90% of drone strikes miss & other drone details leaked

[Imperial528]

It might be plausible but you still have the problem of the missile body it self, fuel and all crashing into the target. You'll still get a nasty fireball even if you remove the warhead altogether. As for making the missile smaller that probably can't be done because the bulk of the missile is in fact not the warhead but the guidance systems and engine.

This is true. However the lack of a warhead would make the requirements of the engine significantly less. On the Hellfire and Griffin, the two ground-attack missiles on the Predator, the warhead is about 1/5th and 1/4th the wet mass of the missile, respectively.

I imagine a significant amount of fuel load is for range and maneuvering, however. Still, with say a 2lb penetrator instead of an 18lb or 13lb warhead, there's a good margin you could shave off.

[Patroklos]

From most of the strikes that have details we are looking at its not like we are literally putting "warheads on foreheads", ie finding the guy sitting on his poach out in the open and getting a skin to skin hit. Its more along the lines of destroy the building he is in. Depending on the size of the building you might be able to get it down to putting in through the window of the room in the building if you are using a TV guided munition and your intel is that precise. If its a moving vehicle you are going to end up with a CEP or some kind so an explosive warhead is useful. The idea seems to be that if you are going to let the enemy know you have the intelligence or means to know exactly where he is in real time you better ensure a takout then and there or they will go to ground or discover and neutralize whatever Intel source you are using.

What you suggest is technically possible, there would just be no real way to use it in the context of the operations we are talking about. There is a video which I can't find at the moment of an Israeli warship firing a TV guided missile through a window on the Gaza coast. That is a much smaller and closer range shot than an aerial drone mind you.

Here is a different video of an NLOS doing such. There is no reason a hellfire or maverick couldn't do the same and I expect most drone strikes are using this level of accuracy on the target selected. JDAMs and other GPS guided munitions are not this accurate. As stated previously the problem isn't with hitting the target accurately, its with choosing the target.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXw9SqnXqZQ

[Purple]

It might be plausible but you still have the problem of the missile body it self, fuel and all crashing into the target. You'll still get a nasty fireball even if you remove the warhead altogether. As for making the missile smaller that probably can't be done because the bulk of the missile is in fact not the warhead but the guidance systems and engine.

This is true. However the lack of a warhead would make the requirements of the engine significantly less. On the Hellfire and Griffin, the two ground-attack missiles on the Predator, the warhead is about 1/5th and 1/4th the wet mass of the missile, respectively.

I imagine a significant amount of fuel load is for range and maneuvering, however. Still, with say a 2lb penetrator instead of an 18lb or 13lb warhead, there's a good margin you could shave off.

Sure, but that still leaves you with needing 4/5 or 3/4 of the engine, mass and fuel. And that's plenty enough to fireball anyway.

Also just removing the warhead is not as easy as you make it sound. The warhead is not just the thing that goes boom, it's also weight that effects the balance of the missile in flight. If you remove it you'll need to reshape the entire missile to account for the changed weight distribution and design new software to fly it accurately. At that point you'd essentially be paying for a whole new missile design. And that's going to cost a lot. The only cheap option would be to just use a dead weight instead of a warhead. But that does not solve your fuel fireball issues.

[Channel72]

Yes. I wouldn't describe the situation like that if someone was asking. I'd say you were so sociopathic that you don't care about the lives of millions of people. Saying you "intended" to kill millions of people would imply to the listener that your goal was to kill millions of people, not Oskar McDouchy specifically.

Language is important. Words are important. It helps to be precise with words, if not with drones.

So it's just a matter of numbers then? Killing ten people for every one guy you want to kill (maybe...intelligence isn't so great after all) is OK, but there's an upper limit? Could you please define the upper limit of collateral damage for me after which it becomes just "sociopathic" to engage in such practices?

Sure. Killing ten people is absolutely fine, if the USA does it, as long as they're all Muslim. Actually, as long as they're simply not white, it's probably all good. I mean, obviously. The upper limit is 65,536 Muslims, after which you need to wait a few months before killing more, because (A) otherwise it just looks too suspicious, and (B) drone software uses 16-bit integer fields to store kill counts. (Source)

[Batman]

The fuel is usually completely spent by the time the missile hits and solid rocket fuel isn't actually all that volatile. The problem is even if you had targeting precise enough to hit a single specific individual (and I don't think we're there just yet) you'd need LOS.

[Ralin]

There's your answer. If the US goes for mass-extermination of the Muslim world, it will get a few nukes lobbed its way since China and Russia would feel massively threatened by a US willing to commit outright nuclear genocide.

Here endeth the lesson.

Who the hell said anything about nukes? What world do you live in where China and Russia would fight a war with the US to avenge the poor people of Fallujah/Tikrit/Kabul/Other city full of 'brown people' if the US decided to straight up indiscriminately bomb the place instead of 'just' targeting buildings or campsites in small towns and villages where maybe one out of ten people present is a dangerous terrorist?

So yeah, you have an ax to grind and you're clearly determined to twist anything and everything to make it fit.

[Patroklos]

The fuel is usually completely spent by the time the missile hits and solid rocket fuel isn't actually all that volatile. The problem is even if you had targeting precise enough to hit a single specific individual (and I don't think we're there just yet) you'd need LOS.

1.) That depends on where you fire it from and where you are firing it at. For obvious reasons its not a good idea to habitually use it at a range that equals empty at impact. There will still be plenty of fuel to make it less than inert mass.

2.) Its harder to ignite solid rocket motor fuel than other types sure. The problem here is that its already burning and its not going to stop. short of a large explosion that consumes it.

[Batman]

The fuel is usually completely spent by the time the missile hits and solid rocket fuel isn't actually all that volatile. The problem is even if you had targeting precise enough to hit a single specific individual (and I don't think we're there just yet) you'd need LOS.

1.) That depends on where you fire it from and where you are firing it at. For obvious reasons its not a good idea to habitually use it at a range that equals empty at impact. There will still be plenty of fuel to make it less than inert mass.

Then you'd better get really close to the target because the Hellfire's engine burns out 2-3 seconds after launch. Assuming it starts out at maximum speed that's less than 1.5 km. Virtually all non-cruise missiles are habitually used at ranges seriously exceeding their engine burn duration.

2.) Its harder to ignite solid rocket motor fuel than other types sure. The problem here is that its already burning and its not going to stop. short of a large explosion that consumes it.

No, it used up all its fuel quite a while ago unless it was launched from stupidly close range.

[Simon_Jester]

But when you bomb residential building blocks to take out a certain person, acting as a careless evil robot Hitman, it is even more questionable. Even with perfect intel, if you always, absolutely in all cases kill one bad person with 9 bystanders, should this practice be continued?

What if you blow up the car they were riding in?

If the police killed 9 bystanders for every killed or apprehended criminal, I bet they would be in trouble...

Yes. And if it were feasible for the US to send policemen to arrest these people with a near-total lack of collateral damage, they'd probably do so. If nothing else because it would be cheaper than paying thousands of spies and drone operators to monitor large groups and territories for years.

