The United Nations Human Rights Council Is Going to Investigate the Practice of Drone Murder — Will the Inquiry Be Enough to Slap Legal and Moral Sense into the Imperial American Presidency?

26 January 2013

Why this matters

Drone murder, the way the United States has been pursuing it, arguably amounts to the institutionalization of the commission of war crimes.

In Pakistan alone:

Data collected by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism say 2,600-3,404 Pakistanis have been killed by drones, of which 473-889 were reported to be civilians.

Can illegality be reasonably claimed?

Succinctly:

Ben Emmerson, special investigator for the United Nations Human Rights Council, says he will investigate rise in drone strikes and other forms of remotely targeted attacks in effort to determine whether there is plausible allegation of unlawful killing.

The United States will (reportedly) not be singled out

Mr. Emmerson said that the human rights inquiry will begin with 25 selected strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestinian territories, Somalia, and Yemen. There, the focus will be on the U.S., Great Britain, and Israel.

However, given that fifty plus nations have, or can quickly achieve, drone technology, the implied overall thrust will be to come up with international agreements governing its use:

“This form of warfare is here to stay, and it is completely unacceptable to allow the world to drift blindly toward the precipice without any agreement between states as to the circumstances in which drone strike targeted killings are lawful, and on the safeguards necessary to protect civilians.”

The panel’s immediate goal will be to come up with recommendations for the U.N. General Assembly regarding the duty of member states to investigate civilian casualties.

U.S. as a rogue nation?

Given that the Obama Administration has intentionally short-circuited investigations of civilian casualties — by claiming that any military aged males killed in the strikes were necessarily terrorists or terrorist supporters — it seems unlikely that his Imperial Presidency will be receptive to whatever the U.N. panel comes up with.

The legal and moral weakness of the U.S. blanket claim of self-defense

The United States’ Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (John O. Brennan) claims that the U.S. has the right to defend itself against stateless enemies.

But this justification evades the due process and moral points.

Just because we have the right to defend ourselves does not carry with it the equivalent right to be murderously sloppy about it. Or to cover up instances of carelessness on our part:

Mr. Emmerson angered American officials by suggesting that some “double tap” drone attacks, involving a second missile attack on a target, could be described as war crimes because they had been reported in some instances as having killed mourners at funerals for people killed in the initial strike, or tribal elders meeting at the target sites.

I imagine the Obama Administration’s comeback for “double taps” will parallel its claim about military aged males. Namely, that anyone who has feelings enough for a terrorist, terrorist sympathizer or terrorist-associated family to bury them is — by definition — an equally imminent threat to the United States.

The moral? — Fear causes America’s downward moral spiral

Decades ago, I did not anticipate that the United States — as a matter of policy — would be torturing prisoners, cavalierly raining remotely controlled death from the sky, and making up lying justifications for both.

Our fear, and the often unthinking actions taken to counter it, have overtaken our ethical sense.

Perhaps the United Nations’ preliminary inquiry will begin the process of saving us from ourselves. That, too, is something I would not have forecast decades ago. An America become so morally short-sighted that the U.N. would have to step in?

President Eisenhower’s warning about the implied spiritual pitfalls of indulging the Military Industrial Complex is pertinent.

PeteFree.com

The United Nations Human Rights Council Is Going to Investigate the Practice of Drone Murder — Will the Inquiry Be Enough to Slap Legal and Moral Sense into the Imperial American Presidency?