Legality of attack on Usama Bin Laden [Split]

[Bakustra]

Let me put it this way- if we are at war with because an individual declared war on us, then I ought to be able to demand POW treatment when captured by simply robbing a few banks and declaring "war" on the US, maybe gathering a gang first. If we reclassify al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations as things we can make war upon, rather than criminal organizations, then aren't we giving them a legitimacy that they don't deserve? Aren't we validating them as a thing beyond a bunch of murderers? Aren't we giving into the mind-numbing impulse to declare war on everything we can comprehend? Can't I declare war upon you, Simon, and thus justify any violence I do to you? Where does it all end?

Quite the contrary; they were a major part of the target for the attack- just as much so as the victims of Bomber Harris's "dehousing" campaigns. The object of the exercise in situations for people like that is to hit multiple targets with one attack. To start, there's physical damage to infrastructure (important to Harris, not important to bin Laden because his assets weren't capable of doing enough physical damage to the US to matter), and 'cultural' damage to symbolic targets (not so important to Harris, important to bin Laden).

But above all, there is the goal of causing psychological damage: the creation of mass terror and reactions that would force the target nation to behave in the way the attacker desired. This was very important to Harris, who was following up on the air power theories of Douhet and trying to make the German people turn on Hitler by devastating German cities and proving Hitler could not protect them. It was also very important to bin Laden, who was trying to provoke the US into launching expensive wars that would bog it down and antagonize the Muslim world into uniting against them.

And when it comes to creating mass terror and psychological damage that affects the enemy nation's collective actions, yes the enemy's civilian population is considered part of the target. That's been true at least since Ghenghis Khan, if not earlier.

Pretty much all of these apply to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so sad that you've swallowed the lies we tell ourselves for "ego me absolvo". The US targeted them for a psychological blow to Japan, they dropped the bombs knowing full well that civilians would get killed, and indeed targeted civilians by refusing to drop leaflets over the cities, unlike in other bombings of Japanese cities- really, the only difference is that we consider ourselves to be justified and Bin Laden not to be justified. After all, he just wanted to damage an American symbol of power and might, just like we wanted to get Japan to surrender.

I'd say that as in medieval times when a declaration of war was against an individual to include all of his feudal holdings, that we were at war with the person of Osama bin Laden, and the Sheikh was a military commander. His holdings were the lands where his followers governed, and his family was Arab nobility and by their own definitions of warfare the rules apply between clans, and therefore Osama was certainly a military commander by the rules of the game in the Muslim world. The "war on terrorism" was really "the war we declared against Sheikh Osama bin Laden and all of his followers and their de facto holdings". This is the result of the collapse of the artificial imposition of the Westphalian state on the non-European world, meaning that we are essentially fighting pre-Westphalian definitions of power and therefore have to revert to older customs to have a proper understanding of events. Osama was more or less a Muslim Arab feudal lord who commanded a great number of religious and secular followers and with his clan controlled territory by force of arms. He was no civilian criminal; he was a warlord and a military commander, and he died like one.

Yes, clearly there is no reason to try him like a criminal. Ideals? What the fuck are those? Telling the truth to the public? Eh, they'll just fall in line with propaganda, no need to treat them like adults.

PS: There are severe doubts that you can describe al-Qaeda as feudal, let alone the implications of insisting that Muslims don't operate under the idea of states. Hell, there are serious doubts that it can be considered an organization at all beyond Bin Laden and his personal circle.

So non-state actors can be at war then? Curious, then, that POW status does not appear to apply to supposed al-Qaeda operatives, despite their apparent status as such. For that matter, what about the benefits of trying Bin Laden, as I asked before?

The Sheikh never signed the Geneva conventions (nor did he follow them, as his repeated choices of civilian targets demonstrated).

What does that have to do with what I said? Ad hominem tu quoque, why is that fallacious, playground reasoning?

[Metahive]

I want to ask, what motivation other than the invocation of "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" is there to not treat Al Quaeda like any other criminal organization? What kind of legal body should they be considered as if they really have the right to declare war upon nations?

[Bakustra]

I want to ask, what motivation other than the invocation of "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" is there to not treat Al Quaeda like any other criminal organization? What kind of legal body should they be considered as if they really have the right to declare war upon nations?

Given that Bin Laden was charged in absentia under the RICO act, clearly they must be simultaneously a criminal organization that is of doubtful extent and reality and a feudal organization under Osama bin Laden that is of even greater doubt as to its reality and extent. Duh, the US has to have it both ways!!! All the time!!!

[Thanas]

The Sheikh never signed the Geneva conventions (nor did he follow them, as his repeated choices of civilian targets demonstrated).

If that was true, do you also contend that as the rules of war do not apply to him, he also had the right to purposefully target civilians?

[Covenant]

I want to ask, what motivation other than the invocation of "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" is there to not treat Al Quaeda like any other criminal organization? What kind of legal body should they be considered as if they really have the right to declare war upon nations?

Not to be a jerk, but how differently would you have treated a criminal organization like the Mafia or something in a similar situation? If they had a massive compound in Sicily where the regional government was sheltering godfather-style bin Ladin, and any time you had the legal authority of the region involved he got tipped off, and he had openly gloated about sending Mafia suicide agents to blow up people around the globe...? You airlift in the untouchables, Usama Capone fires on and blows up the helicopter carrying Eliot Ness, who shoots back, and scarface takes one to the head. That's pretty reasonable.

I mean, do you think we should have shot at him with rubber bullets? The people in his compound shot down a helicopter carrying Navy SEALS. It's not like this was a job for local law enforcement. We treat drug dealers with less care. But that's a different discussion as well.

I'm not diving into the mire of "if he is or is not a combatant" or anything because honestly I have no answer for that. I just think it's a bit goofy to say we used excessive force when this is kinda the standard way of dealing with people who are shooting at you.

[Metahive]

How often do I need to say that as long as a token attempt was made to take him alive I have no objections to how this operation went down? What I objected to originally was TheHammer's attempt to draw a distinct line between cheering Americans and cheering Palestinians/Lebanese/whoever after they experienced a hit being dealt to their perceived arch-enemies.

[Covenant]

How often do I need to say that as long as a token attempt was made to take him alive I have no objections to how this operation went down? What I objected to originally was TheHammer's attempt to draw a distinct line between cheering Americans and cheering Palestinians/Lebanese/whoever after they experienced a hit being dealt to their perceived arch-enemies.

Well, you'll need to say it a bit more then. The line I quoted sounded like it was taking objections, and the thing is, a 'token attempt' to take someone alive who is shooting at you is not the way you treat criminals or military targets. Yelling "drop the gun" as you get ready to fire is as close as you're going to get. The fact is that the guy wasn't taken at night and that his compound was apparently on full enough alert to knock down heavy military hardware. I just want reasonable people to treat this seriously, and not imagine it like a movie or video game where you CAN take people alive with magic stun-darts or heroic screaming. And I figure you're a reasonable person, so this kind of wishy-washy stuff is off-base.

It also sounds like either he or the female shield he's reported to have used were in fact armed and shooting to kill, so there's no way to reliably take a target alive in that kind of a situation. It's not like they're in friendly territory, especially given the possibility that recent information may be true, and the Pakistani government had been deliberately sheltering him.

