Saturday, February 09, 2013

Death From Above


The use of air-power to kill people on the other side of the Earth during war is not new.

The death of innocent people during war is not new.

And the targeting and killing of  individuals during war is not new either:
Operation Vengeance

Operation Vengeance was the name given by the Americans to the military operation to kill Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto on April 18, 1943, during the Solomon Islands campaign in the Pacific Theater of World War II and exactly one year following the United States' most direct previous blow to Japan with the Doolittle Raid. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, was killed on Bougainville Island when his transport bomber aircraft was shot down by U.S. Army fighter aircraft operating from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal.

The mission of the U.S. aircraft was specifically to kill Yamamoto and was based on United States Navy intelligence on Yamamoto's itinerary in the Solomon Islands area. The death of Yamamoto reportedly damaged the morale of Japanese naval personnel (described by Samuel Eliot Morison as being considered the equivalent of a major defeat in battle), raised the morale of the Allied forces, and was intended as revenge by U.S. leaders who blamed Yamamoto for the Pearl Harbor attack which initiated the formal state of war between Imperial Japan and the U.S. After the war, more controversy surrounded the legacy of the mission, as several of the U.S. fighter pilots involved debated for years over who should have received the credit for downing Yamamoto's aircraft.
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox to "get Yamamoto." Knox instructed Admiral Chester W. Nimitz of Roosevelt's wishes. Nimitz first consulted Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander, South Pacific, and then authorized the mission on April 17.
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The technology and the actors have changed, but the fundamental questions have not:  Are we at war? And, if so, what are we permitted to do when the people with whom we are at war have no capital city to capture and no leadership with whom peace treaties can be signed?

13 comments:

Swede said...

Who are these people you are at war with and who says they are the enemy?

moorespeed said...

Yamamoto's had an eight-strong fighter contingent escorting his plane.

Our last Yemeni/Afghani/Pakistani/Somali/Iraqi "target of interest" was being escorted by his wife and four children.

It's the difference between combat and assassination. And quite frankly, it's not possible to have a legitimate dialogue on the subject without acknowledging that difference.

Anonymous said...

I have been trying to make this same point. Drones are just the latest refinement of war machinery. There is no effective moral distance between lining up coordinates on a scope 20,000 feet above North Vietnam and pressing a button and lining up a target from 1,000 miles away and pressing a button. It's madness.

Phil said...

This is a terrible example. A better one might be a comparison of bombing raids that killed tens of thousands of civilians. Such raids were on a much larger scale than drones today but the process is the same. Drop bombs on a legitimate military target and to bad so sad for people that might be close by. That doesn't make it right and just because the US did it before doesn't make it OK now. This is just rationalizing.

Phil said...

A better question than is the US in a war, is are the methods being used effective in keeping Americans safe?

Betsy said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Betsy said...

Dear Driftglass,

I heard you and Bluegal discuss this on your podcast as well, and I am afraid that you're missing the point of the criticism of this program. Of course drones are safer for Americans than manned aircraft or traditional combat, but the main criticism of the drone program is not of its existence in a war effort, but of the use of the CIA rather than the military to conduct killings of what should be military targets. This allows the Obama administration to avoid congressional oversight and to remove responsibility to the UCMJ and the Geneva conventions. Comparing the drones to military aircraft is simply a distraction, and a deflection.

Approximation Prophet said...

Yeah drifty, you are totally missing the point here, you should maybe look into the issue a little more, frankly. I say that not to insult you, however when you ask the question, "Are we at war?" then go on to claim there is nothing new under the sun going on here, you leave out entirely that we are killing people thousands of miles from any actual battlefield, or area where actual war was being declared and fought, and have basically claimed the right of assassination all over the world with or without the sovereign's permission to act. We cannot and should not police the world by assassination, it is not a legitimate tactic of foreign policy, which btw was the church commission's findings on the excesses of the cia, who also runs our drone program, NOT THE MILITARY. It's a testament to how far the left has actually shifted rightward that you think nothing untoward is going on here, this is not killing yamamoto in japan, this would be like killing someone in India during WW2 because they wrote pamphlets in support of the Axis.

