but that is hardly any excuse.

There has always been a disconnect between the moral intent of leaders and the actions of men on the ground. I am sure many Kings of England were good christians but there men still raped and pillaged. At least drones don't rape people.

Any action? Lets look at some specifics and ask which ones should count as murder. A reasonable person might see a different degree of justification in each case.

A person wielding a gun is running and firring their weapon towards a solider. The solider shoots back and kills them.

A boat full with military weapons enters an areas which marines are defending and refuse to turn back. The marines sinks the boat.

A tank drives into a town. The Solider defending the civilians attacks the tank and the tank driver dies in an explosion.

A bomb plane that drops bombs on military facility with tanks, airfield with bombers on them, and docks with military ships.

A bomb plane that dropping bombs on a factory that produce tanks and guns, killing workers.

A bomb plane that fire bombs on housing districts to demoralize the population.

A person is driving down the road in uninhabited area, and a solider sends a remote missile.

A person is celebrating a wedding in their own house, and a soldier sends a remote missile to kill everyone in the wedding.

I don't see what degree of difference there is in your first 4 examples: They're all armed people in a situation of war.

Of course the last 3 are murders (although we know that the Allied erased most of German and Japanese cities, including the civilian neighbourhoods, for morale and retaliation) and the 4th before the end (killing military workers) is debatable.

Last point, concerning French nationals who went to Syria twice to train in military camps and came back to lead the terrorist attacks with actual killings: Can we please extend the Geneva convention to consider them ennemy military corps (and thus, prisonners of war)? I have zero tolerance for police investigating innocents or listening to everyone, but once we know what they've done, I wonder why they just face some penal law (a few years in jail, max, like a driver in a car accident).

I don't mind the downvotes, please explain first how parent's 8 examples are different, and how people being trained in enemy military camps and coming back doesn't raise the POW legislation.

I'm sorry — what point, exactly, are you trying to prove right now, and how do you think this point contradicts my original comment?

Whose soldiers? Whose civilians?

> This description fits almost any action that you can perform when you're at war. So, either you advocate that war courts review cases of all the enemy soldiers before aithorizing an attack, or you have to come up with a more precise definition of what is exactly wrong here.

What everyone else said. What you can do to people you're at war with isn't relevant; there is not even a pretense of being at war here.

The description doesn't even match what happens in war; execution implies sentencing, which does happen here but doesn't in war, where there would be no point.

> no reasonable person would argue with.

By framing it like this, that's where you take a wrong turn.

"This description fits almost any action that you can perform when you're at war."

Except there is no man in the loop in the kill chain.

   "where the maimed survivors of a mistaken drone 
   strike on unarmed civilians in February 2010, 
   which killed 23 people, describe what happened 
   when they were attacked. The juxtaposition of 
   the appallingly gung-ho attitude of the drone 
   operatives, re-enacted from a transcript of 
   the event, and raw footage of the dead bodies" [0]

How do you confirm ground-truth? That truck you targeted with a high statistical chance of having X leader also is surrounded with non-combatants. Eyes on the ground will be responsible and wrestle with this and take responsibility. [1] Even if it's personal.

Death by algorythm, remote control, sanctioned higher up the command chain, does not.

[0] "National Bird review – chilling film reveals truths about drones" ~ https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/17/national-bird-r...

[1] "Into the Fog of War" ~ http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-23/soldier's-story-exp...

It's one thing to shoot soldiers without a trial.

It's a far different thing to bomb random folks living their lives in Afghanistan, then retcon all male casualties to terrorists.

It's one thing to shoot back at people who are shooting at you, but we're talking about blowing up people in remote places who aren't currently attacking anyone or doing anything obviously bad, along with anyone near them at the time.

OK, so come up with a more precise definition than "execution without a trial".

International law has always been very careful not to proscribe the bombing of enemy leaders just because they're not in a conflict zone, never mind going so far as to require soldiers to wait until they're under fire before shooting enemy soldiers. There are serious questions about the adequacy of the intelligence reports and whether - as with many conventional military operations - the tendency to cause civilian casualties means the strikes do more far harm than good, but on the other hand more research has been put into identifying that the intended targets were responsible for "obviously bad" things than virtually anyone else killed in warfare.

Exactly 0 people have ever been in the category "enemy soldiers" since WWII because we haven't declared war.

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