Remote-Control Carnage

Jim Henley tallies the moral cost of, in his words, The American Way of Remote Control War Against Individual Enemies.

Comments

[Stickler]

Hey, Skibo: The phrase "evil nation" appears nowhere in the article.

[dude]

It sez "evil government" not "evil nation" - a subtle and correct difference, I think.

I wonder why the Pentagon is still announcing that they're doing this sort of thing. They blow up some cars in the middle of the night, say Saddam or Osama or Hitler's brain *might* have been in it, and then, inevitably, with icy precision, it turns out - nope. Didn't bag anyone "important." Another false alarm.

[Croesus]

A nation and a government are not the same things.

[bill o'reilly's dog]

would jim say the same thing if the mission had suceeded?

yeah it sucks when a policemen kills a little kid with a squirt gun because he thinks it is a weapon. but is the evil? or just ineptitude? inept goverments are nothing new.

or is his argument that it is morally wrong to kill a dangerous mass murderer?

[PJ]

Bill asks: "would jim say the same thing if the mission had suceeded?"

Well, let's read the piece:

"If we're going to make war on individuals, as we increasingly seem to do, we ought to consider doing it in such a way that we know whether or not we actually got them."

And:

"This was not a wartime operation to capture a strategic crossroads. This was, supposedly, an effort to detain specific fugitives in a country where "major combat operations have ended." In that context it is not moral to kill strangers because one or two of them *might* be in your deck of cards. Too often now our government behaves as if what we *can* do and what we are *justified* in doing are the same thing. They are not."

[bill o'reilly's dog]

i did read it and i am confused on his moral argument. i am sure the planners *thought* they did it in way that they know whether or not they actually got them and in a way to avoid innocent deaths. there is no evidence to the contrary.

fucking up is not neccessary evil.

[JenL]

"yeah it sucks when a policemen kills a little kid with a squirt gun because he thinks it is a weapon. but is the evil?"

I don't think the writer was saying it was evil to, in your analogy, kill the kid because he thinks the kid has a squirt gun. He thinks it's evil to shoot *without even trying to find out* whether you're aiming at the "armed and dangerous" kid or one of the other kids you know live in the neighborhood.

Sticking to the kid with a squirt gun analogy, it's the difference between 1) shooting because you saw something that looked like and gun or some person you have reason to believe is reliable says there is a gun and 2) shooting because some unknown person claiming to be a witness says he saw a gun.

[Anonymous]

yeah, we should get up real close to 'em, face to face, and ask 'em for I.D.
you go first, I'll be right behind you.

[Brian]

Two points: Is it morally right to kill people if you are unsure if they are innocents or the ones you're really after? We like to pretend that war has rules and we (the US) use these rules to justify our actions, yet this policy of shooting before confirming the target violates the rule of war against killing innocent non-combatants. At the very least, we're supposed to take steps to minimize "collateral damage" yet bombing of a convoy solely on the basis of some intelligence of questionable certainty without botehring to confirm it almost guarantees that innocents will be killed and wounded. Thus these actions directly violate the same rules of war we are so vocally supportive of.

Taken to its logical extreme, we could have used the same reasoning that justifies these actions to justify the nuking of Bagdad - Our intelligence indicated that top members of the Iraqi leadership were somewhere in the city so we leveled the city in an attept to kill them. That there were innocent non-combatants killed is an unfortunate side effect of our action. That we did not do this is a merely the result of our concern for public relations and how the US is perceived around the world. Certianly this action would have saved many American lives while achieving the desired result. Those who argue that confirming inteligence before striking risks American lives are right, but we risked thousands of American lives by sending ground troops into Iraq instead of using nukes. If you supported that action, why don't you suport risking American lives confirming targets before shooting? What's the difference?

[Anonymous]

Croesus, of COURSE they're not the same!

But then you need to re-read the post: "It sez "evil government" not "evil nation" - a subtle and correct DIFFERENCE."