Trouble is, the amount of manpower required to physically reach and arrest these people is a force the size of an infantry company. And that's just the minimum- for cases like the assassination of bin Laden. To do that reliably without having random jokers with shoulder-fired SAMs killing your commando teams you would literally have to send an army, enough men to secure a large territory and allow your designated 'arrest' group to capture the person you're looking for.

And the collateral damage associated with sending an army to arrest people is very large.

This reminds me of the time Thanas tried to argue that Al Qaeda was a problem for ordinary law enforcement...

Because he didn't have the ability to do so. It was guarded by soldiers with guns and other weapons who would have killed him and his men if he'd tried.

There's your answer. If the US goes for mass-extermination of the Muslim world, it will get a few nukes lobbed its way since China and Russia would feel massively threatened by a US willing to commit outright nuclear genocide.

Here endeth the lesson.

Do you honestly think the US couldn't be killing more Muslims without that happening? I mean, for crying out loud, do you think Vladimir Putin actually cares if we use 1000kg bombs to level whole city blocks?

For all Putin cares we could be using B-52s instead of drones and JDAMs instead of Hellfires, and killing ten or a hundred times more people. He wouldn't threaten nuclear war to stop us. Neither would the Chinese. Neither of those governments is less ruthless or more humane than the Americans.

You're just... so fucking unrealistic, that you tell what amounts to outright lies about the world whenever you talk about geopolitics, because believing those lies allows you to say Americans are the worst thing ever.

Yes. I wouldn't describe the situation like that if someone was asking. I'd say you were so sociopathic that you don't care about the lives of millions of people. Saying you "intended" to kill millions of people would imply to the listener that your goal was to kill millions of people, not Oskar McDouchy specifically.

Language is important. Words are important. It helps to be precise with words, if not with drones.

So it's just a matter of numbers then? Killing ten people for every one guy you want to kill (maybe...intelligence isn't so great after all) is OK, but there's an upper limit? Could you please define the upper limit of collateral damage for me after which it becomes just "sociopathic" to engage in such practices?

It's not "ten deaths is okay, a million deaths is not."

But you're taking the opposite approach, the Stalinist attitude of "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." Or rather, the Metahive attitude is "ten deaths is an atrocity, ten million deaths is a statistic I can use to make up bad analogies to continue my America-bashing."

I mean really, all you would have to do is not lie and actually compare things which are similar, while having a realistic grasp of the difference between large and small atrocities. Is it that hard to tell?

Yeah, I agree, my analogy was poor. After all, Hitler acted out of desperation. You lot don't even have that. You do it out of...what?

Metahive, you are literally engaging in apologetics for Hitler because of your need to criticize the US.

[Thanas]

This reminds me of the time Thanas tried to argue that Al Qaeda was a problem for ordinary law enforcement...

Oh wow, another shitty drive by post by a shitty poster. I argued that you did not need mass surveillance of your own citizens or use things like torture because ordinary courts, ordinary police using ordinary techniques should be enough to convict terrorists. This was specifically done to argue against the need for rendition, military tribunals, torture and the mass surveillance state. This of course is quite different from what you remember.

Or, to appropriate what you said about another poster:

"You're just... so fucking unrealistic, that you tell what amounts to outright lies about what Thanas said , because believing those lies allows you to say Thanas is the worst ever."

Oh wait, shit that was unfair. My bad.

See how that works?

[K. A. Pital]

And the collateral damage associated with sending an army to arrest people is very large.

Indeed, which is why it is not an easy decision. Which is why you don't go to war over "very bad person is hiding in nation X". But when you can just kill people with drones, war becomes much more acceptable "at home" and even, shall I say, entertaining?

This reminds me of the time Thanas tried to argue that Al Qaeda was a problem for ordinary law enforcement...

I think Thanas did not argue that it was - and I'd ask for proof he ever did, if you don't mind. And by the way, I fully support him in his criticism of Gitmo, extraordinary rendition, military detainment "black sites", secret courts and all things related to the massive extrajudicial assassination and kidnapping apparatus that the US created.

What if you blow up the car they were riding in?

If the strikes were only directed at cars driving somewhere across the land, I doubt the bystander-to-target ratios would be so high. But they are not.

[Simon_Jester]

This reminds me of the time Thanas tried to argue that Al Qaeda was a problem for ordinary law enforcement...

...I argued that you did not need mass surveillance of your own citizens or use things like torture because ordinary courts, ordinary police using ordinary techniques should be enough to convict terrorists. This was specifically done to argue against the need for rendition, military tribunals, torture and the mass surveillance state. This of course is quite different from what you remember.

Or, to appropriate what you said about another poster:

"You're just... so fucking unrealistic, that you tell what amounts to outright lies about what Thanas said , because believing those lies allows you to say Thanas is the worst ever."

Oh wait, shit that was unfair. My bad.

See how that works?

No, that was actually... something approximating fair, assuming that what I claimed you said isn't a reasonable approximation of what you actually said. It would take... a lot of digging for me to find evidence one way or the other because I do not remember when we had that conversation. Guess I should at least start trying.

It was also... at best loosely disciplined of me, I literally was going "oh, I remember the last time someone told me that normal police action* would be enough to cope with large international terrorist organizations, hm, that was Thanas wasn't it" I should not have mentioned it, if nothing else because it would predictably make you cranky.

Now, I'm going to be honest, it IS folly to think "just send the police to arrest them" when talking about major international terrorists.

Even a relative small-fry individual like al-Awlaki... He lived among Yemeni rebels. If he was guilty of a crime (not that this was ever proven in court), legally the Yemeni government's police would have jurisdiction to arrest and extradite him. But they'd have the slight problem that if they tried to arrest al-Awlaki the rebels would shoot them. He was already on their "most wanted" list as a criminal... but they didn't arrest him.

[Please note that whether al-Awlaki could feasibly be arrested by normal police action is totally separate from the complaint that he did not receive anything like an actual trial. The point that drone strikes are used by the state to put people to death after "star chamber" hearings with no public viewing of evidence is an extremely strong point against drone strikes, and I in fact oppose drone strikes. I simply also oppose willful ignorance and deliberate foolishness about what a national police or military force is and is not capable of.]
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*In the sense of 'action by police,' not in the sense that 'police action' is used as a euphemism for 'a war against people weaker than we are.'

And the collateral damage associated with sending an army to arrest people is very large.

Indeed, which is why it is not an easy decision. Which is why you don't go to war over "very bad person is hiding in nation X".

This one gets complicated. To talk about it, I have to talk a bit about the ideas behind the concept of extradition.

There are things for which a government would have good reason to want to pursue someone over a national border. For example, murderers, leaders of organized crime syndicates, and child molestors... if they flee your country to avoid prosecution for their crimes, you might reasonably want them dragged back to face trial.

Now, there is a mechanism built into the Westphalian system of nation-states for this: extradition. We all take it for granted- if a French murderer flees to, say, Italy, the Italians will bring him back to stand trial in France if certain conditions are met.

But why are things like this? I would argue that it is precisely because this is an effective mechanism to prevent war. If Italy were in the habit of offering sanctuary to people that committed murders in France, it would result in poor trade relations between Italy and France. In theory, if one of these murderers did something especially horrible (like kill a thousand people with a bomb), it could even lead to war.

