Tweet
Philip Alston photo from the Project on Extrajudicial Executions
Multiple news stories, including AFP and BBC, are carrying remarks from a report delivered to the UN General Assembly Human Rights Committee and a subsequent press conference on Tuesday by Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions. From AFP:
“The problem with the United States is that it is making an increased use of drones/Predators (which are) particularly prominently used now in relation to Pakistan and Afghanistan,” UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Philip Alston told a press conference.
“My concern is that drones/Predators are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” he said.
BBC continues:
“The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons.”
Note that the role of drone attacks in the larger story of targeted assassinations has been discussed in the context of Dick Cheney’s rumored “assassination squads”. Marcy Wheeler has discussed those squads and their disclosure to Congress in multiple posts, including this one from July. A key point from those discussions, which address Sy Hersh’s initial disclosure of the squads, is that the squads were run by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) under the apparent supervision of Cheney’s office.
Who ran JSOC from September, 2003 until August, 2008? That would be Stanley McChrystal. Who is in charge of military efforts in Afghanistan where Alston now says the drone strikes are becoming extrajudicial executions? Again, Stanley McChrystal. What a coincidence!
A bit further down in the BBC report we have this:
The US told the UN in June that it has a legal framework to respond to unlawful killings. It also said the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have no role in relation to killings during an armed conflict.
But Mr Alston described that response as “simply untenable”.
Alston doesn’t buy the US government’s justifications for McChrystal’s actions. Alston’s timing couldn’t be better in making this announcement as Barack Obama is in the process of assessing US strategy in Afghanistan. Although the strategic reassessment now mainly centers on the number of troops to be assigned, Alston’s report makes it essential that Obama also review the strategy and decision-making in the use of drones if the US wants to operate within international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Assuming, of course, that Obama does want to operated within those laws. Does he?
43 Comments
I don’t think we can really know– although the evidence is not in his favor– and our not knowing is just one more indictment of this WH, which campaigned on transparency.
recommended
This is some black humor. It’s like saying that the Nazis might have been in breach of international law for insanitary conditions in some of the bathrooms at their death camps.
I suppose its the guy’s job though. But obviously the US military occupation is itself a criminal enterprise and all US personnel involved in it are therefore guilty of the crime of war. Now sure, someone gets to document specific war crimes within that theater, but that’s the icing on the cake isn’t it? But it comes across like,
Of course we know.
Obama is a 100% war criminal. From even before he was president. He totally rejects every single aspect of international war. Just the same as Bush. We’re talking about torturing people and murdering millions of people (beyond invading people’s countries of course). You REALLY want to suggest Obama simply doesn’t understand the difference between right and wrong? That would make him a barely functioning psychopath.
Clearly he’s a high functioning psychopath.
I bet just as Obama thinks drones are pretty cool, the nazis thought V-1 and V-2 rockets were pretty nifty.
I can understand Germany’s response to the indiscriminate terror bombing of their homeland by Allied forces with the best they could come up with late in the game, however, the drone bombings under review here are more a species of said terror bombings of WW2. No one on the Allied side of that war was ever prosecuted or even reprimanded for the horror inflicted on whole cities in Germany and Japan, merely punctuated by the atom bombings of Hirshima and Nagasaki. The precedent was set and what we see now follows that precedent.
It’s a matter of how much outrage can be raised in America for all its numerous crimes against humanity throughout its history starting with the genocide of native people.
Absolutely correct.
Thanks, Jim. Let’s post and post and post some more; everything we can find on the wrongness and inhumanity of these brutal, brutes’ wars while this little window of hope still exists. If Obama goes bull-headedly on ahead and escalates instead of drawing down in an unwinnable war, at least he can’t say he wasn’t told exactly what he is doing ahead of time.
scout
Golly Jim, you think the US would tell us about that framework, too?
