Posted on 11/07/2002 7:37:59 PM PST by DWPittelli
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."
First, it is not an act of war against Yemen if Yemen is OK with it.
Second, we are legally at war with al Qaeda and its allies: 1) because they attacked us. 2) because of the Sept 2001 Congressional Resolution; and 3) because of actual combat in several countries with Muslim populations, most notably Afghanistan and the Phillippines.
Third, soldiers are shot in wars, often from too far away to check papers and ask for weapon-surrender. This is of course always true when airplanes shoot at surface targets (and vice versa).
Yemeni officials say al-Harethi went into hiding in 2001 after being tipped off that he was wanted for questioning by US investigators in the Cole bombing. Between August and November of last year, al-Harethi spent several months in Hosun al-Jalal, a poor village in Marib – a region of gun-toting tribesmen where government forces venture only with permission of local chiefs.
Al-Harethi lived in the village along with Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, another al-Qaida suspect who is also wanted for the Cole attack. Last December, Yemeni special forces, trained by US instructors, moved into Hosun al-Jalal to search for al-Qaida suspects. In the clash that followed, 18 soldiers and six tribesmen were killed, the government said.
The two al-Qaida suspects got away. Yemen's foreign minister, Abubaker Al-Qirbi, said earlier this year that al-Harethi and al-Ahdal took refuge in the Rub al-Khali or Empty Quarter, the world's largest sand desert which straddles Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
This one's priceless.
"Zap! Crunch! So where next for the drones of death?"
Did I miss something? Did The Guardian hire Maureen Dowd?
This certainly reads as if it came straight out of Her Shallowness' word processor...
Sovereignty, whether the term applies here or not (and it doesn't, IMHO) is one important principle. But it is not the only pertinent principle. Of equal or greater importance is the principle that terrorists may no longer exploit that restraint to cover their own international operations. The Guardian wishes to invoke international law when it's to our disadvantage, and ignore it when it isn't, siding with murderers when it suits their politics. If the worst thing these most blatant of hypocrites can do is accuse us of hypocrisy, we must be doing all right.
But seriously folks, When they start qouting Alexander Herzen, a Russian born socialist-liberal, we should expect this from the gaurdian.
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