Because realistically, no nation can be expected to tolerate having its citizens murdered and have the murderers face no punishment. There are certainly limits to what punishment is acceptable, there are rules about what constitutes justice. But no one should have to just sit there and watch their citizens be murdered helplessly, simply because another national government says "you can't do anything about that." *

If France had to watch Italy sheltering more and more people who'd committed murders in France, eventually France would be compelled to take action. No functional government would ignore such a thing forever, and the French electorate wouldn't tolerate a government that did ignore such a thing forever.

So instead we have extradition, which works very well as a legal principle. There are circumstances under which extradition isn't done, and that is fine...** but the key point here is that extradition exists to prevent war. People who commit crimes in Country A are not normally entitled to the protection of Country B. The normal state of affairs is for Country B to arrest them itself and hand them back to Country A.

But what do you do when Country B's government is unwilling or unable to extradite? How much crime does Country A have to tolerate against its own citizens? What recourse does Country A have if Country B starts actively training criminals to operate on Country A's soil?

So the first real question is "at what point does failure to extradite criminals constitute an act of war?" If the answer is "never," you've just created a mechanism under international law by which one nation can effectively destroy another, or at least badly weaken it, by sponsoring massive organized crime and terrorism.

And the second real question is "at what point does inability to extradite criminals undermine a country's credibility in claiming to be a sovereign state?" If criminals in Country A flee to rebels in Country B, and Country B is unable to arrest them, can Country B claim to be a sovereign nation unless it makes efforts to get the rebels under control? Surely one feature of a sovereign nation is the ability to enforce its own laws on people within its borders. If Country B is unable to do that, Country B is not carrying out the responsibilities that go with sovereignty. At which point they need some kind of humanitarian or peacekeeping assistance, preferably NOT from a bunch of imperialist clown-morons like the US security establishment.
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*YES, I extend this logic to any government which, for instance, opposes US military action in its country, is helpless to prevent it, and so forth. Everyone should be accountable. Yes, everyone.

**YES, I am aware that there are some cases where it is right and proper for Country Y to refuse to extradite to Country X. Lots of reasons why that might happen. This is not relevant to my argument.

But when you can just kill people with drones, war becomes much more acceptable "at home" and even, shall I say, entertaining?

If so, the entertainment is shared only by the people who control the drones and have access to their footage. Honestly, most Americans probably wouldn't notice if the US just stopped using drones and said it had blown up all the people it's actually blowing up in reality. At least, not until newspapers eventually started running stories about how "reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

This reminds me of the time Thanas tried to argue that Al Qaeda was a problem for ordinary law enforcement...

I think Thanas did not argue that it was - and I'd ask for proof he ever did, if you don't mind.

I'd already resolved to start looking, but I'm not sure how to find it except by an exhaustive trawl of hundreds of my own posts, so it could take a while. Yell at me if I don't finish that within a day or two, okay?

And by the way, I fully support him in his criticism of Gitmo, extraordinary rendition, military detainment "black sites", secret courts and all things related to the massive extrajudicial assassination and kidnapping apparatus that the US created.

[/quote]Hell, so do I- just not unconditionally.

There is a tremendous number of things that you can totally correctly say against the US's security-espionage establishment, its disdain for human rights, and the way it exploits the US's economic and military power to cause massive harm with impunity.

Thanas says a lot of those things. So, for that matter, do you.

[K. A. Pital]

Extradition does not always work. Some Nazis were hiding in South America until the end of their sorry lives. Nobody's gonna ever extradite US citizens, even if they are involved in war crimes.

Other nations sometimes just have to sit back and watch as criminals live out their lives unpunished. That's life.

[Thanas]

Now, I'm going to be honest, it IS folly to think "just send the police to arrest them" when talking about major international terrorists.

Even a relative small-fry individual like al-Awlaki... He lived among Yemeni rebels. If he was guilty of a crime (not that this was ever proven in court), legally the Yemeni government's police would have jurisdiction to arrest and extradite him. But they'd have the slight problem that if they tried to arrest al-Awlaki the rebels would shoot them. He was already on their "most wanted" list as a criminal... but they didn't arrest him.

Then you just have to grow up and take it. Why is it so fucking unreasonable to expect the US to be held to the same standard as every other nation in the fucking world? Hey, guess what. The USA sponsors countless terrorists and murderers. If those criminals then run to the USA for asylum and the USA refuses to extradite them, you know that that is the end of it. And yet the USA breaking every law of combat and sending out kill orders against their own citizens is supposed to be okay?

Terrorism is a law enforcement problem. Anything that goes beyond normal law enforcement (like rendition, torture etc.) should not be employed to fight it. How the fuck is it that countless nations have dealt with terrorists (and arguably far more capable and deadly terrorists) as law enforcement problems and the USA gets a fucking pass for their completely disproportionate response?

[Simon_Jester]

Extradition does not always work. Some Nazis were hiding in South America until the end of their sorry lives. Nobody's gonna ever extradite US citizens, even if they are involved in war crimes.

Other nations sometimes just have to sit back and watch as criminals live out their lives unpunished. That's life.

Besides, if all you have on the subject of extradition is "sometimes it doesn't work, what do you do then," you're dropping the whole question of what ought to be done. If you drop that question, you are not in a good position to tell someone they're wrong when they do NOT choose to react by sitting back and watching nothing happen, due to the weakness or collusion of a foreign government.

Willfully harboring people who have committed crimes against a foreign nation is an act of aggression against that nation. No one should commit that act, no one should get away with that act without repercussions, and no one should be surprised, dismayed, or disappointed if the nation which was victim of the crime chooses to do something other than twiddle their thumbs in response.

As an example, the Israelis reacted to Argentina's refusal to extradite Nazi war criminals rather... drastically, and if anyone tells me they were somehow in the wrong for sending spies to kidnap Eichmann I'm going to laugh.

Then you just have to grow up and take it. Why is it so fucking unreasonable to expect the US to be held to the same standard as every other nation in the fucking world? Hey, guess what. The USA sponsors countless terrorists and murderers. If those criminals then run to the USA for asylum and the USA refuses to extradite them, you know that that is the end of it. And yet the USA breaking every law of combat and sending out kill orders against their own citizens is supposed to be okay?

No, it is not okay. As I said to Stas, willfully harboring people who have committed crimes against another nation, and refusing to extradite them for reasons other than human rights reasons, is wrong. It is an act of aggression. In extreme circumstances I honestly think it would be reasonable to call it an act that would provoke war.

No nation should commit acts of aggression or acts provoking war against another nation.

Now, if the nation in question is not harboring the criminal, and is in fact merely unable to arrest the criminal themselves, that's different. If, say, a neo-Nazi state had formed in Argentina and Peron was trying to fight it but could not defeat it and therefore couldn't extradite the Nazi war criminals, that would not be a wrong committed by Peron.

[Obviously this is a counterfactual]

But in that case, Peron is essentially saying that his writ does not govern Argentina, that the nation is in a state of chaos and that a powerful rebellion is endangering the sovereignty of his government. At which point it is understandable for an outsider to step in and say "we will help you subdue these rebels, who are our enemies as well as being yours."

