Benign State Violence vs. Barbaric Terrorism
By Matt Peppe
September 13,
2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Just
the Facts" -
Seven months ago, UK Prime Minister
David Cameron lamented the "sickening murder" of Jordanian pilot
Moaz al-Kaseasbeh by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
President Barack Obama also decried the "viciousness and barbarity"
of the act. In his home country, al-Kaseasbeh was remembered as a
"hero" and a "martyr" by government officials. Obama even declared
his murder demonstrated ISIS's "bankrupt"
ideology. The killing was seen by the Western coalition and allied
Arab monarchies fighting ISIS as a symbol of the evilness of their
enemies, and by contrast the righteousness of their own cause.
The act that precipitated such a strong
outpouring was the purported execution of the 26-year-old al-Kaseasbeh.
He was burned
alive inside a cage after several months in captivity. As part
of ISIS's propaganda campaign, they posted the video on Youtube. The
authenticity of the video has since been
questioned,
but there is no doubt that regardless of the method used, he was
indeed killed.
Al-Kaseasbeh was not an innocent
civilian. In fact, he was a pilot in the Royal Jordanian Air Force
who was bombing territory controlled by ISIS when his F-16 fighter
jet crashed. That is to say, he was an active combatant in military
hostilities. His combatant status would be equivalent to an ISIS
pilot (if they had an Air Force) apprehended after bombing New York
City or London. Though it was reported in the British newspaper
The Telegraph that al-Kaseasbeh was "kidnapped," a military
combatant engaged in armed conflict on the battlefield cannot be
kidnapped. He was captured.
According to the Geneva Conventions,
Prisoners of War enjoy protected status that guarantees their humane
treatment and eventual release at the end of hostilities. "POWs
cannot be prosecuted for taking a direct part in hostilities. Their
detention is not a form of punishment, but only aims to prevent
further participation in the conflict. They must be released and
repatriated without delay after the end of hostilities," writes the
International Committee of the Red Cross.
ISIS would have no legal grounds to kill
al-Kaseasbeh, but it was cynical and sanctimonious for the Western
coalition to react with such outrage when he was killed. Those same
countries have embraced and celebrated summary assassinations and
executions on a scale far more massive than anything ISIS could ever
be capable of.
Several weeks ago, Cameron ordered the
assassination of two British citizens in Syria alleged to be ISIS
militants.
"The strike against British citizen
Reyaad Khan, the 'target of the strike,' was committed without
approval from Parliament. British citizen Ruhul Amin, who was killed
in the strike, was deemed an 'associate' worthy of death," writes
Kevin Gosztola in
Shadowproof.
The British government has not declared
war on Syria and has not released any legal justification for its
actions. Naturally, any legal documentation they did produce would
be merely psuedo-legal cover that would never withstand real
judicial scrutiny.
Cameron's actions in ordering the murder
of his own citizens follows the well-treaded path of Obama, whose
large-scale drone program in as many as seven countries (none of
which the US Congress has declared war on) have killed more than
2,500 people in six years. The President has
quipped that he is "really good at killing people."
By any measure, the drone assassination
program has been wildly reckless and ineffective. One study
determined that missile strikes from unmanned drones, launched by
remote-control jockeys in
air-controlled trailers in the American desert, kill 28
unknown people for every intended target. In Pakistan, a study
revealed that only
4% of those killed have been identified as members of al Qaeda.
Among the victims have been 12 people on
their way to a
wedding in Yemen, and a
13-year-old boy who said that he lived in constant fear of
"death machines" that had already killed his father and brother
before taking his own life.
"A lot of the kids in this area wake up
from sleeping because of nightmares from then and some now have
mental problems. They turned our area into hell and continuous
horror, day and night, we even dream of them in our sleep," the
now-deceased boy, Mohammed Tuaiman, told
The Guardian.
Before Cameron did so, Obama also
targeted citizens of his own country for assassination without
trial. The most well known case is of Anwar al-Awlaki, killed by a
drone strike in 2011. The government claimed he was operationally
active in al-Qaeda, but this was never tested in court.
