Drones of death: Bush takes the law into his own hands
Leader
Wednesday November 6, 2002
The Guardian
Zap! Pow! The bad guys are dead. And they never knew what hit
them. Living his presidency like Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan,
George Bush etched another notch in his gun butt this week,
blowing away six "terrorists" in Yemen's desert. Their car was
incinerated by a Hellfire missile, fired by a CIA unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV) or drone. Dealing out death via remote-controlled
flying robots could be the spooks' salvation after the September
11 and Afghan intelligence flops. It makes the agency look
useful. It is quick and bodybag-free. It is new wave hi-tech, a
21st century equivalent of James Bond's Aston Martin. And the
hit had full authority, right from the top, judging by Mr Bush's
comments. The president is keen on hunting down America's
foes, on the ugly old premise that the only good Injun is a dead
Injun. For redskin, read al-Qaida. It is part, he says, of his
anti-terrorist war-without-end. All the world's a battlefield for Mr
Bush. The United States of America, 001: licensed to kill.
Zap! Ping! Even as the bullets ricochet, it should be said there
are some problems with this approach to international
peacekeeping. For a start, it is illegal. The Yemen attack
violates basic rules of sovereignty. It is an act of war where no
war has been declared. It killed people, some of whom who may
have been criminals, but who will never now face trial. It
assassinated men who may have been planning attacks. But
who can tell? It is, at best, irresponsible extra-judicial killing, at
worst a premeditated, cold-blooded murder of civilians. And it is
also, and this is no mere afterthought, morally unsustainable.
Those who authorised this act have some serious ethical as well
as legal questions to answer. That there is no prospect at all
that they will, and no insistence by Britain or others that they do
so, only renders ever more appalling the moral pit which gapes
and beckons.
Zap! Crunch! So where next for the drones of death? What about
Georgia or Turkey, where shady Chechens lurk? Russia would
approve. Lebanon, Iran, or Gaza, as rehearsed by Israel's
gunships? Or Finsbury Park perhaps? How would that feel?
Stateless, gangster terrorism is a fearsome scourge. But
state-sponsored terrorism is a greater evil, for it is waged by
those who should know better, who are duty-bound to address
causes not mere symptoms, who may claim to act in the
people's name. As Alexander Herzen said in another age of
struggle: "We are not the doctors. We are the disease."
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