Why killing "criminals" with drones is a war crime. - By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine - 0 views
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Of course, there's a lot of controversy over the percentage of noncombatants killed in the drone strikes. One study, not very convincingly, puts civilian casualties at slightly above 3 percent. Another says 10 percent, another a full one-third, Brookings far more. Do these different numbers yield different moral conclusions? Are the drone strikes defensible at 4 percent murdered innocents but indefensible at 33 percent? There's no algorithm that synchs up the degree of target importance, the certainty of intelligence that's based on, and potential civilian casualties from the attack. It's a question that's impossible to answer with precision. Which suggests that when murdering civilians is involved, you don't do it at all.
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so-called "just war" principles have not been given much weight by the Obama Justice Department, which has glossed over or ignored them in giving its sanction to stepped-up drone warfare. The two key "just war" principles are "distinction" and "proportionality." Distinction means that an act of war is illegitimate if it does not at least attempt to make a distinction between military and noncombatant civilian casualties. Nukes obviously don't, can't
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The "foes" in Afghanistan do not wear uniforms. I'm not saying all Taliban look alike, but the pious believers don't look very different from the "provincial commanders." Some have called the whole drone program "targeted assassination" that violates even U.S. prohibitions, especially when carried out by the CIA, which was supposed to be prohibited from carrying out assassinations.
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