Today's Headlines and Commentaryby Staley Smith, Quinta Jurecic Friday July 10th, 2015 at 7:51 PM
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Today's Headlines and Commentaryby Staley Smith, Quinta Jurecic
Nuclear negotiations with Iran have been extended through the weekend. According to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the United States is prepared to keep working toward a deal but will “call an end to the process” if the deadlock cannot be broken. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told Iran’s state-run news station, “Unfortunately we have seen changes in the position and excessive demands...by several countries,” making the task of securing a deal much harder. One Iranian negotiator said, “It’s not like a multilateral negotiation. It’s like we’re doing five bilateral negotiations.…Everyone now has their own red line.”
The Washington Post reports that negotiations today have been less rushed than yesterday, when envoys were pushing to reach a deal by the end of the day. After meetings ended this morning, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius departed Vienna for Paris, another sign that a deal is not imminent. Kerry has asserted that negotiators “will not rush and will not be rushed.”
Bloomberg reveals that a nuclear deal with Iran could create a jackpot for U.S. defense contractors, “who already are benefiting as the Obama administration tries to assuage Israeli and Gulf Arab concerns by cutting deals for more than $6 billion in military hardware.” William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy writes that “In theory, an Iran deal could lead to a reduction in tensions in the region that would reduce the demand for advanced weaponry.... In the short-term, a deal could actually boost the demand for arms.” Iran currently has an estimated $100 billion in Iranian oil revenue currently frozen by sanctions and “will make possible an Iranian military shopping spree that it will be near-impossible for Israel to keep up with.”
In a last ditch effort to avoid the “Grexit,” Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras submitted a bailout reform plan to eurozone creditors on Thursday, hours before the EU-imposed deadline. Members of the Greek parliament were to vote today on bailout reform plan that requests 3.5 billion euro loan over the next three years in return for concessions to creditors, including tax hikes, spending cuts, and pension savings. The European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund will send their assessment to eurozone finance ministers ahead of a Eurogroup meeting on Saturday, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Al Arabiya lets us know that Turkish officials arrested 21 suspected members of ISIS, including 3 foreigners, in pre-dawn raids on Friday. The raids were carried out in major cities across Turkey, including Istanbul. The suspects are accused of helping the terrorist group recruit members across Europe.
A humanitarian ceasefire in Yemen begins today. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged that, “Full and unhindered access by humanitarian agencies to all parts of the country, including through sea and airports, should be ensured with a view to reaching people in need, including with essential medicines, vaccinations, food and water.”
In his first speech on the job, the new leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) called for (you guessed it) attacks on the United States, Reuters reports. The former military commander of AQAP, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen's south-eastern city of Mukalla last month. The United States considers AQAP to be al Qaeda’s most dangerous affiliate.
British tourists in Tunisia are coming home after the U.K. Foreign Office tightened its travel advice in response to the terrorist attack at a beachfront hotel that left 30 Brits dead. Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid criticized the Foreign Office’s decision to recommend departure, arguing that tourist flight from the country is “what the terrorists want.” The Guardian has the story, along with footage of the gunman walking along the beach with a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
Iraqi Shiite militia fighters have initiated the first stage of an offensive to take back the ISIS-held city of Fallujah, Reuters explains. The Iraqi military vowed to quickly take back Anbar’s capital Ramadi after Islamic State captured it last month. However, plans to retake Ramadi were shelved and it has its sights set on Fallujah, “a city located further downriver and closer to Baghdad, meaning supply lines for a counter-offensive would be less vulnerable…[Iraqi] commanders concluded that Fallujah would be ‘a dagger pointed at the army in Ramadi’ unless it was tackled first.”
Reuters tells us that the Syrian army is closing in the ancient city of Palmyra, which is now under ISIS control. The city is home to some 50,000 people and has some of the most extensive and best-preserved Roman ruins in the world.
The Daily Beast notifies us that ISIS has come to Russia. Last month, one of the most important rebels in the Northern Caucasus pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, stating in a Twitter post, “We testify that all Mujahideen of the Caucasus...are united in their decision and we do not have differences among ourselves.” Terrorism is Russia is not new: the Chechen struggle for independence that began in the 1990’s has slowly developed into an insurgency throughout the region.
Iran’s most important proxy group is taking a beating in Syria, Foreign Policy reports. Hezbollah is shouldering a heavy burden in the war on behalf of the Assad regime with roughly 7,000 fighters on the ground. U.S. officials believe the group has suffered close to 1,000 casualties, a major blow to the group.