Seriously, what response has there been to “unlawful killings”? In fact, I’m not at all clear on what it takes for a killing to be considered “unlawful” by the US government. I bet it would make fascinating reading, albeit with hopelessly convoluted and tortured logic (as you would expect, now that torture’s just another tool in the government’s toolbox).
what are these loony leftists at the UN sayin’ now? That perhaps using robots to fly across international borders to kill arbitrarily designated targets (some of whom are just people who offended an allied government) and a bunch of accidental victims to boot, might actually be illegal? the horrors…
We were attacked by Al Qaeda who are (one supposes) in Afghanistan and Pakistan, so we should be allowed under any international law to go after them. The Right of self-defense is inviolate.
If they deny that then why haven’t they denied Israel’s right to attack Gaza and to occupy & sometimes kill Palestinians in the West Bank?
We have at least chosen to not prosecute this war in the most violent way — an invasion of Pakistani territory. We’re using the drones as a compromise position in coordination with the Pakistani gov’t and military.
Likewise Israel has chosen to NOT obliterate the Gazans, but to withdraw settlements there and then when violence is needed they do that, but withdraw when they feel their message has gotten through.
What is fully unacceptable is the overthrow of a Democratically elected gov’t in Honduras and the assassination of political leaders anywhere in the world.
We need to support Democracy and individuals who will risk their lives to lead and promote peace & prosperity.
That’s one reason I’m sick and tired of the defeated pessimistic Republicans lacking hope for America. They lack ideas to solve today’s problems because they see no future for us. Even today in a doctor’s office waiting room I heard several complaining about how much trouble we’re in and how there won’t be a better future. Today we need to deal with today’s problems head-on and that requires optimism and hope and a lot of hard work. Republicans need not apply (at least until they grow up some).
What happened to the “recommended” link for this column?
That disappears when the column gets promoted to The Seminal “front page”.
Really good and short article on why Obama should not deploy more troops to Afghanistan.
http://progressnotcongress.org/?p=3304
Jim, thank you for this post.
At the same time, I don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.
Black humor? I don’t know about that. It’s not been your style.
Well, damn! I must have caught it as it was moving. I checked the front page, assuming that was what had happened, but it wasn’t there… yet. Way to go!
Israel does extra-judicial executions so that makes it okay.
The United Stated Troops are fueling the insergency and a wise old sheep hearder told me we need to get the Flock out of there.
““My concern is that drones/Predators are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” he said.”
Who gives a ……?
Acutally, a lot of us who choose to live by the rules of civilization do. Just pray that you never make Stanley McChrystal mad.
Glenn Greenwald now on Rachel Maddow.
Murder & assassination are ok if you’re the U.S. As is torture. As is repeal of the Bill of Rights. As is fill-in-the-blanks.
And it all got McChrystal promoted.
Yep. McChrystal is a real piece of work. So proud that the moran is fighting the good fight for me. /s
He’s so articulate and so in command of the facts.
Does the military make people become like McC or do they have to have a tendency to be this way? I have always wondered – not about the young who volunteer for various reasons but the higher ups who have seen a number of wars and people dying and seem to really love it.
Good post, Jim. Gee, Cheney and McChrystal; how does the old saying go? “War criminals of a feather, flock together.” and it seems Obama may want to join the flock, albeit in a more indirect fashion.
Now that we’ve broached the subject: Looking back, how many Presidents in recent history could also be so labeled, for direct or indirect participation and/or approval of what are rightly classified as war crimes. Certainly Dubya, Bill Clinton, Bush 41, St. Ronnie, perhaps Carter, Ford. Nixon, Johnson – how far back do we have to go?
A big part of the problem is that a large number of high level military officers who are the opposite of that quit in disgust under Bush, while people like McChrystal and Petraeus were promoted. Some of the most articulate anti-war people around are ex-military [even as seen here at the Lake], so I don’t think the military makes them like that. The sadistic jerks were like that before they joined up. It’s just who they are.
May want to? He promoted McChrystal.
The Rude Pundit has an excellent post today re the “war.”
afghanistan, iraq did not attack the usa.
and neither did al-fresco. no matter what george bush and dick’em cheney told you.
Yes, you are right, ES. I was kind of giving Obama the benefit of the doubt. Obviously McChrystal was vetted by somebody, I just couldn’t speculate by whom, and what they chose to reveal or conceal as part of thatt process; or whether Obama was given the entire ‘skinny’ about McChrystal. But I guess it is ultimately Obama’s job to know all those things.
