>>No one, not even the United States has the luxury of making it alone in the modern world. Our world has become intricately interconnected. Do you really think America can exist in isolation ? Gulf war could never have ended so decisively and quickly without the world support...<<
Of course not. I wasn't suggesting that at all. And I fully don't "expect" it. But to say that we "must" have world support as we defend our people attacked within our own borders is fallacious, imo.
I certainly hope we will maintain the support of the alliance, BUT we cannot allow any waivering on the part of allies deter us from defending our country against naked aggression.
AND Of course I believe "what" strategy used is important. What I prefer is what will ultimately work. We have had a policy of limited engagement dealing with terrorism, chasing down individual perpetrators and then relying on courts to try and convict.
That strategy obviously hasn't worked for 30 years.
When I say fatal, I mean it in the literal sense. If we are indeed in a war, you do as Colin Powell said in 1991 when asked for his policy on eliminating the Iraqi army...
>>First we're going to cut it off, then we're going to kill it..
I realize he was speaking as a military commander and now he acts in the role of Secretary of State. But I believe our actions will define whether or not we see this escalation as "war" or whether we are simply hearing rhetoric aimed at assuaging the passions of the American people.
I found this article from last month and I think special note should be given to Caspar Weinbergers comments...Considering the dates and intervening events, I wonder if Secretary Powell stands by his stated view.
Military Experts Debate Moral Ramifications of Killing Leaders
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
August 05, 2001
Israel says the targeted killings of Palestinian leaders are necessary as part of its effort to prevail in "an armed conflict short of war." Palestinians denounce the killings as "extra-judicial executions." Military experts tend to disagree with the Palestinians, even while conceding that such attacks fall into a gray area.
Some think attacks by the Israelis on specific Palestinian targets are legal and justified because the leaders are engaged in aggressive warfare. Others, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, are opposed to the practice.
On Tuesday, an Israeli military helicopter fired a missile into a seven-story office building on the West Bank, hoping to kill two leaders of an Islamic militant group. The Israelis succeeded, although they also killed six other Palestinians, two of them boys.
The Palestinians immediately denounced the attack as another in a series of "assassinations." That's the term the Palestinians use to describe the Israelis' use of military muscle to kill specific Palestinians who are suspected of leading the effort to plot terrorist attacks.
But are such military moves "assassinations"?
Despite some loose legal ends, the consensus seems to be "No."
One of the experts in the field is John Norton Moore, who directs the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia's law school.
In a telephone interview Wednesday, he said, "If one is lawfully engaged in armed hostility, it is not 'assassination' to target individuals who are combatants."
Moore cited the Yamamoto precedent. Adm. Isoru Yamamoto was a brilliant strategist who led the Japanese sweep across the Pacific in the early days of World War II.
In April 1943, U.S. code-breakers learned that Yamamoto was planning an inspection trip by plane. The Americans set up an ambush. On April 18, 1943, U.S. warplanes pounced on the plane carrying Yamamoto and shot it down, killing the admiral and several key staff aides.
"That was clearly not an assassination," Moore said. He said belligerents like Yamamoto "are lawful targets."
A similar view came from Air Force Col. Charles J. Duncan Jr., a military lawyer who writes widely on such subjects.
After cautioning that he was speaking for himself and not for the Air Force, Duncan said, "Contrary to popular belief, neither international law nor U.S. domestic law prohibits the killing of those directing armed forces in war." And he said, "Nations have the right under international law to use force against terrorists."
Virginia's Moore added a caveat: "It's somewhat clouded in low- intensi ty conflict. The situation in the Middle East is perhaps more ambiguous."
Means to an end
But not to Caspar Weinberger, the former secretary of defense and the holder of a law degree from Harvard.
In the spring issue of Strategic Review, he writes, "If the targeting and killing of the leader or leaders [of aggressive warfare] can help to end a war quickly, and thus spare the lives of hundreds of thousands of combatants, it is hard to find any moral argument for not attempting to kill the leaders."
He adds: "What has been forbidden in most statements of the law of arme d conflict is assassination, usually defined as a murder by treacherous means.
"Thus it is considered lawful in warfare for a skilled and daring soldier (perhaps a Delta Force commando) to steal into the enemy's camp and enter the general's tent and kill him. But it would be a forbidden assassination if someone disguised as the general's doctor was admitted to his tent, and then killed him."
The Air Force's Duncan added another example of treachery: "For example, it is illegal to kill an enemy leader when he is protected under a flag of truce."