FBI director James Comey announced that counterterrorism officials foiled multiple attacks leading up to the July 4th holiday. He declined to say how many people had been involved or reveal what the plots entailed but described that those arrested “are products of this ISIL online recruiting, motivating, directing effort.” The New York Times has more.
The Post has more news on the death of Shahidullah Shahid, the former Taliban spokesman turned ISIS leader killed in a U.S. drone strike in eastern Pakistan earlier this week. Afghan officials have stated that over twenty ISIS fighters, along with Shahid and one other ISIS leader, were killed in American drone strikes on Tuesday. The Post suggests that U.S. use of drones and other airstrikes are on the rise in Afghanistan, perhaps indicating increased U.S. efforts to prevent ISIS from gaining yet another foothold in the embattled region.
With tentative success achieved in peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban and more talks on the horizon after Ramadan, Foreign Policy considers how negotiations might---and might not---lead to a lasting deal for peace. The Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program, or APRP, has been tasked with developing a peace process but remains isolated from the Afghan population and saddled with a maddeningly vague mandate. As the clock ticks toward the APRP’s expiration, it will be up to President Ashraf Ghani to develop a new blueprint for the Afghan peace process.
A Buzzfeed report does some knee-deep muckraking on U.S. education aid to Afghanistan, and concludes that U.S. efforts to establish schools and educate Afghan children have been “hollowed out by corruption.” The education aid program, supposedly crucial in winning the “hearts and minds” of Afghans in the counterinsurgency effort against the Taliban, is riddled with schools that have low to no attendance or were never even built. “The U.S. government,” the story argues, “has known for years that it is peddling hype.”
India and Pakistan have come to a rare accord, agreeing to cooperate in fighting terrorism in South Asia. While the meeting between Pakistani President Nawaz Sharif and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi may represent a thaw in the often-frosty relations between the two countries, theJournal cautions against excessive optimism. “Expectations should never be too high,” the paper quotes a retired Pakistani general as saying. “That would be unrealistic.”
Violence continues in Burundi in the wake of President Pierre Nkurunziza’s decision to seek a third term in violation of the constitution. The U.N. human rights chief issued a warning yesterday that the country is at a high risk for escalating political violence.
The United States has rejected South Sudanese President Salva Kiir’s move to unilaterally renew his regime for three more years in the absence of elections. National security advisor Susan Rice called instead for the establishment of a transitional government to ease the nation out of its 19-month civil war. As of yesterday, South Sudan has now been independent for four years.
At his confirmation hearing yesterday for his new position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,General Joseph Dunford described Russia as “the greatest existential threat” to the United States, saying that Russian military activity and arms buildup is “nothing short of alarming.” General Dunford also listed China as a potential threat. NPR has excerpts from the hearing.
Possibly in response to Chinese aggressiveness in the South China Sea, Japan may seek to join a NATO missile building consortium. Reuters writes that the U.S. navy is supporting Japan’s involvement in the hopes that it may lead to greater military ties between U.S. allies in Asia. As China has continued to build islands across the disputed South China Sea, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has worked to develop security cooperation between other Asian nations threatened by China’s expansion.
Speaking of China, President Xi Jinping is weathering a “rare backlash” among the political class as Chinese markets continue to struggle. The Wall Street Journal reports on how market turmoil may affect the president’s previously strong hold on authority.
The remembrances of Srebrenica continue this week, on the twentieth anniversary of the infamous massacre. Foreign Policy examines how Srebrenica’s role as “a brutal symbol of the price of inaction” has shaped U.S. and U.N. approaches to foreign intervention. On Wednesday, Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the killings, and the magazine also considers the implications of the Kremlin’s reluctance. The Atlantic has more on the role of the United Nations during the crisis in the former Yugoslavia and now.
As of Friday afternoon, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, Katherine Archuleta, hasresigned. Her decision to leave her post comes after news that the recent OPM hacking compromised the data of 22 million people, a dramatic increase over previous estimates. The Postwrites that not only federal employees and contractors, but also their families and friends, have been affected by the breach, and that every single OPM file related to a security clearance application for the last fifteen years was included in the hack. Interestingly, among government agencies, the CIA appears to have been comparatively unaffected. The Times has more.
Both Foreign Policy and Politico have in-depth stories on cyberwar. At Foreign Policy, David Kennerexamines (with the help of some nifty graphics) the constant stream of DDoS attacks across the globe and the arrival of projects devoted to providing protection. At Politico, August Cole and Peter W. Singer study what cyberwar looks like now and what shape a global cyber conflict might take in the future.
