The President gives a briefing on the operation. Reuters.
One American and one Italian, both hostages of Al-Qaeda were killed along with two American members of the organization during drone strikes. Reuters. American Warren Weinstein, a doctor captured by Al-Qaeda in 2011, along with Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto, were killed in a drone strike along with Ahmed Farouq, an American member of Al-Qaeda. Adam Gadahn, an American Al-Qaeda spokesman was killed in a separate strike. President Obama expressed regret for the result of the strike and claimed that nobody knew that the hostages were at the location that was attacked. The attack is the first known case of an American hostage being killed in a drone strike. Obama claimed the strike was legal and that a review would take place to determine what went wrong.
My Comment:
Not a good day for the U.S. intelligence services. I understand that it would be very hard to track where these hostages were at any given time and that there was always a chance of this happening. Still, you would hope we would have a bit better intelligence then this. One thing I do know is that the pilot that fired the missile that killed Weinstein and Lo Porto has to be feeling bad right now. It's not his or her fault, but this will probably stick with them for their whole lives. I hope whoever did it gets help.
This tragedy could be used by Al-Qaeda and other terror groups like ISIS as a new way to avoid drone strikes. Using human shields is not a new concept, but to date, Al-Qaeda hasn't adopted it, to the best of my knowledge. If the leadership does start to travel with U.S. or other foreign hostages it would give the United States something to think of before they ordered a strike. They would have to choose between killing their own innocent people or letting the enemy get away. This seems like such a basic tactic, albeit an extremely cynical one, that I am surprised that they aren't doing it already. My guess is that there just aren't enough hostages for the strategy to work.
I haven't said much about Farouq and Gadahn. Both of them were traitors for sure. Gadahn especially was a major figure in Al-Qaeda so I am not sad to see him go. He was a propagandist, and an effective one at that. He was also fairly high up in the leadership, so his death hurts Al-Qaeda quite a bit.
I'm more then a little uncomfortable with the government killing people without trial. There is no doubt in my mind that Farouq and Gadahn were guilty of treason, even with the rather strict constitutional limits on charging the crime. Had they been prosecuted, I am sure they would have been convicted and most likely executed or at least imprisoned. They would have had a trial, lawyers and the right to appeal their convictions.
But Farouq and Gadahn never got a trial. Obama claimed that nobody knew that the two men were at the sites of the drone attack. I have no idea if that is true or not. There is a major difference between a targeted killing and a drone strike that just happened to kill two citizens. But I have no idea how we could fine out which category this attack fell under. Unless there is another Edward Snowden style leaker we may never know.
If the deaths of Farouq and Gadahn were an accident, then I suppose it is justified. You accept certain risks when you take up arms against your home country and in this case a drone strike is one of them. Just being in a war zone gives you a fair chance of being killed. And it is unreasonable to expect the government to take every precaution to protect someone who is fighting against them.
But if it was a targeted assassination then we are talking about something different. The U.S. Constitution is supposed to protect U.S. civilians from death without trial. No doubt that Farouq and Gadahn were reprehensible people that deserved to die. But I don't like the precedent, which, to be fair, already exists.
To be clear, I don't want to put myself in the unenviable position of defending Al-Qaeda members. But my concern is that now that the precedent exists, who is to say that the government won't use drone strikes on other American citizens who are not involved in terrorism? Back during the Cliven Bundy standoff, there was some semi-serious talk about drone striking him. And some of the justifications that the government used for killing Anwar al-Awlaki could be used against him. He was doing something that displeased the government and arresting him would have been almost impossible without government casualties. Though the standoff ended peacefully because Bundy couldn't keep his mouth shut about race, I'm sure some people would have liked to have seen it end with Bundy ending up the same as Awlaki, Farouq and Gadahn...
The entire situation leaves a bad taste in my mouth and this latest incident adds more fuel to the fire. I'm getting dangerously close to conspiracy theory territory here, but I think there is at least a strong possibility that Obama knew that these strikes were targeting Farouq and Gadahn and went ahead with them anyways. That way he could avoid some criticism from both libertarians and the few liberals that are left that object to this kind of thing (like Glenn Greenwald). I have absolutely no proof of that though and it is just as likely that the whole scenario did play out like Obama claims.
No matter what though, this incident should lead to some changes. We seem to be a bit trigger happy with our drones these days. Drone strikes do have a place in modern warfare but without good intelligence it is hard to avoid mistakes like this. Our government is so reliant on signals intelligence that they have largely neglect human sources. Signals intelligence has its uses, but we catch so much useless data, which also happens to violate the rights of Americans, that it is hard to get good information. These kinds of mistakes are likely to continue in the future.
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