I'm not going to whitewash the fact we went in with full intent to kill him if he didn't lie down and surrender, but that's the professional, reasonable way to deal with it. In that sense, more than a token attempt to take him alive WAS made, and it's just unfair (or willfully disingenuous) to claim there should have been some extremely dangerous and even-more-unreliable method of capture (like, I don't know, trying to fire teargas at him until he passed out or something) when every military professional deals with a situation like this in this kind of a way. If he's unarmed, grab him. If he's not, fire and be safe. That goes for police and for soldiers.

[Metahive]

I think now having said it three whopping times is enough to have it sink in, don't you think?

I'm not going to whitewash the fact we went in with full intent to kill him if he didn't lie down and surrender, but that's the professional, reasonable way to deal with it. In that sense, more than a token attempt to take him alive WAS made, and it's just unfair (or willfully disingenuous) to claim there should have been some extremely dangerous and even-more-unreliable method of capture (like, I don't know, trying to fire teargas at him until he passed out or something) when every military professional deals with a situation like this in this kind of a way. If he's unarmed, grab him. If he's not, fire and be safe. That goes for police and for soldiers.

Hey, I said I'm content with a token, pro forma demand for him to surrender, so I hope that's not me you're labeling as "unfair" or "disingenious". If Adolf Eichmann had resisted arrest violently and the Mossad agents shot him in the process I'd have been OK with that too.

What I'm not OK with is when people try to invent/apply, poorly-defined legal definitions out of nowhere to make themselves feel better about this whole affair. The deliberate killing of a human being is dirty business one way or another, there's no two ways about it, including when the target is a stinkbug like Bin Laden.

[Simon_Jester]

Simon, the very reasonable explanation could be that the woman was there in a normal capacity (wife or whatever) and that in the chaotic firefight, some cowardly terrorist douchewad decided to hide behind her and she got killed. Lemme quote from a rather... unpleasent source, the Talking Points Memo article on this:

Bin Laden engaged in the firefight, but it was unclear if he picked up a firearm or shot any rounds. Brennan also identified bin Laden as the combatant who had used a woman as a human shield. She was the only woman who died in the operation, which also killed a courier for bin Laden, the courier's brother, and one of bin Laden's sons, Brennan said. Brennan later said it was his understanding that the woman was one of bin Laden's wives.

I've heard it reported elsewhere. Honestly, unless you're going to question the actual accounts, it seems unlikely that she was just chilling in Osama's rec-room playing Call of Duty.

I don't know whether to question the actual accounts or not. I'm sure she was there for some significant reason- such as being bin Laden's wife, or being the maid responsible for keeping the place clean, or who knows what. I'm sure she knew who lived there, and I'm pretty sure she was OK with bin Laden continuing to live there. I have literally no idea whether anyone actually tried to use her as a "human shield" in the narrowly defined sense of the word ("drop your guns or the girl gets it!" and "if you bomb this place you kill civilians!")

I know that there are tremendous incentives to falsify this- to call her a 'human shield' by default because she was physically located in the same building as the target, to explain why she was shot regardless of where and why it actually happened (which I do not know), and of course to portray the last minutes of bin Laden's life according to the general narrative of what kind of man we know he was- the sort of person we'd expect to try something like that, even when he had no realistic hope that it would work.

Point being, I don't know the truth and have my suspicions- which is that she was simply shot in the confusion and chaos of room to room fighting through a building known to contain numerous armed guards, and labeled "human shield" after the fact. Which, honestly, I can live with, since there's no sign of carelessness or homicidal indifference to civilian life implied by that under the circumstances.

How often do I need to say that as long as a token attempt was made to take him alive I have no objections to how this operation went down?

Once is enough, point taken. That said, your questions demand answers, and they don't have much to do with "I have no objections to how this operation went down." They have a lot more to do with the notion of warfare.

Private persons and organizations can't legally declare war on another nation making this all a moot point.

If they have enough firepower to fight on the scale of war, the legalities are irrelevant- they are fighting a war, and if anyone is going to stop them, they must be stopped using the tools of war. A war is going on, as defined by simple and practical measurements such as the number of random explosions per square mile, whether the legalists want to admit it or not.

Whether it is a just or unjust war depends, as always, on the details- who's fighting, what are they fighting for, what tactics are they using or willing to use to achieve their goals.

But it does not take two nation-states to fight a war; war existed before nation-states.

I'd say that as in medieval times when a declaration of war was against an individual to include all of his feudal holdings, that we were at war with the person of Osama bin Laden, and the Sheikh was a military commander. His holdings were the lands where his followers governed, and his family was Arab nobility and by their own definitions of warfare the rules apply between clans, and therefore Osama was certainly a military commander by the rules of the game in the Muslim world. The "war on terrorism" was really "the war we declared against Sheikh Osama bin Laden and all of his followers and their de facto holdings". This is the result of the collapse of the artificial imposition of the Westphalian state on the non-European world, meaning that we are essentially fighting pre-Westphalian definitions of power and therefore have to revert to older customs to have a proper understanding of events. Osama was more or less a Muslim Arab feudal lord who commanded a great number of religious and secular followers and with his clan controlled territory by force of arms. He was no civilian criminal; he was a warlord and a military commander, and he died like one.

While Her Grace's sensibilities are more medieval than mine, which probably explains her choice to cast the conflict in those terms, I don't disagree with her take on the situation.

When we separate the "war on terrorism" that was rationally a response to 9/11, and draw a line between that and all the other absurd nonsense perpetrated in the name of American security (such as the invasion of Iraq), we were basically fighting a war against a single warlord/nobleman and his followers, plus whatever associated warlord/noblemen might choose to ally with him.

However, I must disagree with the Duchess over a few points of detail.

One, I would argue that bin Laden was, even under medieval definitions, an outlaw and a renegade. He was effectively disowned by the larger house from which he sprang, and denounced by most of the responsible religious authorities of his faith. Were there a pope-equivalent in Islam, it is not unlikely he would have been excommunicated for religious heresy, even if his secular crimes were not enough to ensure this. Thus, in a real sense he is a criminal, even by medieval standards... but the medieval definition of "criminal" was somewhat different from the modern definition. Bin Laden was an outlaw and a rogue, but not a private citizen, and he had a strong following he could send to fight on his behalf.

Two, and this is more a point of clarification than a disagreement, because bin Laden was outlaw and renegade, who had dissociated himself from ties with his own relatives by his actions, fighting his "clan" (insofar as the term is applicable) should not be construed to mean we're at war with the entire house of Laden, or with the Saudis who harbor them.

---

I want to ask, what motivation other than the invocation of "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" is there to not treat Al Quaeda like any other criminal organization? What kind of legal body should they be considered as if they really have the right to declare war upon nations?

Their ability to make a farce of any attempt to treat them like a criminal organization. No more, no less. They don't have the right to declare war on the US; they just have the power to do it. There's a difference. It may be a laughably one-sided war in some regards, much as if the Duchy of Luxembourg declared war on the US, but by the simple and pragmatic metrics used since time began to judge whether a war is or is not happening... there's a war on.