Honeypot: Wired provides commentary on the recent hacking of the Italian firm Hacking Team, which resulted in the loss of two zero-day exploits that the firm possessed as well as controversial information on the company’s sales of surveillance software to various governments. The lesson,Wired argues, is that companies stockpiling zero-days should probably invest in higher levels of security than Hacking Team did, since zero-days will be an obvious target for hackers.
The U.S. District Court in Washington DC is preparing to order the accelerated release of videotapes showing force-feeding of Guantanamo detainees, the Guardian reports. The Department of Justice has fought to prevent the tapes’ release on the grounds that their disclosure would be needlessly inflammatory. On Thursday, Judge Gladys Kessler referred to the DOJ’s previous challenge to a release order as “among the most frivolous I’ve ever seen” and announced her plans to “move as fast as we can” in ordering the release of the tapes.
Parting shot: Is your information safe from hackers? Probably not, but you can take a look at thisGuardian flowchart to find out how concerned you should be.
ICYMI: Yesterday, on Lawfare
Herb Lin posted a brief response to Paul’s proposal yesterday on allowing government “backdoors” to be built into encryption.
Paul continued to publish excerpts from his upcoming lecture series on privacy, this time drawing on the works of Plato and Jeremy Bentham.
Suzanne Maloney considered the five main issues at the center of the Iran negotiations.
Ben discussed FBI Director James Comey’s recent “public offensive” on the matter of encryption and “going dark.”
Bobby wrote about the rise of “preventative prosecution” in U.S. law enforcement.
Aaron Zelin posted a statement from the Taliban “Concerning its Political Affairs.”
Email the Roundup Team noteworthy law and security-related articles to include, and follow us onTwitter and Facebook for additional commentary on these issues. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Visit our Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.
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A little over a week ago, the law firm Sidley Austin LLP submitted its "Independent Review Relating to APA Ethics Guidelines, National Security Interrogations, and Torture" to the APA Board of Directors. Today, the report was released to the public along with a storyin the New York Times summarizing its contents. The APA commissioned the report after a heated debate within the organization about whether ethics guidelines developed in 2005 were designed to facilitate toture by the CIA.
You can read the full report here.
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This week on Rational Security, FBI Director James Comey goes to Capitol Hill to talk about “going dark,” and the gang discusses his reception in two Senate committees. Former officials are expressing concern about the Iran deal. And the Office of Personnel Management put people who had no experience in computer security in charge of, you guessed it, computer security.
Plus, you can hear the epic saga of the first shipwreck Tamara and I have survived last weekend—a shipwreck whose casualties were our many electronic devices.
Yesterday, on Lawfare, FBI Director James Comey laid out his concern that the growing adoption of strong encryption technologies will frustrate law enforcement’s ability to conduct investigations — what he calls the “Going Dark” problem. The gist of Comey’s position is this: He recognizes encryption is important to security and privacy, but believes we are fast approaching an age of “universal encryption” that is in tension with the government’s investigative needs. Although he assures us he is not a “maniac,” Comey also feels it is his duty to ensure that we have a broad public debate that considers the costs as well as the benefits of widespread encryption. Comey will presumably be making the same points tomorrow afternoon at aSenate Intelligence Committee hearing where he will be the sole witness, while a broader panel of witnesses will be testifying on the same controversy tomorrow morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
First, credit where credit is due: James Comey is certainly not a maniac but a dedicated law enforcement official, one who has in the past put his career on the line to impose the rule of law on overreaching government surveillance. And it’s true that encryption will likely frustrate some investigations, a point I addressed directly when I testified at a House hearing on the subject in April. It’s also true that the FBI has so far failed to come up with any compelling examples of how encryption has actually stymied any investigations, and the latest wiretapping report shows that encryption is not yet a significant barrier to FBI electronic surveillance — encryption prevented law enforcement from obtaining the plaintext of communications in only four of the 3,554 criminal wiretaps authorized in 2014! Even so, it’s a given that just as ordinary citizens use encryption, so too will criminals, and that will likely pose a challenge for law enforcement in some cases.