Terrorism is a law enforcement problem. Anything that goes beyond normal law enforcement (like rendition, torture etc.) should not be employed to fight it. How the fuck is it that countless nations have dealt with terrorists (and arguably far more capable and deadly terrorists) as law enforcement problems and the USA gets a fucking pass for their completely disproportionate response?

Rendition and torture are not justified and no passes should be granted for any of them. They are not the issue I was talking about, either.

The issue I was talking about was the simple point of: What should Country A (regardless of who that country is) do if Country B is unwilling or unable to hand over people who have committed crimes against it? If Country A has the means to compel Country B to hand over criminals that it harbors, are they supposed to sit there with folded hands and ignore the problem? If Country A has the means to help Country B capture criminals it is otherwise unable to capture, should they ignore that problem?

...

Now, your actual question, in particular the part where you say "how the fuck is it that countless nations have dealt with terrorists as law enforcement problems," has a different answer.

I think the reason other countries do so well against terrorist movements while the US fails to do well against terrorists that attacked it, even with the US using all manner of wicked and lawless tactics... two reasons.

For one, the wicked and lawless tactics don't work very well.

For another, most of those other movements were domestic- so you COULD use the tactics of policing, since your police have jurisdiction, or police of a nation friendly and cooperative to you does. True international terrorism of the kind the US (and other countries) have gotten from Al Qaeda is relatively rarer- and harder to overcome.

[Thanas]

As an example, the Israelis reacted to Argentina's refusal to extradite Nazi war criminals rather... drastically, and if anyone tells me they were somehow in the wrong for sending spies to kidnap Eichmann I'm going to laugh.

Why do you think they were in the right? Because if your whole argument below is that consent of the host nation makes it ok, then that necessary element was missing.

But in that case, Peron is essentially saying that his writ does not govern Argentina, that the nation is in a state of chaos and that a powerful rebellion is endangering the sovereignty of his government. At which point it is understandable for an outsider to step in and say "we will help you subdue these rebels, who are our enemies as well as being yours."

First, this does not apply to at the very least Somalia. It certainly does not apply to Yemen either because there is no legitimate Government that could have made that request. Second, apparently it is a-ok to not follow the necessary steps when a friendly government says it is ok to do so.

Rendition and torture are not justified and no passes should be granted for any of them. They are not the issue I was talking about, either.

Yes it is, because it is the same security apparatus using the assessment. It is the same culture of secrecy. It is the same disregard for the constitution and the rights of your own citizens that makes this possible. Droning cannot be divorced from those other shady means because they arrive out of the same belief and build on each other.

It is like saying exploiting third worlders has nothing to do with globalization.

The issue I was talking about was the simple point of: What should Country A (regardless of who that country is) do if Country B is unwilling or unable to hand over people who have committed crimes against it?

Then they should sit on their hands like adults and take it. You know, like civilized nations do.

Take for example Yugoslavian secret agents who murdered dissidents on EU soil. We know who they are. We know what they did. And yet we didn't send a drone to blow up their village, we waited for two decades until the nations involved decided to turn them over.

If Country A has the means to compel Country B to hand over criminals that it harbors, are they supposed to sit there with folded hands and ignore the problem?

Anything else than diplomatic pressure? No go.

For one, the wicked and lawless tactics don't work very well.

And yet you defend them.

For another, most of those other movements were domestic- so you COULD use the tactics of policing, since your police have jurisdiction, or police of a nation friendly and cooperative to you does. True international terrorism of the kind the US (and other countries) have gotten from Al Qaeda is relatively rarer- and harder to overcome.

Bullshit. Plenty of nations have had to deal with international terrorism (IRA, PLO, RAF, ETA, Red Terror in Italy). Heck, some nations even had to deal with secret services of other nations financing whole terror groups.

[Simon_Jester]

As an example, the Israelis reacted to Argentina's refusal to extradite Nazi war criminals rather... drastically, and if anyone tells me they were somehow in the wrong for sending spies to kidnap Eichmann I'm going to laugh.

Why do you think they were in the right? Because if your whole argument below is that consent of the host nation makes it ok, then that necessary element was missing.

There are two separate cases.

One is that the consent of the host nation (who is willing but unable to arrest this criminal, as they have armed supporters) makes it okay.

...

The other is that deliberately harboring criminals who have committed grave crimes against Country A is an act of aggression against Country A. That's it's own separate issue.

This second issue is involved when we talk about Eichmann. Countries have to be prepared to extradite in good faith, or face consequences proportionate to the scale of the crime.

The alternative is untenable- because it gives malevolent countries a 'legal' way to cause chaos and harm in their enemies' countries, by harboring organized crime rings, terrorist networks, and so on.

The entire reason my police have jurisdiction on my soil, and yours don't, is the presumption that I will actually enforce law and order within my own borders, insofar as it affects you. If I refuse to maintain law and order in my own country, and that has consequences for your country, then I am complicit in whatever crimes are being committed against your country. In which case I cannot justly deny responsibility, or claim that my 'sovereignty' protects my nation (and the criminals) from retaliation.

If I intentionally shelter a bunch of gangsters who assassinate 500 of your countrymen a year, that is morally no different from my sending army troops to shoot 500 of your countrymen a year. But the latter would be an act of war- a nation is justified in using its armed forces to defend itself from violent invaders, whether those invaders are part of a national army or not.

But in that case, Peron is essentially saying that his writ does not govern Argentina, that the nation is in a state of chaos and that a powerful rebellion is endangering the sovereignty of his government. At which point it is understandable for an outsider to step in and say "we will help you subdue these rebels, who are our enemies as well as being yours."

First, this does not apply to at the very least Somalia. It certainly does not apply to Yemen either because there is no legitimate Government that could have made that request. Second, apparently it is a-ok to not follow the necessary steps when a friendly government says it is ok to do so.

In the case of Somalia, there is no de facto government... which means the only way for anyone to protect themselves from criminals sheltering in Somalia is to attack the criminals themselves.

Somali pirates or criminals cannot simultaneously claim that 'national sovereignty' protects them from being held accountable by foreign police, while exploiting the fact that no domestic police exist to pursue them. The entire concept of 'sovereignty' is wrapped up with the idea that the sovereign has, or at least seriously attempts to have, the ability to police its own territory.

In the case of Yemen, there is presently an ongoing civil war- but this is a relatively recent state of affairs. The situation is simple. If there IS, at a given time, a recognized government of Yemen, and if someone commits a crime against your nation and shelters in Yemen, you go to the government and ask for extradition. If you receive it, well and good. If they want to extradite but can't, offer them help. If they refuse to extradite, then you are within your rights to exert pressure on the Yemeni government. If they refuse to extradite repeatedly and heinous crimes are committed against your people... at some point you have grounds to declare war.

If there is no government of Yemen, then your only recourse is force- the use of spies, commandoes, or potentially armies to pursue the criminal.

Rendition and torture are not justified and no passes should be granted for any of them. They are not the issue I was talking about, either.