This is not a question of legality. It is a matter of brute fact. Al Qaeda is simply too large, too well defended, and too remote to be treated the same way we'd treat the Gambino crime family. To arrest them and try them, we would need a police force the size of a mechanized corps- with, I repeat, all the weapons and freedom to use them that a mechanized corps implies.

We could call the resulting conflict a "police action," and indeed the US has done exactly that in the past, in other wars... but it would still be a war. Calling a wolf a sheep doesn't make it any less of a wolf.

Let me put it this way- if we are at war with because an individual declared war on us, then I ought to be able to demand POW treatment when captured by simply robbing a few banks and declaring "war" on the US, maybe gathering a gang first.

Possibly. The line is difficult to draw. In the Middle Ages, you could do more or less exactly that- as long as you were willing to extend the same courtesy to others, and had backers willing to pay your ransom for you. A nobleman could privately fight a war with another nobleman, and if there were battles between them in which men were captured, those men could be ransomed under established codes of law and custom.

People who couldn't pay ransom, or find someone to pay it for them, got short shrift- and a slit throat in the bargain. Outright outlaws, men who had been identified by the community as enemies of all, got an ugly death if they were taken alive. Under medieval codes, bin Laden probably would be an outlaw for what he's done, given the importance and power of the enemies he's made.

There were other customs associated with this: the concept of 'parole,' under which you give a binding oath witnessed by God and man not to fight in a war in exchange for friendlier treatment by your captors, things like that. All of them went out of style in the 1800s, because all of them are relics of an older time, of war as something fought between specific powerful men and not between organizations. The old rules were enforced mostly by power of personal reputation and personal expectations of gain- abusing or killing your prisoners cost you money and prestige.

By modern standards, when you fight in a war you are a soldier of the nation, of an organization rather than of specific feudal lords. The practice of demanding ransom for prisoners has ended except for occasional gambits (which don't work, as a rule) and for prisoner exchanges. Because in a war between nations, we aren't concerned with your personal status and authority as a prisoner; you are simply one more tool the enemy organization tried to use to hurt our organization. The rules of the Geneva Convention spring out of this- the need to have some kind of standards to keep an eye on prisoner treatment when wars are fought between organizations.

This is a huge difference.

If we reclassify al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations as things we can make war upon, rather than criminal organizations, then aren't we giving them a legitimacy that they don't deserve? Aren't we validating them as a thing beyond a bunch of murderers? Aren't we giving into the mind-numbing impulse to declare war on everything we can comprehend? Can't I declare war upon you, Simon, and thus justify any violence I do to you? Where does it all end?

Can you declare war on me?

I don't know. What's your title? What are your holdings? What are mine? What's the provocation? Will you get in trouble with your overlord, or mine, for fighting me? Are there religious obligations demanding that we not fight? Have you sworn any relevant oaths? Are there family ties between our respective lineages, and is the provocation strong enough to justify ignoring them, as well it might be?

These are all very strange questions to someone who thinks like a 20th century member of the proletariat or bourgeoisie. They are very real, and significant, questions to someone who thinks like a medieval warlord/aristocrat... or someone who understands how to deal with them.

Quite the contrary; they were a major part of the target for the attack- just as much so as the victims of Bomber Harris's "dehousing" campaigns...

But above all, there is the goal of causing psychological damage: the creation of mass terror and reactions that would force the target nation to behave in the way the attacker desired. This was very important to Harris, who was following up on the air power theories of Douhet and trying to make the German people turn on Hitler by devastating German cities and proving Hitler could not protect them. It was also very important to bin Laden, who was trying to provoke the US into launching expensive wars that would bog it down and antagonize the Muslim world into uniting against them.

And when it comes to creating mass terror and psychological damage that affects the enemy nation's collective actions, yes the enemy's civilian population is considered part of the target. That's been true at least since Ghenghis Khan, if not earlier.

Pretty much all of these apply to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so sad that you've swallowed the lies we tell ourselves for "ego me absolvo".

Quite the opposite. In assuming you know how I think, you've interpreted my argument to mean the exact opposite of what it actually means... which is that the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very much the targets of the bombing of those cities, and were not in any sense collateral damage.

If you aim at something, and you kill it, that is not called "collateral damage." That is called "we hit what we were aiming at." Come to think of it, in that case we may have a case of violent agreement- you may well believe substantially the same thing on this matter.

As to the morals of the attacks, that depends (like the concept of just war) on details: who are you fighting, and why, and what methods are available and necessary to achieve your war aim, and is your war aim worth it?

That cannot be discussed in proper detail here without taking the thread totally of topic.

I'd say that as in medieval times when a declaration of war was against an individual to include all of his feudal holdings, that we were at war with the person of Osama bin Laden, and the Sheikh was a military commander...

Yes, clearly there is no reason to try him like a criminal. Ideals? What the fuck are those? Telling the truth to the public? Eh, they'll just fall in line with propaganda, no need to treat them like adults.

What ideals? When you're fighting a man who thinks and acts like a medieval warlord who just so happens to have been granted modern tools to fight with, what ideals apply? What principles apply?

If you are to apply any principles at all, you apply them purely for your own benefit, in an attempt to enforce the limits of civilized behavior on yourself, even when your opponent refuses to do the same. The question of how tight those limits are, what a nation can and cannot do for the sake of being civilized, is (again) too complicated to be fully discussed here. On the one hand, we shouldn't be barbaric in our conduct towards our enemies; on the other hand, we shouldn't be foolish.

PS: There are severe doubts that you can describe al-Qaeda as feudal, let alone the implications of insisting that Muslims don't operate under the idea of states. Hell, there are serious doubts that it can be considered an organization at all beyond Bin Laden and his personal circle.

Note the irony- feudal structures are precisely the ones in which an organization boils down to "big man on top and his personal circle, plus whoever takes orders from the personal circle, and so on down to Joe Foot Soldier."

Also note that Duchess didn't say any such thing as "Muslims don't operate under the idea of states;" you made that up. What she points out is that there has been a breakdown of the state system in the Muslim world. This does not mean "all Muslims abandon the idea of states," and it takes an incredibly shallow level of thinking to come away with that in one's head. It means that in the Muslim world, an increasing amount of power has shifted out of the hands of states* and into the hands of individuals who operate on, for all practical purposes, the same terms as medieval warlord/aristocrats did. Bin Laden himself is one example of this.

The dictators who set themselves up as warlords and generalissimos are examples of the same process on a larger scale- consider Mubarak, who basically tried to make himself king of Egypt and pass the throne on to his son. Or Qaddafi, who is still trying to establish himself as king of Libya, or at least an abridged edition thereof.

*Organized bodies, with governments that exist as more than one man's private property, with populations that basically see themselves as being part of the state.

So non-state actors can be at war then? Curious, then, that POW status does not appear to apply to supposed al-Qaeda operatives, despite their apparent status as such. For that matter, what about the benefits of trying Bin Laden, as I asked before?

The Sheikh never signed the Geneva conventions (nor did he follow them, as his repeated choices of civilian targets demonstrated).

What does that have to do with what I said? Ad hominem tu quoque, why is that fallacious, playground reasoning?

You missed a very important point.

The Geneva conventions are not laws of nature, they are social conventions, a mutual agreement to make war less horrible, by the people in a position to make it horrible in the first place. People who disregard the conventions one day do not get to use them the next against the same opponent.