So we are not “talking past each other” on encryption, as Comey puts it. Rather, since he first raised this issue last October, there has been an incredibly robust debate (as reflected in this massivebibliography of recent statements and writing on the subject), directly addressing the Director’s suggestion that companies should engineer their encrypted products and services to enable government surveillance. As that debate reflects, the broad consensus outside of the FBI is that the societal costs of such surveillance backdoors — or “front doors,” as Comey prefers to call them — far outweigh the benefits to law enforcement, and that strong encryption will ultimately prevent more crimes than it obscures.
Tech companies, privacy advocates, security experts, policy experts, all five members of President Obama’s handpicked Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, UN human rights experts, and a majority of the House of Representatives all agree: Government-mandated backdoors are a bad idea. There are countless reasons why this is true, including: They would unavoidably weaken the security of our digital data, devices, and communications even as we are in the midst of a cybersecurity crisis; they would cost the US tech industry billions as foreign customers — including many of the criminals Comey hopes to catch — turn to more secure alternatives; and they would encourage oppressive regimes that abuse human rights to demand backdoors of their own.
Most of these arguments are not new or surprising. Indeed, it was for many of the same reasons that the US government ultimately rejected the idea of encryption backdoors in the 90s, during what are now called the “Crypto Wars.” We as a nation already had the debate that Comey is demanding — we had it 20 years ago! — and the arguments against backdoors have only become stronger and more numerous with time. Most notably, the 21st century has turned out to be a “Golden Age for Surveillance” for the government. Even with the proliferation of encryption, law enforcement has access to much more information than ever before: access to cellphone location information about where we are and where we’ve been, metadata about who we communicate with and when, and vast databases of emails and pictures and more in the cloud. So, the purported law enforcement need is even less compelling than it was in the 90s. Meanwhile, the security implications of trying to mandate backdoors throughout the vast ecosystem of digital communications services have only gotten more dire in the intervening years, as laid out in an exhaustive new report issued just this morning by over a dozen heavy-hitting security experts.
Yesterday, Comey conceded that after a meaningful debate, it may be that we as a people decide that the benefits of widespread encryption outweigh the costs and that there’s no sensible, technically feasible way to guarantee government access to encrypted data. But the fact is that we had that debate 20 years ago, and we’ve been having it again for nearly a year. We are not talking past each other; a wide range of advocates, industry stakeholders, policymakers, and experts has been speaking directly to Comey’s arguments since last fall. Hopefully he will soon start listening, rather than dooming us to repeat the mistakes of the past and dragging us into another round of Crypto Wars.
We have already had the debate that Comey says he wants. All that’s left is for him to admit that he’s lost.
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Soon after the Charleston church shooting, FBI Director James Comey argued that Dylann Roof’s actions probably weren’t terrorism, eliciting criticism that law enforcement employs a double-standard: It calls violence attributed to Muslims terrorism, but refuses to attach that label to attacks in the name of right-wing ideology. On the other hand, Roof, the young white man alleged to have carried out the attack, has been charged with nine counts of murder and if proven guilty will face severe punishment. So what does it matter whether we call the attack terrorism?
How a society describes violence is important. Calling an act of violence terrorism signifies that it is part of a broader pattern that requires attention beyond ordinary crime fighting. Calling Roof’s actions murder rather than terrorism underplays the role of his evident racist motives and avoids questions about the prevalence of racism in our society. Similarly, thekilling of three American-Muslim students in North Carolina earlier this year, was quickly dismissed as a random act of violence with little attention paid to whether it was part of a broader pattern of violence directed at minority populations. In contrast, a hatchet attack on New York cops by a Muslim convert whose social media presence was described by police as “anti-Western, anti-government and in some cases anti-white” and who had watched videos of beheadings by the Islamic State, was quickly and firmly laid at the door of extremist Islamic ideology.
Under federal law, you don’t need an ideology to be a terrorist. Violent acts are considered terrorismif they appear “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or to influence government policy or conduct. Even if, as the FBI Director suggested, a political motive is needed, there is sufficient evidence to call Roof’s actions terrorism. In addition to his Facebook posts and pictures, he is reported to have told witnesses that he went to the church to “shoot black people” because they “rape our women” and are “taking over our country.”
Upgrading the Charleston attack to terrorism may encourage law enforcement to pay greater attention to the risks posed by white supremacist groups and their ilk. As the media seems to have only recently discovered, terrorism doesn’t necessarily come with the prefix “Islamic.” According to astudy by West Point’s Countering Terrorism Center, in the decade following the 9/11 attacks, right-wing violence killed 254 people in the United States. During roughly the same time period, terrorism plots by American Muslims caused a total of 50 fatalities. A recent survey by the Police Executive Research Forum and Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security found that state and local law enforcement personnel are almost twice as worried about right-wing and anti-government terrorism as they are about the threat from al-Qaeda types.
