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Were the Missile Strikes in Pakistan Illegal?: The Laws of War, Explained    [

    No Remorse
    By Derrick Z. Jackson
    The Boston Globe

    Wednesday 18 January 2006

    When teenagers show no remorse for mistakes, we call in the therapist. When killers show no remorse, we want life sentences or death row. When the United States makes deadly mistakes, remorse is unnecessary, because, of course, it is never our fault.

    Thinking we could nail Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, our military launched an air strike into a Pakistani town just over the border from Afghanistan. We smoked 18 people at a dinner that al-Zawahri was allegedly going to attend, but apparently skipped out on. The provincial government claims that four or five foreign militants were killed, but local witnesses said women and children were among the rest.

    This is of small concern to the White House. President Bush has never apologized to the Iraqi people for the three years of carnage done in the name of weapons of mass destruction, weapons that were never found. Bush always dodges the need to show remorse on the premise that "we are up against people who show no shame, no remorse, no hint of humanity."

    He long ago maneuvered the self-absorbed American psyche to ignore our own inhumanity. Our bombs and bullets have now killed several times more innocents in Iraq than were killed during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. But the rationale for a remorseless occupation continues to be, as one senior White House official told me and a small group of journalists in November of 2003, "There will be some civilian deaths. It will be nothing like what Saddam Hussein did."

    With three years of denial, the reaction to the latest mistake in Pakistan was predictably without feeling. Asked yesterday if regrets were forthcoming, White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to talk about the incident, saying only, "I think you've heard our comments about matters of that nature in the past. If I have anything additional to add, I will." All McClellan said was, "Al Qaeda continues to seek to do harm to the American people."

    On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brushed off the air strike by saying, "The biggest threat to Pakistan, of course, is what Al Qaeda has done in trying to radicalize the country. . . These are not people who can be dealt with lightly."

    The weekend talk shows had influential senators, both Republican and Democrat, issuing remorseless support of the mistake. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, a Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, basically blamed Pakistan for the mistake. "It's a regrettable situation, but what else are we supposed to do?" he said. "It's like the wild, wild west out there . . . the real problem here is that the Pakistani government does not control that part of their own country."

    Mississippi Republican Trent Lott, who is on the intelligence committee despite a career of unintelligent comments on race and sexual orientation, justified the strike and targeted assassinations by saying, "There's no question that they're still causing the death of millions of - or thousands of innocent people and directing operations in Iraq." Bayh seconded that by saying to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "I agree wholeheartedly, Wolf. These people killed 3,000 Americans. They have to be brought to justice."

    But no one should dare attempt to bring America to justice. Senator John McCain of Arizona played the game on CBS's "Face the Nation" of issuing an apology and then immediately qualifying it. At one juncture, he said, "It's terrible when innocent people are killed. We regret that. But we have to do what is necessary to take out Al Qaeda, particularly the top operatives."

    At another juncture, McCain said, "We apologize, but I can't tell you that we wouldn't do the same thing again."

    The equivocation guarantees that it will happen again and again. The world is our wild west. When we miss the villain at high noon and the bullets fly past the saloon to kill mothers and children, we still flip the barrel to our lips, blow a triumphant puff, twirl the gun back into the holster and say, "Darn sheriff should'a told everyone to stay inside."

    McCain said, "This war on terror has no boundaries. Clearly Al Qaeda does not respect those boundaries, but I don't want to equate our behavior with theirs."

    The air strike in Pakistan reaffirms how our behavior is plummeting in the direction of the evil we proclaim to fight. At home, we are appalled by drive-by shootings that take out innocent children. Abroad, the fly-by air strike is the source of no remorse, with dead children and mothers taken very lightly.

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    Were the Missile Strikes in Pakistan Illegal?: The Laws of War, Explained
    By Daniel Engber
    Slate.com

    Tuesday 17 January 2006

    An illegal attack?

    A US missile attack targeting al-Qaida's second-in-command killed 18 people in a Pakistani village early Friday morning. Pakistan's government lodged a "strong protest" with the American ambassador the next day; public protests followed. This is the fourth such assault in the last few months, and it comes just a few weeks after the Pakistanis formally protested a Jan. 7 helicopter attack that killed eight people. Are these cross-border strikes against the law?

    It depends on whom you ask. The attacks raise two legal questions: First, was the decision to launch the air strikes consistent with international law? Second, did the attacks themselves fulfill accepted standards for military conduct? International-relations scholars categorize these questions as relating to jus ad bellum (the "law to war") or jus in bello (the "law of war").

    According to the principles of jus ad bellum, as codified in the UN charter, one nation can attack another only in self-defense. That doesn't mean you can launch a full-scale attack in response to a tiny incursion. In 1842, US Secretary of State Daniel Webster laid out a doctrine of legitimate self-defense that scholars and government officials have cited again and again. Webster said you can only attack when the necessity is "instant" and "overwhelming." The jus ad bellum tradition also stipulates that a nation's act of self-defense should be proportional to the threat against it.

    Some legal scholars say the missile strikes in Pakistan are clearly against the law since Pakistan never attacked the United States. Others argue that the rules of war need to be updated, since terrorist groups, like states, can engage in major armed conflict. By that logic, the recent attacks on Pakistan are similar to the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan; i.e., both were legitimate acts of self-defense against al-Qaida.

    This dispute is irrelevant if the Pakistani government gave the United States permission to carry out the missile strikes. If so, that could make the attack legal whether or not the US had a valid claim to self-defense. Few nations in Pakistan's position would admit that they had struck such a deal, so it's possible that the formal diplomatic protests are for show.

    What about the way in which the attacks were conducted - the jus in bello question? Is killing 18 people in Pakistan against the law? The traditional rules of war say you can't target civilians, but that civilian deaths are acceptable as long as they are proportional to the overall military objective. (The US military takes care to outline these legal issues in its manuals.) The latest missile strike was designed to kill al-Qaida's second-in-command, which is an important and valid military goal if you accept the jus ad bellum argument above.

    Bonus Explainer: Do governments ever pay reparations for an illegal attack? Sometimes, but they rarely admit they were wrong. In 1988, the United States sent the Iranian government about $30 million after the USS Vincennes shot down a commercial airplane with 290 people aboard. In making the payment, US officials denied wrongdoing and called the attack a "justifiable defensive action." (Iraq had paid the United States three times as much per casualty for a wrongful attack on a US naval vessel the year before.)