"It is likely the real reason Anwar
al-Awlaki was killed is that he was seen as a radicalizer whose
ideological activities were capable of driving Western Muslims to
terrorist violence," writes Arun Kundnani in The Muslims Are
Coming!.
In other words, the Obama administration
decided his speech was not protected by the 1st amendment to the US
Constitution, and rather than being obligated to test this theory in
court they unilaterally claimed the right to assassinate him, the
way King John of England would have been able to order the execution
of one of his subjects before signing the Magna Carta 800 years ago.
Three weeks later, al-Awlaki's
16-year-old son was killed in a drone strike. An
Obama adviser justified the strike by saying he should have "had
a more responsible father."
Writing on his blog, former British
security services officer
Craig Murray claims that in light of the decision 20 years ago
by the European Court of Human Rights that targeted assassinations
when an attack was no imminent were illegal, the British government
cannot claim its drone strike in Syria "is anything other than
murder."
"For the government to claim the right
to kill British people through sci-fi execution, based on highly
unreliable secret intelligence and a secret declaration of legality,
is so shocking I find it difficult to believe it is happening even
as I type the words. Are we so cowed as to accept this?" Murray
writes.
So what makes ISIS's killing supposedly
morally outrageous compared to the US and British drone strikes?
Was ISIS's killing less morally
justified? Al-Kaseasbeh was a combatant who had been dropping bombs
on the people who eventually killed him. That much is beyond
dispute. The US and UK kill people - including their own citizens
who enjoy Constitutional protections of due process - through drone
strikes merely for being suspected militants who might one
day seek to attack those countries.
Were ISIS's methods less humane?
Certainly burning a human being alive is sadistic and cruel. But is
it any less so to incinerate a human being by a Hellfire missile?
Former drone operator
Brandon Bryant told NBC News that he saw his victim "running
forward, he's missing his right leg... And I watch this guy bleed
out and, I mean, the blood is hot." Is a drone strike less cruel
because the operator is thousands of miles away from the bloodshed
and watching on a screen rather than in person?
Were ISIS's actions terrorism while the
US/UK actions were not? As the late Mohammed Tuaiman attested, he
and his neighbors were terrified by the omnipresence of the "death
machines" that could at any second of the day blow him to pieces
without warning or the possibility of escape. Were the people in
ISIS controlled territory as terrorized as Tuaiman by the burning of
the Jordanian pilot, who was specifically targeted because he had
been caught after bombing the same people who now held him captive?
Surely they were not more terrorized, though perhaps they
might have been equally so.
It would by hypocritical to justify one
form of extrajudicial killing while demonizing another. Yet that is
exactly what happens when one form of violence is undertaken by a
state and another is not. The New York Times is indicative of
broader public opinion when it decries the "fanatical
vision" of ISIS that has "shocked and terrified the peoples of
Iraq and Syria," while accepting Obama's rationalizations of deaths
via drone strikes as collateral damage, maintaining only that he
should "provide
a fuller accounting" to enable an "informed debate."
The apologies for state violence enable
the shredding of the rule of law as a method of accountability for
those in power, while other states take advantage of technical
advances to proliferate their own sci-fi violence against their own
citizens and others.
"Pakistan is the latest member of a
growing technological club of natioins: those who have successfully
weaponized drones," writes Spencer Ackerman in
The Guardian. "In addition to the US, UK and Israel, a recent
New America Foundation report highlighted credible accounts that
Iran, South Africa, France, China and Somalia possess armed drones,
as do the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Russia says it is
working on its own model."
One day in the not too distant future,
the skies across the world may be full of drones from every country
dispensing justice from Miami to Mumbai via Hellfire Missiles,
relegating the rule of law and its method of trial by jury to the
ash heap of history. And it will not be because of terrorist groups
like ISIS that governments and the media are so forceful to condemn,
but because of governments themselves and their lapdogs in the media
who refuse to apply the same standards in judging violence to states
that have their own Air Forces.