I seem to recall you being a fan of the idea of social contracts, right? The Geneva convention is a social contract on a grand scale- and like any contract, it necessarily excludes people who reject its terms.

[Thanas]

If that were true, Simon, then you also have to accept that 9/11 was a legitimate target. After all, if the Geneva convention does not apply here and Al-quida has not signed anything, how do you hold them accountable?

You might argue that they are bound by the customs of war. However, this is fishy on its own, especially if you yourself also feel not bound to abide by the same customs (like treating prisoners of war). In reverse, this argument justifies al-quida and that is not an argument that I think one should make.

Meanwhile, I find the attempt to phrase this as some kind of feudal struggle completely idiotic and can only find intellectual contempt for people who attempt such. Just because it is a kind of nice way to get out of the dilemma does not make it valid.

Also, Simon, your interpretation of the social contrat excluding people who reject it seems to be a bit off a reach as well.

[Bakustra]

Simon, since you're carrying things over from other threads, might I point out that you're rewriting arguments to make them more reasonable again?

First of all, bin Laden did not, in fact, act like a warlord. Duchess says that because she is desperate to validate the actions of the US, but he behaved like any modern-day, Western or non-Western, political figure, issuing statements and rallying supporters. He does not act like a medieval warlord except in the vaguest of ways. I'm going to guess that he didn't think like a warlord either. This is just a guess based on his actions and statements, mind.

Her argument was that the notion of "states" never entered the Muslim world, which is pretty goddamned false and honestly repugnant as well, being as it is just another, slightly disguised form of dismissing Muslims as medieval barbarians. Her use of the term Sheikh is also part of this.

In addition, our leaders have acted publicly as though Bin Laden were a criminal, so if Duchess is right in this being the way that the upper echelons of power think (and I wouldn't be that surprised at this point), then they are deliberately deceiving the public in a number of ways. Furthermore, what would be foolish about trying Bin Laden, as you oh-so-cleverly implied?

I don't think you get what I was saying in my last paragraph. See, I was pointing out that the violation of the Geneva Conventions by someone did not invalidate them for everyone. Otherwise, ought we to have raped, tortured, and murdered every Axis POW in WWII, since those powers disregarded the Geneva Conventions? Hmm, Simon? The Conventions are a burden on the signers, but they are multilateral- an agreement that the signatories will treat the defined POWs and other categories according to the Conventions- not a set of bilateral agreements between all the signatory parties that are invalidated by the behavior of one, nor do they not apply suddenly to combatants of a nation that had not signed them.

[Metahive]

If they have enough firepower to fight on the scale of war, the legalities are irrelevant- they are fighting a war, and if anyone is going to stop them, they must be stopped using the tools of war. A war is going on, as defined by simple and practical measurements such as the number of random explosions per square mile, whether the legalists want to admit it or not.

Could be applied to the Triads, the Camorra, the N'Drangheta, the Russian Mafa or even some ghetto street gangs. Are you saying they all have the right to declare war upon nations and consider themselves legal institutions just because they're armed? I also question that Al-Quaeda constitutes some sort of military threat to degree you make them out here.

But it does not take two nation-states to fight a war; war existed before nation-states.

We are talking about the modern, legal definition though, otherwise you'll have an exceedingly hard time to actually pin anything onto Al-Quaeda or Bin Laden.

Their ability to make a farce of any attempt to treat them like a criminal organization. No more, no less. They don't have the right to declare war on the US; they just have the power to do it. There's a difference. It may be a laughably one-sided war in some regards, much as if the Duchy of Luxembourg declared war on the US, but by the simple and pragmatic metrics used since time began to judge whether a war is or is not happening... there's a war on.

How's Al Quaeda any different from other armed terrorist organisations like the Rote Armee Fraktion, the ETA or the PIRA that were never considered anything but criminal organisations and not some pseudo-nation body with the legal right to declare wars? You're just special pleading.

[NecronLord]

I don't think you get what I was saying in my last paragraph. See, I was pointing out that the violation of the Geneva Conventions by someone did not invalidate them for everyone. Otherwise, ought we to have raped, tortured, and murdered every Axis POW in WWII, since those powers disregarded the Geneva Conventions? Hmm, Simon? The Conventions are a burden on the signers, but they are multilateral- an agreement that the signatories will treat the defined POWs and other categories according to the Conventions- not a set of bilateral agreements between all the signatory parties that are invalidated by the behavior of one, nor do they not apply suddenly to combatants of a nation that had not signed them.

For what it's worth, that's not entirely true. If you, Commander Bakustra, do battle with me, Commander Necron, and attack me using Perfidity (say, misusing white flags) then when I win and capture you, the protections of the Third Geneva Convention do not apply to you. It is permissible under the conventions and laws of war for me to put you to death, as if you were a spy. Specifically, I would then put you on trial as a civilian, and throw the book at you according to my domestic law, which may include such things. I may have to assemble a 'competent tribunal' to determine your status, but in this example, you would not benefit from any protection under the Geneva Conventions.

There are several examples in the Geneva Conventions, and even the fourth Geneva Convention, where not signing it means you don't get the benefits. If a third party non-signatory's civilians are in a warzone they are not protected in the same way as a signatories, but only protected by civil laws.

As for the idea that Osama was a civilian and thus should benefit from the protections of the fourth Geneva Convention, if we want that to apply, we must presume he was in Pakistan while it was being invaded by the United States.

Even if we grant that, he took up arms upon the approach of foreign armed forces in order to resist them. He may qualify as a regular combatant in these circumstances (though he was a foreign national, not a Pakistani) and thus qualify as a regular combatant; liable to be shot and killed by the invading armed forces like any other soldier.

If of course, he had been captured and denied rights in the same manner many hundreds of others have been, then there may be violations, but as a regular combatant IE a person taking up arms against an invader, he has the right to conduct warfare in accordance with the Geneva Conventions (IE, get shot when attacked by superior forces).

This is frankly, a massive stretch, but if one insists on using the Geneva Conventions for something they were not intended for (the United States is not at regular war with Pakistan) that's what one ends up with.

However, as this was not a United States invasion of Pakistan, he had the protections afforded by Pakistani Civil Law, which, depending on Pakistani support may be 'none' or alternately, it may be that the United States conducted a minor act of war against Pakistan to kill a non-citizen resident (a matter for their diplomats to resolve between their nations, which they presumably already have). Either way, this would not afford him any special protections due to civilian status.

Fairly obviously, his actions are not those of an innocent civilian, and saying that he should have been afforded the protections intended for such ignore his culpability for the many deaths. Legalism is one thing, but no law quite applies to this situation, save perhaps the Laws of War, which are unequivocal: Resist a foreign military - you may be shot and killed unless you surrender.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yes, Thanas. His targets were as legitimate as they were in medieval times. We cannot apply the Westphalian paradigm and its laws of war to the conflict of pre-Westphalian conflict that Osama started. I've always had the highest respect for the Sheikh, been rather fascinated by him--and wanted his head on a pike outside the White House.

[NecronLord]

To add to my above post, and something that should have been in it in the first place an act of war against Pakistan would be in violation of international law only inasmuch as the legality of wars is now determined by the United Nations Security Council. Prior to the United Nations (well, League of Nations) a country could undertake acts of war against another for almost any reason, including territorial expansion.