Yes it is, because it is the same security apparatus using the assessment. It is the same culture of secrecy. It is the same disregard for the constitution and the rights of your own citizens that makes this possible. Droning cannot be divorced from those other shady means because they arrive out of the same belief and build on each other.

The question of whether the drone strikes, specifically, are lawful is separate from the question of whether nations are entitled to at least try to pursue criminals who flee into foreign countries that refuse to extradite them.

Whether the US, specifically, should be pursuing these particular people, is a separate question.

The issue I was talking about was the simple point of: What should Country A (regardless of who that country is) do if Country B is unwilling or unable to hand over people who have committed crimes against it?

Then they should sit on their hands like adults and take it. You know, like civilized nations do.

Take for example Yugoslavian secret agents who murdered dissidents on EU soil. We know who they are. We know what they did. And yet we didn't send a drone to blow up their village, we waited for two decades until the nations involved decided to turn them over.

Did you just ignore the question? That's not being civilized, that's being passive- that's treating the lives of people on your soil as something your government is not obliged to protect.

Alternatively, perhaps you exerted some sort of pressure on the governments that were sheltering these agents. But then the question is not "should we sit on our hands." The question is which measures should be taken.

There are a range of responses one might take. One might withdraw cooperation on various matters from the country harboring the fugitives. One might break off trade or diplomatic relations. One might covertly send spies to monitor, or even to capture, the criminals. One might even respond to a massive crime committed against one's people by declaring war.

Having secret star chamber proceedings decide these individuals are criminals, and then assassinating them by remote control, is an extremely violent and questionable way to go about dealing with a perceived threat. There's a lot wrong with it. Many things wrong, and I don't think you need me to tell you what they are.

But that doesn't mean that governments are required or expected to just tolerate and ignore crimes committed against their people by foreign agents. That is not part of being 'civilized,' that is simply unwillingness to defend civilization against barbarism.

If Country A has the means to compel Country B to hand over criminals that it harbors, are they supposed to sit there with folded hands and ignore the problem?

Anything else than diplomatic pressure? No go.

For one, the wicked and lawless tactics don't work very well.

And yet you defend them.

I do not defend renditions. I do not defend torture. You are extremely nebulous about what you mean by "them."

I DO defend the right of an abstract, arbitrary Country A to, under some circumstances, use force against Country B or persons on its soil, as a consequence of crimes committed against Country A by people now sheltering in Country B.

Because otherwise, one of the basic premises of our idea of national sovereignty- reciprocity- breaks down. Sovereignty is not an asymmetric thing that grants one side all the privileges and the other side all of the obligations. My nation's right to police its own soil comes at the price of my having to agree to act in a way that will not undermine law, order, or safety on YOUR soil.

This isn't even about the US, except insofar as others have chosen to stake out a radical position on international law in order to condemn the US just a little bit harder.

Apparently it's not enough to call the US security complex a bunch of lying torturers (which they are). Or to say that they're lashing out half-blindly at people who aren't a threat to them (which is true). Or to say that they're using secret tribunals to assassinate citizens of their own country (also true).

No, we have to distort longstanding principles of international law to make US actions look just that little extra bit more wrong!

For another, most of those other movements were domestic- so you COULD use the tactics of policing, since your police have jurisdiction, or police of a nation friendly and cooperative to you does. True international terrorism of the kind the US (and other countries) have gotten from Al Qaeda is relatively rarer- and harder to overcome.

Bullshit. Plenty of nations have had to deal with international terrorism (IRA, PLO, RAF, ETA, Red Terror in Italy).

And these are the very terrorist groups that were always hardest to overcome.

The British didn't defeat the IRA with police tactics- it took paramilitary and military forces deployed for decades.

The Israelis never did overcome the PLO; they're still around, and insofar as they've become less of a threat it's because other, more violent groups took over their role.

The RAF was a mostly domestic terrorist organization in that most of its members based in West Germany, not in other countries. The Stasi offered them a lot of support, but the bulk of the RAF's membership was in places the German police could at least get to.

The ETA is opposed on both sides of the Spanish-French border, rather than having ETA terrorists be able to commit crimes in Spain and flee to safety in France or vice versa.

And if by the Red Terror you mean the Red Brigades in Italy- again, the bulk of the manpower of the Red Brigades was IN Italy, so normal Italian police could at least reach and arrest them. It didn't take an army to shoot their way into the area where the criminals were hiding.

It is intellectually dishonest to present examples of 'international' terrorists that were primarily headquartered in the same countries they committed terrorism against, and claim that this is proof of how other international terrorist groups that do NOT match that description can be overcome by normal police work.

It is also dishonest to use the IRA and the PLO as evidence of how a terrorist group that gets to shelter freely behind a national border can be overcome by normal police work, when neither group was overcome by normal police work.

Heck, some nations even had to deal with secret services of other nations financing whole terror groups.

Yes- and you will note that when the secret services of a foreign power finance terrorism on a large scale, it tends to end badly.

Look at what happened when Serbia started using the Black Hand as a catspaw- and touched off World War One.

It is immensely and insanely provocative for one nation to become a large-scale exporter of crime and terrorism into other nations. Large powers sometimes get away with it by using their sheer strength to escape justice. But it is nevertheless a deeply bad and unwise thing to do, for the sake of the peace of the world.

It should therefore be a punishable offense.

[K. A. Pital]

Thanas did an excellent job, I have almost nothing to add to his comments. Who gives you the right to "apply force"? You know that France gave immunity to left-wing militants of the Autonomists from Italy? You know that Ireland will not give out to Britain some IRA members? And yet, these nations do not go to war against each other.

Britain sent paramilitary forces to Northern Ireland, which was a part of its territory. The US sends the drones to nations that are not, never have been and never will be a part of its territory.

"Civilization against barbarism"? Remind me, in which fucking nation Luis Posada Carilles is hiding. I think it starts with a U, but I just can't remember the rest. I think it would be wrong for Cuba to assassinate Carilles as opposed to slowly pressing for his extradition via diplomacy. You, apparently, think otherwise.

Finally, who said anything about "overcoming"? You police your own nation. Police your borders. But you don't get to police other nations. Other nations did not "overcome" the IRA or other groups. They policed their own territory and did the rest with diplomacy. You seem to think you're special. You're not.

[Thanas]

The other is that deliberately harboring criminals who have committed grave crimes against Country A is an act of aggression against Country A. That's it's own separate issue.

This second issue is involved when we talk about Eichmann. Countries have to be prepared to extradite in good faith, or face consequences proportionate to the scale of the crime.

None of these are separate issues at all. There is only one issue here. Is a nation legally allowed to ignore national sovereignty if it is powerful enough and it is in its interest to do so? I do not believe so unless for that very short list of cases international law allows for (and I am talking real international law, not whatever propaganda the USA prints that says their actions are all legal).

The alternative is untenable- because it gives malevolent countries a 'legal' way to cause chaos and harm in their enemies' countries, by harboring organized crime rings, terrorist networks, and so on.

You mean, like it has always been done? The Stasi financed the RAF. The USA harbors Cuban terrorists (and let counter-revolutionaries plan a whole invasion). Germany harbored known PKK members who almost certainly built networks from Germany against Turkey. The USA let mujaheddin use its territory for meetings. There is nothing Al-Quida has done that makes it more special than those cases.