The Israeli approach has been a lot less subtle than that of Weinberger's Delta Force commando. Last month, for example, Israeli tanks leveled their guns on a red Volkswagen and blew it away, killing an activ ist in the militant group called Hamas.
The Palestinians complained bitterly to the Mitchell Commission this spring that Israel's practice -- the Israelis call it "the targeting of individual enemy combatants" -- was, in fact, a policy of assassination, of "extra-judicial executions."
The Mitchell Commission arose from President Bill Clinton's meeting with Israelis and Palestinians last October at Sharm al Shaykh, Egypt. Former Sen. George Mitchell and four other internationally respected figures took testimony on the roots of the conflict and set forth some suggestions on ending it.
When the commission issued its report in May, it took note of the Palestinians' complaint that the killing of individuals violated the Geneva Convention. The commission also noted the Israeli reply: "Whatever action Israel has taken has been taken firmly within the bounds of the relevant and accepted principles relating to the conduct of hostilities."
The commission let the matter go at that, without further comment. But it had mild criticism of Israeli's contention that "Israel is engaged in an armed conflict short of war. This is not a civilian disturbance or a demonstration or a riot. It is characterized by live- fire attacks on a significant scale."
The commission called the Israeli description "overly broad" and suggested that Israel "abandon the blanket 'armed conflict short of war' characterization." Even so, the commission took into account the Israeli complaint that Israel was being held to a higher ethical standard than the Palestinians.
The report says, "More than once we were asked: 'What about Palestinian rules of engagement? What about a Palestinian code of ethics for their military personnel?' These are valid questions."
The Israelis bristle at any suggestion that they're defining a protest as a war. After Tuesday's missile attack, Israeli Cabinet Minister Ephraim Sneh -- once a high-ranking Army officer -- said, "Anyone who thinks the war against terrorism is a ping-pong war simply doesn't understand it."
But another former high-ranking military man, Secretary of State Colin Powell, has taken exception to the Israeli approach.
Late in June, the Israelis used a military helicopter to fire a missile at a car in the West Bank, killing three Palestinians. Powell said then, "We continue to express our distress and opposition to these kinds of targeted killings, and we will continue to do so."
Tuesday's missile attack drew a similar reaction against what a State Department spokesman called "the Israeli policy of targeted attacks."
But in each such case, U.S. officials have steered clear of the word "assassination."
"A legitimate target"
Curiously, in an op-ed piece Tuesday in the Jerusalem Post, writer Evelyn Gordon began with these words:
"Israel's policy of 'targeted killing' -- i.e., assassinating terrorists -- has been widely criticized both at home and abroad."
But Gordon notes that "Hamas, Islamic Jihad and most Fatah organizations see themselves as armed soldiers fighting a war."
And in a war, Gordon argues, "you are not required to wait for enemy soldiers to shoot at you; it is legitimate to open fire first. Nor are you required to prove that a given soldier has either shot at your troops in the past or intends to do so in the future. His membership in an enemy force suffices to make him a legitimate target."
Weinberger argues much the same point in his article. He brushes aside the notion that an enemy chief of state or commander should be exempt from the crosshairs -- a notion that he says emerged from the treaty that ended the Thirty Years War in 1648 but never took hold.
"The idea of 'protecting princes' has never been enacted or enshrined in the Geneva or Hague conventions, or anywhere else," he writes.
And with good reason, Weinberger says. "In wartime," he writes, "the higher the target, the more effective it is -- especially if the leadership of the enemy's military can be severed from the military it commands.
"Otherwise, in wartime we would have the absurd situation of having to ascertain if any division or corps commanders were present, or if a commander-in-chief might be visiting that day, before we could attack."
As defense secretary, Weinberger himself had a hand in an attack against an Arab leader -- Libya's Moammar Gadhafi. In April 1986, in retaliation for a terrorist attack on American GIs in Germany, U.S. Air Force and Navy planes bombed Libya. Critics said the bombing had personally targeted Gadhafi, who escaped unharmed.
Weinberger's response: "Actually, we did not know of Gadhafi's whereabouts that night. We knew he changed abodes (usually a tent) virtually every night to keep himself from being assassinated."
But if a bomb had torn up Gadhafi's tent, Weinberger writes, the bombing would have been fair and square. "If a country behaves in such a way that causes us to go to war with it, the head of that state or its army appears to be a legitimate military target. ... The case is even clearer when the head of state or government is the commander of the armed forces." |