So what does the United Nations Security Council have to say regarding Osama?

The full text of resolution 1904 (2009) reads as follows:

“The Security Council,

“Recalling its resolutions 1267 (1999), 1333 (2000), 1363 (2001), 1373 (2001), 1390 (2002), 1452 (2002), 1455 (2003), 1526 (2004), 1566 (2004), 1617 (2005), 1624 (2005), 1699 (2006), 1730 (2006), 1735 (2006), and 1822 (2008), and the relevant statements of its President,

“Reaffirming that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to peace and security and that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable regardless of their motivations, whenever and by whomsoever committed, and reiterating its unequivocal condemnation of Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden, the Taliban and other individuals, groups, undertakings and entities associated with them, for ongoing and multiple criminal terrorist acts aimed at causing the deaths of innocent civilians and other victims, destruction of property and greatly undermining stability,

“Reaffirming the need to combat by all means, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and international law, including applicable international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law, threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts, stressing in this regard the important role the United Nations plays in leading and coordinating this effort,

International Law, as declared by the United Nations Security Council, the supreme authority on such matters, proclaims the need to 'combat by all means' (with provisos) Usama Bin Laden. The resolution goes on at length about listing and sanctions and so on.

International Law literally singles him out and declares that he must be engaged in combat by any means that comply with international law (including UN resolutions).

Usama Bin Laden is specifically targeted for action (including military) by International Law.

To suggest that he is another civilian, when he actually takes up arms, is laughable.

Needless to say, it is entirely reasonable for Pakistan to permit the United States access to this man in order to engage him in combat.

Edit: Dialed down the rhetoric and up the precision.

[Simon_Jester]

If that were true, Simon, then you also have to accept that 9/11 was a legitimate target. After all, if the Geneva convention does not apply here and Al-quida has not signed anything, how do you hold them accountable?

The legitimacy of the target hinges on the legitimacy of the war, and the relationship between the war aims of the group and the targets they pick as part of their warfighting.

I don't believe Al Qaeda's goals justify, from an ethical standpoint, the 9/11 attacks. What they're fighting for, as far as I'm concerned, is simply not good enough to justify committing that scale of evil.

And of course I can damn well say the same about any number of other attacks made by one party against another in pretty much every war since time began, or at least since recorded history began; we can sling "you did it too" and "but it's happened before" at each other from now until Judgment Day and accomplish nothing.*

That's a side issue as far as I'm concerned. The point is that the question of whether a given act of war is 'justified' or 'legitimate' simply has to boil down to the question: "justified by what?" I said as much to Bakustra: the concept of justified and unjustified acts of war cannot be abstracted out from what the justification is, from the issue of who you are fighting, and why, and how.

It is my judgment of those issues, in the specific context, that makes me label the 9/11 attacks as unjustified- as worse than unjustified, as an outright atrocity and a large one by historical standards. They are very far from the only thing I label that way; again, we could go over various examples of historical atrocities forever and it would do us no good.*

*I'd be just as happy, for the record, if we didn't go there- not so much because I fear the debate as because it's a pointless waste of our time to rehash the same old ground when we are probably actually fairly close to agreement on the subject of which acts of warlike aggression are legitimate and which aren't.

You might argue that they are bound by the customs of war. However, this is fishy on its own, especially if you yourself also feel not bound to abide by the same customs (like treating prisoners of war). In reverse, this argument justifies al-quida and that is not an argument that I think one should make.

I would argue that we are bound, by custom if not by law, to abide by some reasonable and fair standard of prisoner treatment.

And it may only be custom, the common humanity that has driven people to behave in "chivalrous" ways towards defeated enemies throughout history. It may only be custom, if there are no laws that we can apply gracefully to the problem of fighting against something like Al Qaeda- a large organization of stateless renegades led by a charismatic warlord who fight for ideological causes while spitting on all the old conventions governing warfare between nations.

If there are no such laws, we should invent such laws, because I doubt Al-Qaeda will be the last international terrorist organization.

But even under the old laws and the old customs, we have to recognize that the applicable standards for the use of force and for civilian casualties are not those of conventional police work as practiced in the territory of a nation-state with overwhelming force on its side.

As I said before, to "arrest" bin Laden the way the police might arrest a Mafia boss would take a force the size of an army, equipped to fight like an army, and given permission to cause as much damage to the landscape as an army would. It would be difficult, dangerous, bloody, and indistinguishable from warfare as far as anyone caught up in it was concerned.

For this reason, when we apply the old laws and customs to the specific act of tracking down and killing bin Laden, the conduct of the US military in this operation would seem to be justified. They sent a team of specialists to infiltrate the territory held by bin Laden's supporters, storm his combination home/command post, and kill him, much as they would an enemy general or minister.

If we are fighting a war, there is nothing particularly out of line about this.

If we are engaged in a police action there might be... but, Al Qaeda is too big and powerful for normal police practices to be applied, as anyone with a gram of sense knows from taking a casual glance at the realities.

Meanwhile, I find the attempt to phrase this as some kind of feudal struggle completely idiotic and can only find intellectual contempt for people who attempt such. Just because it is a kind of nice way to get out of the dilemma does not make it valid.

It's not a way out of the dilemma; it's a frame of reference in which to comprehend the idea of powerful men waging private wars- with all the bloodshed of a war, even with none of the formalities.

Ideally, wars would exist only within a very tightly defined framework. In practice, no one is powerful enough to enforce the framework on people who don't want to play along; bin Laden had enough loyal followers and a big enough home-court advantage to ignore the rules.

Calling him a criminal, with the implication of a small scale threat that ordinary law enforcement can handle, is simply ridiculous. Bin Laden was a man who aspired to control countries, and arguably had the resources to bring it off if he had been free to operate unopposed.

Thinking of him as a private individual with a large following, large enough that he personally can interact with states on peer-to-peer terms- the practical equivalent of a major African warlord whose power rivals that of "his" government, say- makes a lot more sense to me.

And a man like that does, as an empirical matter, have the power to fight wars. If you'll forgive a reference to Roman history, Crassus's comment about the ability to raise one's own army comes to my mind... as does the role of political contests between powerful individuals who had the personal loyalty of armies, men whose private significance was comparable to that of entire barbarian states on the Roman periphery, in the collapse of the Roman Republic and the birth of the Empire.

It's not really a "feudal" struggle because our side of the war is modern and not medieval, and because bin Laden's side isn't formally organized into a feudal structure. But that doesn't mean it's appropriate to interpret bin Laden as just another random private citizen given how large his personal power base was.

Also, Simon, your interpretation of the social contrat excluding people who reject it seems to be a bit off a reach as well.

Within reason, we can extend social-contract protections to people who reject the contract. This is a matter of collective generosity and decency- something we do to avoid turning ourselves into the sort of coldly pseudo-civilized regime that committed so many atrocities in the 20th century.

But there is, again as a practical matter, a limit; we have to balance mercy against prudence.

We can acknowledge the rights of the citizen who breaks a law and is pursued by our police because the disparity of power is so large. We can still catch the criminal, punish him, and stop him from doing it again without having to engage in brutality.