"Nation" is comprised of you, and me, and him, and her. Government is ... (well, I'm sure you can fill in the blanks on your own.)

[Anonymous]

Brian,

The difference is that we value American lives more than Iraqi.

[Saruman]

People have been fighting each other by "remote control" for millennia -- ever since the javelin, the bow and arrow, the slingshot. We've also been tossing boiling pitch over walls, mindless of which innocent bystanders we'd fry down there.

[bill o'reilly's dog]

" Is it morally right to kill people if you are unsure if they are innocents or the ones you're really after?"

this isn't a b&w issue as much as you would like it to be. if a cop fires a pistol at a violent suspect, there is a good chance the bullet could kill a retarded poor black baby a mile away. should you minimize the chance of this happening? of course. but mistakes happen.

so your arguemnt is that we are hypocrites for blowing up a convoy of vehicals in the middle of a desert or for not blowing up a city? yeah, real logical!

" What's the difference? "

holy shit, is this person for real? accidently blowing up a convoy is the same as fucking nucking a city?

[Brian]

Saruman -

So? That doesn't mean it's morally right to kill innocents in the pursuit of the guilty. People have also been raping and stealing and committing other crimes for centuries but we don't use that fact to excuse the behavior.

[Brian]

Bill -

Yes I'm for real. The argument was that confirming targets before firing on them is not justified because it puts American lives at risk. Therefore we should not do it. We should just go ahead and bomb the target reagrdless of the cost to innocent lives. Using that same logic, one could argue that sending thousands of Americans into Bagdad put thousands of American lives at risk therefore we should not have done it, especially when we have a viable alternative strategy (nukes) that would achieve the desired goal of getting rid of Saddam and his cronies, freeing the country from the Baath party and quite possibly eliminating WMD's.

Obviously, there is a difference between the two action. What I'm trying to get at is exactly where does that difference lie? Is it in the number of non-combatants killed? How many non-combatant casualties are acceptable? 10? 20? 20,000? Who decides? Is it how they're killed (nuke vs conventional weapons)? Are we being morally hypocritical to say that x number of civilian deaths are acceptable when x+1 are not? Is it hypocritcal of us to say that killing people with conventional weapons is O.K. while doing the same thing with nukes isn't?

[JenL]

Nuking Baghdad is not the same as bombing the convoy, but it is a logical progression. If it is okay to bomb a convoy because it might include some people we want to kill (we'll check afterwards to find out whether we got any of the guys we were after), when does it stop being okay? When it's 5 potential innocents at risk? When it's 20? When it's 200? At what point is it no longer okay to say "well, we have some indication that Saddam is *here* and we don't have the time or interest to find out whether he's actually there or not -- it's only 5 trucks, how many people could be in them? Besides, if it's not Saddam, it's just a bunch of smugglers anyway . . . ."

When you throw boiling oil over a castle wall, you've got a pretty good idea that the guy at the bottom with weapons trying to climb up the wall is an enemy. A cop who decides someone is about to shoot at him and fires first is at least making the best interpretation of events that he can. But whether it is morally okay to sit miles away and bomb a convoy because an informant says someone you want dead is in that convoy has got to raise questions of whether you believe the informant, whether there is any way or any time to investigate the allegation, whether there is any way to stop the convoy and apprehend those in it without killing them first and using DNA evidence to sort them out later . . . .

[bill o'reilly's dog]

if you can't see the moral distinction between striking a few vehicles in the middle of a desert and nuking a city then it is a waste of my time to even discuss anything rationally with you.

[bill o'reilly's dog]

it is probably logical progression to go from punching someone and beating them to death with a baseball bat, but claim there is the same moral equivivence is a sign of moral retardation.

[Brian]

And about that cop analogy, bill -

That anlogy doesn't apply because the cop is shooting at an identified suspect - A single individual that the cop has identified - correctly or not - as a bad guy by seeing him, not simply because the cop heard that this particular individual might be a bad guy.