The entire reason my police have jurisdiction on my soil, and yours don't, is the presumption that I will actually enforce law and order within my own borders, insofar as it affects you.

This is bullshit. I can't believe you are that dumb. Either you are deliberately trying to rewrite where the authority of the police actually comes from or your education is sorely lacking. Police derive their authority from the sovereign, that is the national state. Not your state, not my state, but the state they are employed by to keep order.

Neither lack of competence, compliance or funds allows more powerful nations to just violate territory of other nations. That is the very core concept of sovereignty. You want us to take us back to pre-Westphalian times. (Incidentally, I suspect no member of a weaker nation would ever make that argument).

If I refuse to maintain law and order in my own country, and that has consequences for your country, then I am complicit in whatever crimes are being committed against your country. In which case I cannot justly deny responsibility, or claim that my 'sovereignty' protects my nation (and the criminals) from retaliation.

If I intentionally shelter a bunch of gangsters who assassinate 500 of your countrymen a year, that is morally no different from my sending army troops to shoot 500 of your countrymen a year. But the latter would be an act of war- a nation is justified in using its armed forces to defend itself from violent invaders, whether those invaders are part of a national army or not.

If the guys are shooting people in your nation, you are very well empowered to shoot them back. If they do it in another nation, then grow the fuck up and let that other nation handle it (or not). You do agree that it is the right of other nations to chose what happens in their own borders?

Somali pirates or criminals cannot simultaneously claim that 'national sovereignty' protects them from being held accountable by foreign police, while exploiting the fact that no domestic police exist to pursue them. The entire concept of 'sovereignty' is wrapped up with the idea that the sovereign has, or at least seriously attempts to have, the ability to police its own territory.

Note the key word here - police.

In the case of Yemen, there is presently an ongoing civil war- but this is a relatively recent state of affairs. The situation is simple. If there IS, at a given time, a recognized government of Yemen, and if someone commits a crime against your nation and shelters in Yemen, you go to the government and ask for extradition. If you receive it, well and good. If they want to extradite but can't, offer them help. If they refuse to extradite, then you are within your rights to exert pressure on the Yemeni government. If they refuse to extradite repeatedly and heinous crimes are committed against your people... at some point you have grounds to declare war.

Oh so what heinous crimes were actually committed against US citizens from Yemen?

If there is no government of Yemen, then your only recourse is force- the use of spies, commandoes, or potentially armies to pursue the criminal.

What you do not get is that this is something that would not fly in a police action. The policy of the USA is to bomb anybody suspected of being AQ. If the same methods were applied to the war against the Mafia, you might just as well carpet-bomb Naples.

The question of whether the drone strikes, specifically, are lawful is separate from the question of whether nations are entitled to at least try to pursue criminals who flee into foreign countries that refuse to extradite them.

Pursue. Not kill. No nation has the right to kill criminals on sight without it being self defence.

Whether the US, specifically, should be pursuing these particular people, is a separate question.

No, you cannot divorce the results of a policy from its legitimacy.

But that doesn't mean that governments are required or expected to just tolerate and ignore crimes committed against their people by foreign agents. That is not part of being 'civilized,' that is simply unwillingness to defend civilization against barbarism.

Of course not. You can arrest them when they commit their crimes on your own soil. Presumably, at some point they actually have to do something. Not every criminal has the luxury of killing by remote.

Because otherwise, one of the basic premises of our idea of national sovereignty- reciprocity- breaks down. Sovereignty is not an asymmetric thing that grants one side all the privileges and the other side all of the obligations. My nation's right to police its own soil comes at the price of my having to agree to act in a way that will not undermine law, order, or safety on YOUR soil.

Except of course the always-recognized exceptions for your own interests. Of which the USA itself makes plenty use of, as Stas noted.

No, we have to distort longstanding principles of international law to make US actions look just that little extra bit more wrong!

K, remind me which longstanding principle of international law gives nations the right to commit assassinations on other nations territory. Go on, I am waiting. Please cite it.

The RAF was a mostly domestic terrorist organization in that most of its members based in West Germany, not in other countries. The Stasi offered them a lot of support, but the bulk of the RAF's membership was in places the German police could at least get to.

German police had access to PLO camps? Right.

It is intellectually dishonest to present examples of 'international' terrorists that were primarily headquartered in the same countries they committed terrorism against, and claim that this is proof of how other international terrorist groups that do NOT match that description can be overcome by normal police work.

I refer you to Stas words.

It is also dishonest to use the IRA and the PLO as evidence of how a terrorist group that gets to shelter freely behind a national border can be overcome by normal police work, when neither group was overcome by normal police work.

Whether it is the military carrying out police work or it is police, is not that important, especially as in many nations the police and the military are one and the same. Point is that the Brits did not drone mass gatherings of IRA families, nor level housing blocks. By and large, they acted in a legal manner. And all of that happened on British territory.

You will explicitly note that the Brits did not drone the planners and financiers of the IRA, many of which were hiding out in the USA. Nor did they send their special forces after them.

Heck, some nations even had to deal with secret services of other nations financing whole terror groups.

Yes- and you will note that when the secret services of a foreign power finance terrorism on a large scale, it tends to end badly.

And yet, nobody has yet droned the CIA or even argued it would be a legitimate target. So I am wondering. If nation A feels the USA is threatening the security of its people (because that is all AQ is at this point, some nebulous threat), would it be justified in funding a terrorist group to attack the USA? I mean, they don't have drones, but they might have some fanatics who are willing to do the same job. So according to your argument, if Iran (who actually had the USA finance numerous terrorist groups against it which blew up a number of high-ranking civilian scientists) were to sponsor a shia version of AQ which hits about 10% of the intended targets and 90% civilians, then that would be a legitimate way to strike back?

Or maybe Cuba should do the same?

Think this through to the logical conclusion and you'll realize why strictly respecting the sovereignty of other nations is the right way to go.

[Simon_Jester]

I literally do not have sufficient time to reply to Thanas before I have to leave for work; I am not deliberately ignoring you but cannot respond until a later time. I did, however, have a reply composed to Stas.

Thanas did an excellent job, I have almost nothing to add to his comments. Who gives you the right to "apply force"? You know that France gave immunity to left-wing militants of the Autonomists from Italy? You know that Ireland will not give out to Britain some IRA members? And yet, these nations do not go to war against each other.

It is a matter of degree and of proportionate response, as anyone with common sense will know is supposed to be the case in anything involving international affairs.

Does my nation shelter one criminal from your nation? You might be justified in committing some relatively petty gesture in retaliation? Does my nation shelter a dozen such criminals? Larger gesture. Does my nation shelter an organized network of hundreds of criminals? At that point there should be serious consequences for me.

If I shelter a large organization that launches mass-casualty terrorist attacks? That's an act of war, if only because I could use such an organization to do a 'wartime' level of harm to you. It is not just for one nation to be able to do violent harm to a second nation, and for the second nation to not be allowed to defend themselves against the first nation because that would somehow violate the first nation's "sovereignty." No one has a sovereign right to attack others with impunity.