Against a force of armed men the size of an army, with a strong territorial base in a remote part of the world where the people are tied to them by strong cultural bonds, that breaks down. We could not have, could never have, sent Interpol to arrest bin Laden.

If we're going to oppose such a force at all, if we're not just going to sit back and let them do as they please*, then we are forced to relax our observance of the formalities, because the rules that work for arresting an individual criminal do not work for arresting an army.

*And don't rule this out as a rhetorical option; I am proposing it seriously and if it strikes you as a bad idea, so be it. What would happen if we left Al Qaeda totally alone, and how bad would it be? Answer that question, and you've at least half-answered any further question about what should and should not be done to fight them.

---

Simon, since you're carrying things over from other threads, might I point out that you're rewriting arguments to make them more reasonable again?

I think the problem is that I interpret certain people's arguments in a different light- I can read between the lines with a fairly good guess as to what Duchess is thinking, for instance, as a result of previous conversations I've had with her. So when I see you breaking out what is, to me, a cartoon version of her argument, into which you are free to read all your own biases, even at the expense of the argument itself... well, I step in because I agree with her to an extent in any case.

First of all, bin Laden did not, in fact, act like a warlord. Duchess says that because she is desperate to validate the actions of the US, but he behaved like any modern-day, Western or non-Western, political figure, issuing statements and rallying supporters. He does not act like a medieval warlord except in the vaguest of ways. I'm going to guess that he didn't think like a warlord either. This is just a guess based on his actions and statements, mind.

What is, to you, the definition of a "warlord?" Or an aristocrat?

Did medieval kings (shiekhs, princes, whatever) not make speeches and rally supporters? They had to do it by word of mouth, of course, since they were dealing with illiterate populations and mass media hadn't been invented yet. But do you honestly believe for a moment that Saladin or Joan of Arc wouldn't have been quite happy to tape-record speeches for distribution among their followers, had they been able to do so?

It is impossible to understand any part of the developing world without understanding the interaction between old and new ideas. Nor is "the developing world" limited exclusively to brown people- the same is true of the American evangelical movement and the rural backwaters from which it draws its greatest strength.

In every corner of the globe that is not thoroughly permeated by the ideas of the industrial and post-industrial ages, we see interaction between the old and the new. People trying to run their societies in the old way (by military dictatorship) using new technology (tanks and radio broadcasts). People trying to run their societies in the new way (regular elections) and running into problems with old cultural mores (people reflexively voting for whichever patrón-equivalent happens to dominate the immediate area because he's the big man).

It happens. We have to deal with it as it happens, and one of the realities of that is that there are private individuals out there who have their own army-sized fighting forces and the finances to match, who have the physical capability to fight wars large enough to pose a real challenge to nation-states, even if not to overthrow those nation-states outright.

Her argument was that the notion of "states" never entered the Muslim world, which is pretty goddamned false and honestly repugnant as well, being as it is just another, slightly disguised form of dismissing Muslims as medieval barbarians...

Conveniently, it is not merely false and repugnant, it is also a cartoon version of her argument.

Again, this is about the interaction of old and new, not about "all Muslims are barbarians." At most, it is about "Osama bin Laden and his followers are barbarians," which is a very different argument from saying the people of a place like Turkey or Bangladesh- or, hell, Pakistan- are barbarians.

In addition, our leaders have acted publicly as though Bin Laden were a criminal, so if Duchess is right in this being the way that the upper echelons of power think (and I wouldn't be that surprised at this point), then they are deliberately deceiving the public in a number of ways.

I doubt very much that the people in the upper echelons of power think like Duchess. Duchess tends to think like a medieval holdover when it comes to matters of war, peace, honor, and dishonor, which is why she advanced the argument in the first place.

Barack Obama and George Bush do not think like medieval holdovers; they think like modern politicians. There is a difference. Their concept of "honor," insofar as it exists at all, is much vaguer and much less important to their notion of good policy. They are less interested in the form, the sentiment, the "fitting-ness" of it all, and far more in calculation: will this help or hurt my election chances? Which interest groups do I pander to next?

This is the difference between the medieval aristocracy and the bourgeoisie that replaced them in power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite being born long after this shift of power was finished in her home country, Duchess is on the old side of that line, politically. Insofar as she espouses more modern opinions, that's because even old-style aristocrats were capable of changing with the times and recognizing new arguments about rights and law- as the French aristocrats who backed the French Revolution demonstrated quite effectively.

But it is nonetheless an interesting frame of reference to look at the war, even if a modern politician wouldn't think of it that way. Osama bin Laden may have been a private citizen, but he wasn't "just" a private citizen, any more than someone like Crassus was. Crassus played a major role in Roman politics for years because while he was a private citizen, he was a citizen whose physical resources were large enough to make him a major player in the state.

In most Western countries, it's hard to imagine any individual being that rich and powerful. Even someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett (or Donald Trump) isn't rich enough to be powerful in their own right, not really; they're just rich enough to be a celebrity with a relatively loud popular voice.

In the developing world, things are different, individuals can be that powerful, and we have to deal with that reality.

Furthermore, what would be foolish about trying Bin Laden, as you oh-so-cleverly implied?

What would be foolish is trying to arrest him against his will when he is perfectly capable of grabbing a rifle and objecting violently to the arrest. You know this, or should. Metahive knows it, and has made it quite clear that he has no objection to the way the actual commando raid against bin Laden's compound went down.

How about you?

I don't think you get what I was saying in my last paragraph. See, I was pointing out that the violation of the Geneva Conventions by someone did not invalidate them for everyone. Otherwise, ought we to have raped, tortured, and murdered every Axis POW in WWII, since those powers disregarded the Geneva Conventions? Hmm, Simon? The Conventions are a burden on the signers, but they are multilateral- an agreement that the signatories will treat the defined POWs and other categories according to the Conventions- not a set of bilateral agreements between all the signatory parties that are invalidated by the behavior of one, nor do they not apply suddenly to combatants of a nation that had not signed them.

(Note: there is no guarantee that I agree with Duchess, or anyone else you happen to disagree with, on the details of this issue).

The limits of our treatment of people who violate the Geneva Conventions, or any other laws of war, depends on the circumstances. When fighting a group which is normally decent in its conduct but has started acting in vile ways, we should behave decently towards them, so that there won't be any major atrocities burning into their minds after they come back to their senses and start behaving decently once again.

When fighting a group of stateless renegades, one which denounces the laws of war as foul lies promoted by the strong to cover up their oppression of the weak, and who preferentially target innocent people over those directly involved in the oppression in question... well, then we need a new set of rules. The old ones aren't going to cut it.

One big difference is that standards of evidence play a huge role- we have to be very careful about who we treat like a terrorist, much more careful than we do about who we treat like a POW, because POWs carry handy insignia telling us who they are and terrorists don't. No one worries about trying a POW to find out if they're a member of the enemy army or not; we should worry, very much, about trying captives to make sure they're really terrorists.

When the terrorists are weak, the normal rules of law enforcement are good enough. When the terrorists have their own army, and territorial bases stretching across hundreds of kilometers of remote wilderness... well, again, we may well need to write up some new rules on how to deal with this in a humane yet efficient fashion.

I'm open to suggestions on what those laws should look like.

