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  • From: James Dasher <jdasher AT ibiblio.org>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] the cowards at the Pentagon
  • Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 09:28:58 -0500


On Monday, Dec 8, 2003, at 10:53 US/Eastern, James Manning wrote:

Why the hell are we using jets to kill individual people?

This isn't really the point of the thread, but FWIW there's a lot of
"overkill" scenarios that happen because of the current "rules" (IIRC,
Geneva convention, but it may be something else, like the presidential
order that Bush may have rescinded, I forget) that disallow
assassinations. The way to get around this is to not send in the one
sniper (with a 50 cal bullet to make it extra fun) but to consider
"it" to be a military target and attack it as such. If the individual
target happens to die, the mission was a success.

FWIW, there are actually four Geneva Conventions. The official site is obnoxious to navigate, but the SPJ runs a reference guide at <http://www.genevaconventions.org>. The first two deal with treatment of wounded enemy soldiers and sailors. The third deals with treatment of POWs. The fourth covers the treatment of civilians. Taken together, they are popularly referred to as "The Geneva Convention" - mostly because the treaties were all submitted to negotiating governments around the same time after WWII.

The assassination rule is a US prohibition against assassinating political leaders for strategic reasons - people like Castro, for example. It's what you might call a "unilateral" law, since we wrote it, passed it into law, and enforce it on ourselves.

Incidentally, the largest collection of experts on the Geneva Conventions is housed at the Pentagon. One of the Protocols attached to the Conventions requires signatory countries to disseminate knowledge of the Conventions as widely as possible, within certain limitations. The US military is the world's leading instructor in humane warfare.

(Also incidentally, much of the development in US military technology is catalyzed by our desire to comply with the Conventions. Smart weapons, battlefield communications technology, laser-guided bombs, and so forth, all minimize civilian casualties. So do Predator drones, Global Hawks dropping Hellfire missiles on Yemeni terrorists, and so on. Imagine how much more collateral damage, including civilian casualties, we might witness were we to send a tank division through every village housing al Qaeda terrorists.)

I dunno, I guess I should google around, maybe the anti-assassination
thing was only a historical presidential thing no longer in effect and
the A-10 overkill attacks were just military choices and snipers were
an option as well. Maybe the overkill just chalked up as success +
additional psychological damage on survivors. After all, in war your
best result isn't to kill an enemy, but to critically wound them.

In war, your best result is to accomplish your objective. If your objective is gathering intelligence, then your objective fails if, for example, your U2 spy plane crashes over the Soviet Union and your pilot is captured. If your objective is to reduce or eliminate an enemy's ability to harm you, then your objective fails if you don't kill him.

Leaving enemy soldiers critically wounded still gives the enemy latitude to make some last effort that could harm you or your soldiers - pulling a trigger, throwing a grenade, activating a bomb, or even speed-dialing on the cell phone to warn others. When that happens, your soldiers die. The best way to avert such a catastrophe is to kill, not wound, an enemy.

Well, enough with the military theory and history!

Cheers -





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