Phil said...

I watched Chris Hayes this morning and they discussed the legality issue. I think it safe to say that their will be no reckoning before an international tribunal or a domestic court for the actions of the United States in this war. I don't think that the US government definition of a war whether through an obscure legal memo or Act of Congress makes a difference. In the end the question is what are Americans prepared to accept being done in our name. If that decision is made based upon (referring now to comments in the podcast) preventing a draft or keeping the children of the rich and middle class out of the military then their is no moral authority to support the argument that drones are acceptable. Invoking Truman or Lincoln doesn't change that

Cliff said...

WWII also required a draft and a rationing of civilian supplies. It was a full scale slugfest between the major industrialized powers.

Today, I can look out the window and see lifted Ford F-150s tailgate Cadillac Escalades, and then I can turn on the news and hear that we're under existential threat by invisible enemies who must never be looked at directly (or else they win).

And this existential threat is such that we must spend decades fighting in deserts, that we can be allowed no private communications, that the war budget can never be questioned.

The story, as presented, makes no sense. A better story is that the weapons dealers have gotten ahold of the reins of power, and the terrorists amount to little more than another Superbowl commercial.

Lit3Bolt said...

So...

let me see...

the 100 patriot missiles we sent in retaliation for the 1998 US embassy bombings have been forgotten...

all the bombs and guided the Air Force used manually have been forgotten...

My Lai and its 10,000 sister massacres during Vietnam have been forgotten...

And all the United States citizens who volunteer for the job of avenging 9-11 and are basically acting as United States targets for terrorists in Middle East have been forgotten...

But we always will remember al-Awlaki and his son?

Yeah, right. Privileged white non-combatant liberals are knocking each other aside to be deeply, deeply...DEEPLY concerned about drones, so much so that they may wear their concern face for a whole month.

That'll teach Obama.

That'll get Congress to take its war powers responsibly.

That'll change the military-industrial complex that holds such sway over our nation.

Do not go gentle into that good night. Whinge, whinge against the dying of the light.

prof_fate said...

Somehow, I have the feeling we wouldn't be so blase about it if Iranian drones were flying over DC and assassinating anyone who gave material support to the MEK. (Although I'm sure the Iranians would regret any unavoidable collateral damage just as much as we do, in similar situations.)

I'll bet the Brits wish they'd had a few of these in the air over Belfast -- and Boston -- not all that long ago.

And Castro could've had bugsplats made out of the guys who bombed that Cuban airliner, for starters. If some tourists from Fort Wayne end up having to be scraped off the wall and sent home in a baggie because they were in the wrong hotel at the wrong time, well, ce la guerre ...

Jasper said...

When did being genuinely concerned ever become an invitation for contempt? In all our abyss-gazing is this what we've allowed the right-wing to let us become? I should hope not. As a not-privileged, non-white liberal (and a son and grandson of veterans and posthumous purple-hearters) I fear I must add my own voice to the chorus of shock and disgust over the Drone Affair. Have we learned nothing from Stanley Milgram about the human tendency to heed "experts" and the ease with which we can become sociopaths with just a little distance?

Not to clutch pearls here, but why is it strategically necessary to double-tap a target site if only to strike first responders? As a trained EMT and firefighter, my mother was a first responder. The notion that her counterpart across the ocean lies in a smoking crater somewhere just twists my guts up.

I think betrays a callous arrogance to call such fears and concerns "pet peeves" because it diminishes the scope of what is involved. You can draw me a diagram and point out tactical decisions all you want, and I'll nod and come along and vote with you in defense of liberalism, but my heart cries out, "Wrong. wrong. wrong." I cannot shut it up. It hurts to stop up my conscience, but I'll shut it the fuck up and vote Dem because it's my only option at this point. I'll go to the meetings and help defeat the lunatics on the right—just don't speak to me of righteousness or honor when it's all said and done. And don't feed me Hope or Change or any of that happy horseshit.

I love your show, but your position on this killed something in me.

Goddamn it all.