---

If they have enough firepower to fight on the scale of war, the legalities are irrelevant- they are fighting a war, and if anyone is going to stop them, they must be stopped using the tools of war. A war is going on, as defined by simple and practical measurements such as the number of random explosions per square mile, whether the legalists want to admit it or not.

Could be applied to the Triads, the Camorra, the N'Drangheta, the Russian Mafa or even some ghetto street gangs. Are you saying they all have the right to declare war upon nations and consider themselves legal institutions just because they're armed? I also question that Al-Quaeda constitutes some sort of military threat to degree you make them out here.

The Taliban certainly does; they were a national government once upon a time, remember?

More generally, no I do not think all groups can declare war by virtue of owning weapons. But as a brute fact, whether a war exists has nothing to do with formalities. This is why things like "undeclared war" have any meaning: because you can be killing people en masse through organized application of large scale violence without anyone having bothered to fill out the paperwork from a legal standpoint.

The Mafia is not powerful enough to do this- not large enough scale relative to what they'd need to be. They live in areas where the police (and the state militaries backing those police) have more than enough power to crush them at any time. When police come to arrest a Mob boss, the Mob boss doesn't get into a shootout with the police because they know how that would end. They may hire lawyers, they may bribe judges, they may intimidate... but they are in no way a credible challenge for the armed might of the state.

A nation is always powerful enough to do this; that's practically the minimal definition of what makes a nation: the ability to wage war against an outsider trying to enforce their will on the nation.

But there is a big gap between national militaries and normal criminal organizations. Al Qaeda lies in this gap, as do a lot of revolutionary movements and powerful warlords around the world. They really can touch off armed conflict on a large enough scale that it takes an army to stop them. What is that, if not the power- not the right, the power- to fight a war?

But it does not take two nation-states to fight a war; war existed before nation-states.

We are talking about the modern, legal definition though, otherwise you'll have an exceedingly hard time to actually pin anything onto Al-Quaeda or Bin Laden.

Hardly.

If a medieval warlord had conspired to collapse a building and crush thousands of subjects of another warlord, no one would be surprised if the target responded by declaring war, then tracking down and killing the offender. It would be a perfectly straightforward situation: A commits a grievous offense against the people of B, B attempts to punish A, B realizes that this will take an army and a long time, so B settles in for a long war that ends in the death of A when someone storms A's house and kills A.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me as a description of a "war," by any definition of "war" that matches reality. Hell, there are war stories dating back to preliterate times that run that way.

How's Al Quaeda any different from other armed terrorist organisations like the Rote Armee Fraktion, the ETA or the PIRA that were never considered anything but criminal organisations and not some pseudo-nation body with the legal right to declare wars? You're just special pleading.

Who said anything about legal rights? I'm not talking about rights. I'm talking about power.

If the Rote Armee Fraktion was never treated as anything but a criminal organization, that just goes to show they weren't as big and strong as Al Qaeda. Not big enough to need an army to stop them, and not big enough to be taken seriously, because warfare is how a state deals with openly declared enemies it takes seriously.

Whether Al Qaeda has the "right" to declare a war in some formal sense is immaterial if they have the power to make a war happen in the practical sense. Which they do, or at any rate did: by committing violent acts so provocative that their openly declared enemies were driven to respond with large scale organized violence rather than allow such provocations to continue.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The better strawman is the inherent presumption in the argument against me that Westphalian nation-states based on linguistic and ethnic characteristics are the appropriate means of organizing humanity and fundamentally moral, rather than basically racist in conception.

[Simon_Jester]

The better strawman is the inherent presumption in the argument against me that Westphalian nation-states based on linguistic and ethnic characteristics are the appropriate means of organizing humanity and fundamentally moral, rather than basically racist in conception.

You can throw that gage down if you like. I won't, as I have neither the inclination nor the time to pursue it. In any case, it damn well deserves its own thread.

Would make an interesting debate between civil and honest opponents.

[Bakustra]

Yes, Thanas. His targets were as legitimate as they were in medieval times. We cannot apply the Westphalian paradigm and its laws of war to the conflict of pre-Westphalian conflict that Osama started. I've always had the highest respect for the Sheikh, been rather fascinated by him--and wanted his head on a pike outside the White House.

I, personally, would rather that if we're going to institutionalize bloodshed, we go all the way and rip his heart out for the table of Huitzilopochtli.

But you didn't bother to address any of the points I made about how this is a faulty view of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Instead you ignored them and kept up with suggesting that Muslims are all savages and barbarians. Good show!

What is, to you, the definition of a "warlord?" Or an aristocrat?

I would say that a warlord actually seeks to take and hold territory, acting as a government, rather than a non-governmental organization! That's a critical part of medieval warlord behavior! It's also pretty insulting to imply that evangelicals in the US are literally medieval savages as well! You insist that individuals having immense amounts of power is a feature of medieval life! Well, I guess that Spain only entered the modern age in 1975!! But you're seriously fucking wrong about that. The idea of absolute monarchy is post-medieval in character. The idea of single despots holding power has prevailed well into the modern era as well.

What would be foolish is trying to arrest him against his will when he is perfectly capable of grabbing a rifle and objecting violently to the arrest. You know this, or should. Metahive knows it, and has made it quite clear that he has no objection to the way the actual commando raid against bin Laden's compound went down.

How about you?

I see you have unveiled yourself, Tomas de Torquemada. Curious guise and questions to ask, but unfortunately you'll simply have to go back to the grave now.

Simon, we were not talking about the raid, we were talking about how it would be foolish to try him rather than regressing ourselves to the medieval mode of thought! Can you answer that, or are you not going to answer me fairly? In that case, why should I give you anything, since you won't bother to respond meaningfully? I might as well turn just respond to everything you post with a series of insults, then. Do you want that? Then shape up!

The limits of our treatment of people who violate the Geneva Conventions, or any other laws of war, depends on the circumstances. When fighting a group which is normally decent in its conduct but has started acting in vile ways, we should behave decently towards them, so that there won't be any major atrocities burning into their minds after they come back to their senses and start behaving decently once again.

When fighting a group of stateless renegades, one which denounces the laws of war as foul lies promoted by the strong to cover up their oppression of the weak, and who preferentially target innocent people over those directly involved in the oppression in question... well, then we need a new set of rules. The old ones aren't going to cut it.

How soon you fall into the ways of beasts, Simon, abandoning pesky, nagging conscience and morality. I do not think that we can come to any sort of agreement on this issue, since I believe that we ought to hold to the Geneva Conventions because they are right- not because they fall under some definition of expediency. I also feel that the nature of terrorism means that law-enforcement is appropriate, and that in the case of fortifications that regrettable levels of force may be necessary, though I am sure people will jump, or wish to jump, on "regrettable".

The better strawman is the inherent presumption in the argument against me that Westphalian nation-states based on linguistic and ethnic characteristics are the appropriate means of organizing humanity and fundamentally moral, rather than basically racist in conception.

No, what I said is that you are wrong about the Islamic world or bin Laden not operating on the ideal of the state or nation-state, and that doing so is part of an ideology that seeks to put down the Islamic world as savage, medieval, barbarian, and inferior. So sorry that you had to unveil yourself as wrong and devoted to a prejudicial ideology.

The better strawman is the inherent presumption in the argument against me that Westphalian nation-states based on linguistic and ethnic characteristics are the appropriate means of organizing humanity and fundamentally moral, rather than basically racist in conception.

