Peacetime Air Strikes are Not Strategically Justified

Feel like a tough debate? Take this one on. After working in ten war zones, losing several colleagues in terror bombings, and training stateside in the U.S. Marines, I've spent years examining whether air strikes and assassinations of suspected terror wielders and mass murderers can be justified as preventive measures, if those individuals were suspected of threatening to kill numerous others.

While many peace activists argue that attacks like these conducted in peacetime are not morally justified, I now believe that there's a stronger argument to be made. Peacetime airstrikes and assassinations are also not strategically justified. Listen...

Old bookstores carry some gems. Last year, I dug up a real treasure in the stacks of a shop on St. Mark's Place in New York. After the Kennedy and King assassinations in the 1960s, Harold Zellner led a group of academics in a book-form debate on whether peacetime assassination could ever be morally justified. The book was called, simply, Assassination. In it the writers took on the conflicting moral "good" of assassinating the world's Hitlers against the moral "wrong" of assassinating the world's Martin Luther Kings.

This week after reading about the U.S. drone strike in Pakistan, U.S. & Yemeni targeting of a terror cell in Sana'a, and Israel's strike on a militant in Gaza, I took the opportunity to crack the spine and give that book a good read. Let's set aside the question of killing in combat for a separate discussion. Instead, we can look briefly at when governments, organizations, and terror squads conduct air strikes, bombings, and shootings in areas where war has not been declared. That is, communities which do not otherwise expect military action.

In Assassination, while historian philosopher Haig Khatchadourian argues a humanist case that peacetime assassinations are virtually never justified, Hector-Neri Castaneda uses logical calculus with math and statistics equations to argue that "murder is sometimes morally justified." Here I'll briefly defend Khatchadourian's humanist case against assassinations -- both those committed by terrorists and those launched by governments for pre-emptive security -- and then add points on counter-terrorism.

High-minded stuff, requiring a closer read and on-the-ground investigation! But I wanted to touch on it here because every day American news pundits call for, or question the lack of, air strikes and assaults as a response to car bombs, killings, and terror threats. Few in the public realm and even fewer in the political sphere currently question the moral premise of killing to prevent killing.

Now it has become conventional wisdom that suicide bombers and their funders can be deterred by preventive or counter-attacks, never mind that security forces may accuse the wrong suspect, that those who are wielders of terror are far too many to hit with any strike, and that many of the targets are suicidal and seeking martyrdom, therefore not well deterred by threat of violence or retaliation. (A Somali Salafist recently told his followers that whether they change the infidels or die, either way they win.)

With examples from Hitler to the Kennedy's to the Israeli Olympic Team at Munich, Khatchadourian, in his essay "Is Political Assassination Ever Morally Justified?" gives the nuanced view that "some 'forms' of political assassination are patently unjustified ... cold-blooded murder," (i.e. shooting Martin Luther King, Jr.) and that the remaining exceptions (i.e. bombing Hitler) must satisfy a collection of criteria which together would be virtually impossible to satisfy.

The exceptions would need to (a) "[Spring] from morally good motives" and (b) Prove the public good outweighs the individual, and would be even more solid if (c) Conducted in immediate self-defense, (d) Painlessness of means, and (e) Assured without a doubt that it was the correct person being targeted. Of course, each of us defines "good" and "self-defense" differently. Nevertheless, Khatchadourian makes the case that in theory one can argue about many exceptions, that assassination can be justified based on the "greater good," but that in reality it is virtually impossible to prove that or to prove the guilt of the targeted party outside of court, therefore the killings are based on assumptions or speculation and so cannot be justified morally.

To update this argument for today's global war and the daily decisions the Obama Administration must make, I recommend we bring national security strategy into account inside the argument. After all, the wielders of the power of peacetime air strikes and assassination ultimately champion the greater good claim.

And so, perhaps we should add a few points. To prove the strategic "greater good," the attackers -- in addition to all of the above criteria - would also have to prove (f) That the target had plans to kill civilians in the works and that only their death would prevent it from going forward. The killing of one member of an organization virtually never signifies an end to that organization. Hitler's death did not end the Nazi Party; a million people and hundreds of military defeats led to that. Otherwise, any of a hundred other leaders would have stepped in. Expecting a terror organization or government or attack plan to fall because of the killing of one leader is short-sighted, a misapplication of small operations models to large operations.

And (g) that the killing would not lead to an increase in propaganda and recruiting for the cause in question. If innocent civilians were killed in the crossfire of a peacetime attack on the terror-wielder, it would very likely result in an increase in public sympathy for the organization and an increase in recruitment of supporters.

A few years ago, Russia's southern republic of Ingushetia was at the time declared "peaceful," but was riddled with counter-insurgency strikes, shootings, car bombings, and threats. When bodies were found, the government immediately chalked them up to the insurgents. But in private, nearly everyone claimed it was the government doing the assassinations.

In one case that hit close to my organization, the Ingush Interior security forces (allied with Moscow) meant well in pursuing a man suspected of participating in insurgent violence against Russia and civilians. But in pursuit of this man into a cul-de-sac inside of a poor displaced family community, they did not wait him out and arrest him.

Instead, they surrounded the refugee shelter he went into with five truckloads full of soldiers and -- to arrest one suspect -- showered the shelter with mortars and bullets, killing him. The women, children, and elderly later called our office, claiming that the soldiers had locked some of them in rooms and nearly caught others in the crossfire. Three families asked for our aid agency's help rebuilding their roofs.

In killing one militant in a peaceful setting outside combat (the man could have been a blood-thirsty tyrant) the security force turned hundreds of impartial witnesses into enemies. And so beyond the moral position one may take against peacetime air strikes or assassinations, it is also vital to include that these kinds of operations are also strategically unjustified as well.

Over the long term, the most strategically sound strategy, is to reduce perceptions of an "Us" versus "Them" war and win over through good works and honesty many of the people who would potentially support if not consent to the activities of those who are preparing violent attacks. In the immediate term, although it may be extremely difficult, security forces on the ground must isolate the targets, surround them, and wait them out through police siege and arrest tactics.

If security forces are convinced enough of the target's guilt to bomb them during peacetime, that likely means that the target has the means of attack on site, so a police siege can limit the movement of the weapon. Of course, this tactic may lead to greater numbers of police killed or injured. This is tragic, but it is better than the result of turning the broader community against the security force and increasing recruitment efforts for the target organization.

By launching air strikes, triggering bombs, or shooting suspected mass murderers, security forces may have good intentions and may appear to achieve success in the short term. But by terrorizing civilians living near the target with the threat of violence, killing someone they are not convinced was guilty, and possibly injuring innocent people in the crossfire, the security forces have duplicated the effects of terrorism on the local population.

And so, peacetime airstrikes are neither morally nor strategically justified. Security actors must take longer-term peacebuilding and relationship building efforts more seriously and until caught up employ police tactics in non-combat settings, even if more costly in the short-term, in order to reduce threats in the long-term.

Photo credit: Gaza, Zoriah