You may not have noticed me repeatedly condemning the US's specific course of actions with the drone strikes- which I do for several reasons, one of which is that they are not a proportionate response if committed against the will of the host nation. Another is that, again, if committed against the will of the host nation, like I just said... "It is not just for one nation to be able to do violent harm to a second nation, and for the second nation to not be allowed to defend themselves against the first nation because that would somehow violate the first nation's "sovereignty." No one has a sovereign right to attack others with impunity."
____________________

On a side note, I genuinely did not know that the French had sheltered any particular members of Italian terrorist groups. But there's a huge difference in scale between sheltering a short list of individuals, and sheltering the entire organization and providing them with the tools to launch further attacks (e.g. the Black Hand).

I did know the extent of Irish support for the IRA... and you will note the IRA was very hard to stop. It took the British a long time and they had to invent all sorts of techniques and tools.

Britain sent paramilitary forces to Northern Ireland, which was a part of its territory.

That's because the terrorists were in their territory, were physically residing there, rather than living in other countries and only entering the target countries just before launching an attack. This has a massive effect on whether it is even remotely useful to try using normal police against them. Normal police tactics only work when you can actually reach and arrest the suspect, which relies on the suspect being on your soil or on the soil of a foreign nation willing to extradite him.

"Civilization against barbarism"? Remind me, in which fucking nation Luis Posada Carilles is hiding. I think it starts with a U, but I just can't remember the rest. I think it would be wrong for Cuba to assassinate Carilles as opposed to slowly pressing for his extradition via diplomacy. You, apparently, think otherwise.

In point of fact, yes, I do think otherwise. The Cubans would be within their rights to use that level of force in such a situation, since the US has shown bad faith and unwillingness to extradite Carilles for a long list of crime. Because realistically, he's going to die of old age before a US administration willing to actually extradite right-wing Latin American terrorists takes power.

Carilles gave up his right to not be killed a long time ago- live by the sword, die by the sword.

And the US is, yes, abusing the idea of reciprocity in extradition. Which is dangerous; it destabilizes the peace of the world. We get away with it because of our country's raw physical size and power, but that's not an excuse for anything.

Using bandits, criminals, or terrorists sheltered in my country as a tool to weaken yours is an act of barbarism. Doesn't matter who's doing it. Ignoring the use of same is not "being civilized." It is either "being so passive one is willing to stand there and be attacked," which is unhealthy, or it is "bowing to circumstances that one lacks the means to enforce one's will," which is an injustice.

Did you really think I wouldn't be consistent about this?

Finally, who said anything about "overcoming"? You police your own nation. Police your borders. But you don't get to police other nations. Other nations did not "overcome" the IRA or other groups. They policed their own territory and did the rest with diplomacy.

So does that mean it is legitimate for countries to use sponsored terrorism as a tool to wage undeclared war against their neighbors? If this can be done with impunity, always, then I fail to see how that's any better than allowing drone strikes. The net effect is the same- an endless, slowly growing pile of innocent dead building up from an undeclared war.

You seem to think you're special. You're not.

Kindly either differentiate between my opinions and the opinions of some abstract "the United States," or stop trying to respond to my posts. It's getting difficult to figure out which things you actually think I believe, and which things you attribute to the strawman.

[Thanas]

Does my nation shelter one criminal from your nation? You might be justified in committing some relatively petty gesture in retaliation? Does my nation shelter a dozen such criminals? Larger gesture. Does my nation shelter an organized network of hundreds of criminals? At that point there should be serious consequences for me.

If I shelter a large organization that launches mass-casualty terrorist attacks? That's an act of war, if only because I could use such an organization to do a 'wartime' level of harm to you. It is not just for one nation to be able to do violent harm to a second nation, and for the second nation to not be allowed to defend themselves against the first nation because that would somehow violate the first nation's "sovereignty." No one has a sovereign right to attack others with impunity.

And what if the nation that does it is so powerful that attempts to retaliate or pursue justice are impossible?

Because that is the end result. A two-way legal system where the powerful get off scot free while reserving the right to bomb anybody who retaliates or who they do not like. That is why a blanket ban on such actions was envisioned at Westphalia.

On a side note, I genuinely did not know that the French had sheltered any particular members of Italian terrorist groups. But there's a huge difference in scale between sheltering a short list of individuals, and sheltering the entire organization and providing them with the tools to launch further attacks (e.g. the Black Hand).

Like the contras, or cuban exiles....

That's because the terrorists were in their territory, were physically residing there, rather than living in other countries and only entering the target countries just before launching an attack. This has a massive effect on whether it is even remotely useful to try using normal police against them. Normal police tactics only work when you can actually reach and arrest the suspect, which relies on the suspect being on your soil or on the soil of a foreign nation willing to extradite him.

The Brits never could touch the financiers of the IRA. There is a longstanding tradition of US citizens financing the IRA and yet Britain has never bombed such gatherings in the USA.

In point of fact, yes, I do think otherwise. The Cubans would be within their rights to use that level of force in such a situation, since the US has shown bad faith and unwillingness to extradite Carilles for a long list of crime.

And yet, as you note, nothing will happen to him. Nothing. The USA, as you note, gets away with it due to its power, which allows it to retaliate and others to not.

And you want to codify this system (one side gets to retaliate, the other gets a nebulous right to retaliation but no means to do so) into law.

This disgusts me.

It is either "being so passive one is willing to stand there and be attacked," which is unhealthy, or it is "bowing to circumstances that one lacks the means to enforce one's will," which is an injustice.

Did you really think I wouldn't be consistent about this?

But you are inconsistent about it, because you defend the droning policy without condoning mass terror attacks (and rightfully so).

So does that mean it is legitimate for countries to use sponsored terrorism as a tool to wage undeclared war against their neighbors? If this can be done with impunity, always, then I fail to see how that's any better than allowing drone strikes. The net effect is the same- an endless, slowly growing pile of innocent dead building up from an undeclared war.

You are right, the only retaliation against the USA for its refusals to extradite or the droning policy would be mass terror attacks. So by arguing that the drone strikes in principal are legal, you are also arguing that retaliatory terror attacks are legal.

[K. A. Pital]

I never thought assassination is a viable tool of international policy. The MOSSAD killed some terrible people, including former Nazis. But should such things be accepted? Supported? Legally enshrined? In my view, no. And while assassination of select individuals is itself a morally and legally questionable tactic (even when the person killed is horrible), assassinating them via bombing urban areas is even more questionable and at no point it should be considered rightful means of "retaliation".

You think normalizing or even codifying into international law a "right to retaliate" as some fuzzy state between war and peace/diplomacy is somehow improving things, Simon? Thanas is right again: this so-called possibility will only be used by the strong to bully the weak. Or carry out bombings and counter-bombings in "hot cold wars" between powers of roughly equal standing. Essentially transforming bad peace into so-called "low intensity conflict". The line between war and peace will become extremely blurred. That is worse than pursuing terrorists only inside your own territory and acting with diplomacy in case they are somewhere abroad.