You can throw that gage down if you like. I won't, as I have neither the inclination nor the time to pursue it. In any case, it damn well deserves its own thread.

Would make an interesting debate between civil and honest opponents.

No wonder you won't, then!

[Broomstick]

Only nations can declare war upon another nation, not private persons or criminal organizations, no matter how full of themselves they are, otherwise there wouldn't be a reason to even try anyone in court since every criminal could be claimed to have "declared war upon the nation" and be deposed of without trial. I also already said in another post that "getting killed while resisting arrest" is fine by me.

When you raise up an army of soldiers and operatives, and purchase lots of military hardware, the distinction between "military" and "civilian" starts to blur. Maybe this didn't happen before in history, but it is now. Perhaps we need a new term for such an in-between agency.

Most criminals don't have a private army and don't have military hardware. Comparable civilian/military mutants might be some of the drug lords of the Americas. Al Qaeda isn't the only such entity in the world.

[Thanas]

The better strawman is the inherent presumption in the argument against me that Westphalian nation-states based on linguistic and ethnic characteristics are the appropriate means of organizing humanity and fundamentally moral, rather than basically racist in conception.

Moral or not, damned better than the barbarity that existed beforehand. It is quite easy for you, a pampered first world citizen, to go all feudal, but it is completely sociopathic considering that the wars that existed before that treaty wiped out a third of all Germans. Do you really want to make that argument?

Yes, Thanas. His targets were as legitimate as they were in medieval times. We cannot apply the Westphalian paradigm and its laws of war to the conflict of pre-Westphalian conflict that Osama started. I've always had the highest respect for the Sheikh, been rather fascinated by him--and wanted his head on a pike outside the White House.

So if your enemy is sinking to a low level, you are absolutely justified to sink to that level as well? What ideals are you defending then?

If that were true, Simon, then you also have to accept that 9/11 was a legitimate target. After all, if the Geneva convention does not apply here and Al-quida has not signed anything, how do you hold them accountable?

The legitimacy of the target hinges on the legitimacy of the war, and the relationship between the war aims of the group and the targets they pick as part of their warfighting.

*snip rest*

This is a huuuge dodge you are making here. You are making the argument that this is a war. You earlier argued that the Geneva convention does not apply here because....al-Quida has not signed anything. Are you now moving away from that argument and are you now arguing that the Geneva convention does indeed apply here?

And I have a huge issue with your argument, because it essentially takes an objective law (You cannot beat prisoners) and makes it into a subjective issue (depending on the circumstances, prisoners may be beaten). Where do you draw the line here?

I would argue that we are bound, by custom if not by law, to abide by some reasonable and fair standard of prisoner treatment.

Clearly the USA does not feel that way. Given that they invented Guantanamo Bay, would you feel that potential enemies of the USA are justified in treating US targets they captured the same way? Because that is what custom law eventually boils down to - it is only honored as long as it is used by the majority of participants. And the example set here is eventually that if a nationstate feels that a non-state actor is threatening enough, said state actor can be eliminated.

I'd much rather we'd all agree that this is a war which allowed for a legitimate killing of Osama as he refused to surrender. That the USA is also in breaches of the law (POW treatment) would not impact the legality of this instance.

If we are engaged in a police action there might be... but, Al Qaeda is too big and powerful for normal police practices to be applied, as anyone with a gram of sense knows from taking a casual glance at the realities.

According to you, the entire German legal establishment and all German courts do not have a gram of sense. Quite a proclamation.

Calling him a criminal, with the implication of a small scale threat that ordinary law enforcement can handle, is simply ridiculous. Bin Laden was a man who aspired to control countries, and arguably had the resources to bring it off if he had been free to operate unopposed.

Thinking of him as a private individual with a large following, large enough that he personally can interact with states on peer-to-peer terms- the practical equivalent of a major African warlord whose power rivals that of "his" government, say- makes a lot more sense to me.

And said warlords are still treated as criminals when they are brought to justice. Your analogy fails on that point.

It's not really a "feudal" struggle because our side of the war is modern and not medieval, and because bin Laden's side isn't formally organized into a feudal structure. But that doesn't mean it's appropriate to interpret bin Laden as just another random private citizen given how large his personal power base was.

Legally, he is either a criminal or an enemy combatant, the former who is tried in courts and the latter who is a potential legal target in a war. There is no difference here. One cannot be "a bit criminal" or "a bit combatant".

Against a force of armed men the size of an army, with a strong territorial base in a remote part of the world where the people are tied to them by strong cultural bonds, that breaks down. We could not have, could never have, sent Interpol to arrest bin Laden.

It seems to me that forces like the Gendarmerie or GSG9 would have been able to accomplish that task.

If we're going to oppose such a force at all, if we're not just going to sit back and let them do as they please*, then we are forced to relax our observance of the formalities, because the rules that work for arresting an individual criminal do not work for arresting an army.

Try them or treat them as POWs. I do not see why there should be a third option, especially not one that only favors one side and which has no legal precedent. And especially not when people were tried and convicted in the past for doing that kind of thing. Three guesses as to what nation(s) also claimed that certain people were not worthy of legal POW status due to the way they fight?

[Guardsman Bass]

I wonder if a Mod could split the "assassination under Geneva law" tangent into a separate thread.

[NecronLord]

On it.

[Anguirus]

They weren't celebrating the random deaths of civilians- they were celebrating a blow against the empire that causes much of the misery in their daily lives, which bombs them and props up their repressive governments, with unfortunate collateral damage, much like we celebrate fighting terrorists and victory over terrorists despite the unfortunate collateral damage of over 2 million people. Kinda like how Americans also cheerlead the targeted deaths of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as essential to victory over Japan, as well.

I'm calling you out for this analogy. It is a false one.

Collateral damage (NOT deliberate war crimes) during war in Afghanistan: accidental killing of noncombatants in pursuit of a declared military goal.

Destruction of Hiroshima: the city itself had many military targets that were relevant in the total war situation that presented itself at the end of WWII. The deaths in the civilian population may have been the unspoken goal, but the goal of THAT was the military objective of forcing Japan to surrender.

Destruction of the Twin Towers: kill 3000-odd civilians in order to...kill 3000-odd civilians. The point was clearly to kill as many as possible with the method of attack that was chosen and the goal of those deaths was to terrorize the U.S. population. There is no plausible progression or mechanism to get from there to "dismantling the American Empire." I am unconvinced that al-Qaeda has any rational strategic goals.

The point I'm getting at is, saying "Fuck you, America" (which is not any strategic goal except for propaganda) is not a valid justification for mass killing.

NOTE: I do not make this post to defend American methods, tactical, operational, or strategic, in Afghanistan. Nor do I make this post to defend the strategic bombing campaign in World War II. I am merely explaining why I think this analogy is a false one. "But Anguirus," you cry, "what if al-Qaeda had only targeted the White House and the Pentagon?" Then, says I, you would have a much stronger case that al-Qaeda wages war, not terror. The boundaries are blurry, but I have always argued that they exist.

[NecronLord]

Split complete, starting from the post where Bakustra posted the thing about the objective being to kill not capture. There may be some leftovers but I think it should suffice.