A better anology would be if the cop was firing blindly into a crowd of people because he thought that there might be a bad guy in there someplace. Would we as a society accept that from our police? I doubt it.

The cop (if he's acting properly)also tries to mimimize collateral damage by aiming carefully, not shooting blindly into a crowd, etc. We have done none of this in Iraq since the "end of hostilities". We hear that there may be a bad guy someplace and we shoot without regard to the potential loss of civilian life. That we do so without first bothering to acertain that the target is actually where he is supposed to be is, in my opinion, morally repugnant.

As for that "mistakes happen" bit, yes they do, but a "mistake" that is the direct result of the failure to excercise diligence and caution and to conduct oneself properly is not excusable. Shit does happen. I guess it's only really important to the innocents that actually get killed and maimed, huh?

[JenL]

Bill,

okay, beating someone to death is far worse than punching someone. But where along the path do you personally draw the line and say "punching is acceptable under certain circumstances, but those same circumstances don't justify beating the person to death" -- after that first punch, after two.

Maybe the US crossed a line by bombing that convoy -- maybe it didn't. Maybe it had oodles of intelligence information it hasn't told us about. But that doesn't change the fact that it is a relevant moral question that should be discussed -- where do we as a nation draw that line? Do we as individuals who make up the nation have input, or is our government going to completely shut us out of the moral question because it also involves a military question?

[Brian]

bill -

I'm not saying it's the same thing. I'm just asking you where does the line get drawn between acceptable civilian deaths and unacceptable? If we kill 50 innocent people out in the desert is that O.K.? What if we killed them in downtown Bagdad in front of a crowd of reporters? Is that still O.K.?

Where is your personal line of discomfort with killing innocent people, especially when those deaths could be avoided by taking a little bit more care before we shoot?

[Anonymous]

Brian: Don't spend too much time trying to get through to Billdog. The rest of us know you aren't saying they're the same thing. Billdog probably knows it, too ? he's just being an ass. Or else he's just one of those people who loves to use phrase "moral equivalence," expecially when it's completely inappropriate.

[Warren]

There's a word for targeting individuals; assignation. Once upon a time, the US claimed it was immoral and didn't do that sort of thing, until, you know, we wanted to that is.

[JFK]

a little after my targeted assignation, I was assassinated.

[C.Saw-sick]

There?s a word for targeting individuals -- it's called "surgical strikes."

Once upon a time we carpet-bombed ... (and still missed Der Fuher.)

What bothers me is the following:

Mon -- "He's dead! We got 'em!
Tue -- "Nope, he's not"
Wed -- "Yeah! He's toast!"
Thu -- "Naw! We missed."
Fri --- "He's dead, for sure! This time we got 'em!"
Sat --- "No! He's alive. He's on the run."
Sun -- "This time, Yes! We'll do DNA to prove it"
Mon -- "Not dead."
Tue --- "He's dead!"
Wed -- "Not"
Thu -- "Dead!"
Fri --- "Not"
Sat ----- (ad infinitum)

[bill o'reilly's dog]

et al: my point wasn't that it was good, just that it wasn't evil. it is grey, we can (and should) disucss ---- but the original poster said it was an action of an "evil goverment" of which i disgree.

[Skibo]

Calling America an "evil nation" is just plain silly. Hi logic suggest that we would become less of an evil nation if we put OUR soldiers more at risk when engaging the enemy. This reminds me of the stigma men using fire arms faced in a sword swinging era.

[Neb Okla]

One must wonder it will be such a great thing when we have the capability to randomly incapacitate an enemy or group of enemies at will using non-leathal weapons fired from UAV's.

In that scenario, there is no reason to use any kind of restraint, and the military would answer to no-one.

Moreover, demand for such technology would be high among the domestic law enforcement crowd.

At least killing is seen as agression. Use of non-lethals will be viewed by the global public as a simple inconvenience.

Imagine a great war where constant barrages of pinpoint non-lethals are launched around the globe.

[Chimera Beth]

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DATE: 01/20/2004 08:18:45
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