[Channel72]

It's really impossible to have this discussion without acknowledging how large-scale destructive terrorism in the 21st century had a major psychological impact on how we view Westphalian concepts today.

I mean, the concepts behind Westphalian sovereignty set a good precedent for nations to implement with regard to international relations, but like many pre-20th/21st century precedents, they fail to account for changing technological realities. The problem here is that Al Qaeda presented a threat to the US and Europe that was so amorphous, ill-defined, and broad in its scope, that there really was no precedent. To a certain extent, Al Qaeda was never a serious threat - but the images of the WTC turning into a giant inferno have been so seared into the collective Western conscious (or at least, the American collective conscious), that ignoring Al Qaeda became psychologically impossible for any normal human being.

None of the other groups discussed here had that effect on as large of a scale: the IRA, the PLO, the Italian Mafia. I mean, the Italian Mafia is actually still a fucking problem in New York and New Jersey to this day - ironically, the US "War on Terror" reallocated a lot of funds from the FBI that were formally used to monitor the remnants of the 5 families - and so in the meantime the remnants of these criminal families have somewhat reorganized and revitalized their operations. And they receive a lot of overseas support from sister organizations in Sicily and Naples. But no, we're not sending drones to blow up villas in Palermo, because the Mafia generally isn't known for causing massively destructive, civilian-killing events that effect elections. All they do is setup prostitution rings and gambling websites, or extort the construction industry. And also, since Italy is a member of the EU, doing that would be insane.

Let's wind the clock back to 2001, for a second - and replay some of these events, and see at what point the US went overboard into black-ops insanity land. The WTC goes up in flames, thousands die, and the US invades Afghanistan with the simple goal of forcefully capturing Bin Laden after the Taliban didn't immediately extradite him. I'd like to know, starting off with that basic starting point, if everyone here believes this was acceptable. I mean, Thanas, Stas, etc. do you guys think that the single isolated act of the US invading Afghanistan in response to 9/11 was morally acceptable? I want to clarify this, so we can reach agreement regarding at what point the US crossed the line from "reasonable" acts in the interest of protecting itself, to the batshit, black-ops, drone-war insanity land we find ourselves in today.

Because, regardless of your personal opinions - your countries initially had no problem with it, and backed the US at mostly every step. Putin even announced that all existing hostilities between Russia and the US would be temporarily suspended, and he supported the idea of the US invading Afghanistan. The same with Germany, Italy, Ireland, etc. It was a moment of intense international solidarity.

So it's difficult to argue that invading Afghanistan for the purpose of forcefully extraditing Bin Laden was somehow invalid with respect to international law, when just about the whole fucking world, including Russia, was okay with the US doing so. The EU, Russia, even fucking Iran (who hated the Taliban) not only supported the US from a political standpoint, but actually offered logistical support with the invasion. Putin allowed NATO forces access to Russian territory for staging offensives into Afghanistan, and Russian special forces assisted the US with actual operations.

So... with all of that as a precedent, regardless of your own beliefs about Westphalian sovereignty, it seems the entire planet Earth pretty much set a precedent after 9/11. The precedent is that if a nation harbors criminals or terrorists who have committed wanton mass destruction in another nation, it is acceptable to forcefully extract those criminals using a military. The precedent was set - and everyone agreed.

But then things took a pretty dark turn really fast. The US took advantage of all this international support, and pushed and pushed and pushed... first the Iraq war, then the drone war and the international black-ops apparatus. The US went overboard and went down the abyss ...

But if we're talking about the simple concept of Westphalian sovereignty ... I mean, 9/11 pretty much showed that everyone on Earth pretty much agrees: sovereignty can go fuck itself if someone levels a skyscraper in your nation. And I'm sure any similar act of mass destruction would have had the same psychological effect. The fact that the US later abused the shit out of that whole situation is another matter entirely.

[Thanas]

So... with all of that as a precedent, regardless of your own beliefs about Westphalian sovereignty, it seems the entire planet Earth pretty much set a precedent after 9/11. The precedent is that if a nation harbors criminals or terrorists who have committed wanton mass destruction in another nation, it is acceptable to forcefully extract those criminals using a military. The precedent was set - and everyone agreed.

The concept of Westphalian sovereignty was neither ignored nor abolished by the invasion of Afghanistan (which btw I supported because the stated goal was to destroy AQ and rebuilt the nation of Afghanistan). In fact, it is just like any other war and it is not as if refusal to hand over people hasn't triggered wars before. But it is a bit different to argue that 90% innocent victims - on top of making a shitshow out of Afghanistan and Iraq and Yemen and Pakistan and god knows where else - is even remotely the

You shall also note that none of the things - the mass surveillance, the droning, the unapologetic routine breaking of human rights, was ever agreed by the nations. So I reject the notion that somehow the whole planet agreed to waive principles. They gave the USA a very narrow mandate - get in, get the criminal, fix whatever damage you cause and then get out. That the USA has messed everything up is not the responsibility of the world, nor does it set aside precedents.

The problem here is that Al Qaeda presented a threat to the US and Europe that was so amorphous, ill-defined, and broad in its scope, that there really was no precedent.

No. I do not get this. Terrorism or warfare has had several precedents. I don't get why AQ is somehow supposed to be special. They are not. They are less threatening than the Irish organizations which actually managed to gain control of Dublin. The RAF had a longer-lasting impact than AQ did as well and causes as much damage to the German consciousness, even though they caused less victims. To put it bluntly, there is nothing in AQ that makes it this great heavy enemy. Heck, even ISIS is causing more damage right now. And I would be very careful in saying AQ is more dangerous than other terrorist organizations in the past. Heck, even the sicarii have a greater claim to having been a greater threat.

[Channel72]

You shall also note that none of the things - the mass surveillance, the droning, the unapologetic routine breaking of human rights, was ever agreed by the nations. So I reject the notion that somehow the whole planet agreed to waive principles. They gave the USA a very narrow mandate - get in, get the criminal, fix whatever damage you cause and then get out. That the USA has messed everything up is not the responsibility of the world, nor does it set aside precedents.

I agree. I'm not saying the US was given such a waiver. I acknowledge that after Afghanistan, the US continued to abuse the situation and the initial post-9/11 international good-faith ever more offensively.

My point is:

(1) There are at least some limited circumstances, 9/11 being one of them, where most countries agree it is acceptable to ignore diplomatic solutions in favor of violating national sovereignty (Afghanistan in 2001 being a prime example.)

(2) Al Qaeda is special for only one reason: while they were never really much of a serious threat, and were in fact less harmful than many other terrorist organizations, they managed to have more of a wide-ranging psychological impact on an international scale - than I think we have seen by other organizations. Part of that effect was US propaganda, but another part was merely the fact that they pulled off a spectacular, almost cinematic attack on an iconic target at a time in history when consumer electronics made it easy to produce amateur video footage. (I mean really, Michael Bay couldn't have done better.) Plus, their base of operations was so remotely distant in origin from their targets, more so than most terrorist organizations (i.e. PLO, ETA, etc.)

I'm not saying this to justify US actions after the Afghan war, I'm merely stating the facts here, that explain the behavior we observed following 9/11.