I just wish that Obama had instead chosen one of the many generals who resigned under the Bush administration, seems they had more integrity than those generals who stayed on.
But, but, but… the Taliban hosted OBL.
I’ve been saying for years that the Afghan insurgency is all about Pashtun nationalists, who the U.S. smears by calling them Taliban, who want to kick out the U.S. and get a govt in Kabul that represents them. Thus sending in more troop is exactly contrary to U.S. goals.
I honestly see McChrystal as being the modern-day version of William Westmoreland. His operational strategy seems to be exactly what Westmoreland did in the late 60s in when he was at MACV, right down to his desire to fight a “hearts and mind” campaign, his desire to escalate and his indiscriminate use of “assets” that are clearly not who we would support if this had not been going on for eight years.
If the parallels are not obviously evident yet, I suspect that they will be when there are another 100,000 or so American soldiers in-country. The biggest issues will soon be deployment levels, rotations/consecutive tours (we are already coming up on having servicemen and women who are almost 50% of the way to retirement and might have never left either Afghanistan or Iraq between tours in one country or the other). During Vietnam no one could do almost a whole career there unless they were insane or highly motivated. The draft insured that a sort-of equitable measure of service happened (we all know who could get away with not going… Dick Cheney, George Bush and most of the congressional republicans and pundit baby-boomers).
Anyone who lived through the Vietnam era will remember these similarities. The only thing we have not heard yet is charges of “politicians managing the war” which came with the Vietnam War. It’s only a matter of time before that happens again. And now that the CIA is back to managing Opium crops for fun and profit, we’ve gotten another check in the box again… it’s just Afghanistan not the Golden Triangle, and it’s the Taliban not the remnants of various Burmese, Chinese, Thai and Lao warlords running the business for them.
Judging by O’s campaign slogans, he knows nothing about Afghanistan. The “good war” “that we must win” indeed. Whadda pile o crap.
Thus he is very susceptible to whoever whispers in his ear last. In the ear-whispering sweepstakes anyone with scambled eggs on his hat or three chestfuls of ribbons has a gigantic edge. Irregardless of whether he knows anything or not.
I think Cheney’s charge that Obama is “dithering” instead of following McChrystal’s troop level request could be the beginning of that “politicians managing the war”.
A couple of other similarities: a govt that isn’t, so the U.S. has no local partner, and a nationalist movement that wants nothing more than the expulsion of foreign occupiers (see my 31), and who won’t stop until the last man is dead.
Oh, and a prez who won’t have the simple goodness not to run again because he mismanaged the war.
I see no comparison between what’s going on in Afghanistan and the attrition strategy pursed by Westy. Otherwise it’s pretty close.
Yeah, you can bet they’ll dust that one off around fall of 2011 so they have time to pound it a while.
Raven,yeah, you’re right about that. It might be Part II, we just haven’t gotten there yet. Every time I listen to McChrystal, I seem to hear Westmoreland.
Should we be calling it MAC-A?
Air-fuel bombs
“Puff the Magic Dragon” gun ships
cluster bombs, painted for da kids
White phosphorus
Depleted uranium
Now the drones, we’ve lost our humanity in the last eight years.
Remember Obama’s speech in Cairo? Something like I come bringing a message of “peace from Americans”
Somehow “drones” not doves…just does not seem very convincing
Actions speak louder than words.
Late to the post on this one. But several seminal posts here lately have reminded me of the practice of using “Drop Weapons” in Iraq, and how similar these drone attacks are–in some ways. Drop weapons apparently used a couple of ways in Iraq, with sniper squads and other combat patrols. Drop Weapon:
1. An AK or other weapon dropped near killed Iraqi in order to make that death easily categorized as taking out a ‘hostile’.
2. Bait–bomb parts or weapons left out as bait, with sniper team present. Whoever picks up the “bait” is killed.
In some way, drones and snipers are synonomous, both practices criminal under international law, and likely killed thousands in Iraq and AfPak.