But diversifying the threat portfolio won’t address the problems that American-Muslims face. Too often, calling something terrorism leads to a politicization of how we treat violence, as well as actions that are only loosely connected with violent ideologies. Violence by people from minority groups is hastily labeled terrorism and often the broader group pays the price in surveillance and suspicion.
American-Muslims know this only too well. They are regarded as inherently suspicious by their own government and their fellow-citizens. The New York City Police Department has for years conducted a surveillance program aimed solely at the city’s Muslims residents, creating maps of where they live, eat, and pray, and infiltrating mosques and community groups to report on their everyday conversations about their families and their faith. The FBI employs similar tactics, using the guise of community outreach to create dossiers on Muslim religious and civic leaders. Growing American hostility to Muslims manifests itself in opposition to the building of mosques, the trumped-up anti-sharia movement, increasing levels of hate crimes against Muslims, and employment discrimination. Ritual burnings of the Muslim holy book have been replaced by competitions to draw the prophet Muhammed, acts that some Muslims believe are forbidden by their religion and nearly all consider insulting.
Against this backdrop, it is important to address the glaring disparity between the characterization of attacks supposedly inspired by different ideologies. But that’s not enough. As a society, we need to get away from the politics of violence and take a clear-eyed look at the range of threats that we face. We should evaluate dangers based not biases and perceptions about particular racial, religious, or ethnic groups, but on facts about actual attacks and the seriousness of purpose and operational capacity of those who seek to harm Americans. Our response needs to be calibrated to these realities and not sweep up innocent people who have no connection to violence but who we find vaguely threatening. Only then will we have a national security policy that works to protect the safety of all Americans.
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Let’s Balance the Argument About the DOD Law of War Manual and Targeting by Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.
Editor’s Note: Just Security is holding a “mini forum” on the new Defense Department Law of War Manual. This series includes posts from Sean Watts, Eric Jensen, Adil Ahmad Haque, Geoffrey Corn, and more to come.
My sparring partner, Prof. Adil Ahmad Haque, has energetically made a fresh critique regarding the new DOD Law of War Manual. This time about the manual’s reading of art. 57(3) of Additional Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions (to which the US is not a party), dealing with precautions commanders must take before attacking in order to avoid unnecessary harm to civilians. According to Haque, this manual provision, which he seems to understand as a total rejection of the essence of art. 57(3), is “both legally and morally unsustainable.” His interpretation is one that the ICRC doesn’t seem to share, but more about that in a minute.
Before proceeding, permit me to emphasize that the new manual ought to be scrutinized and debated; in fact, the DOD openly invites commentary and feedback because such feedback will make it better. But for a debate to have real meaning and impact, it has to be balanced, and that means elucidating competing views and facts. That’s why my previous post about Haque’s first assault on the manual (about human shields) asks the question “Can’t We Improve the Debate?”
Anyway, concerning Haque’s most recent post, let’s begin by looking at the Additional Protocol says so folks can make their own judgment. From the text of art. 57 (3) (emphasis added):
When a choice is possible between several military objectives for obtaining a similar military advantage, the objective to be selected shall be that the attack on which may be expected to cause the least danger to civilian lives and to civilian objects.
Here’s what the manual says about that provision in paragraph 5.11.5 (emphasis added):
AP I Provision on Choice Possible Between Several Military Objectives. AP I provides that “[w]hen a choice is possible between several military objectives for obtaining a similar military advantage, the objective to be selected shall be that the attack on which may be expected to cause the least danger to civilian lives and to civilian objects.” The United States has expressed the view that this rule is not a requirement of customary international law.
For the last sentence, the manual provides a footnote that says in substance (emphasis added):
Paragraph 4B(4) contains the language of Article 57(3) of Protocol I, and is not a part of customary law. The provision applies “when a choice is possible … ;” it is not mandatory. An attacker may comply with it if it is possible to do so, subject to mission accomplishment and allowable risk, or he may determine that it is impossible to make such a determination.
Haque considers this citation to be a mere “Army statement” (perhaps because of a misleadingfootnote in the ICRC customary law study), but it is actually from the 1991-1999 Digest of United States Practice in International Law. According to the State Department, the Digest is intended to“provide the public with a historical record of the views and practice of the Government of the United States in public and private international law.” This particular extract is from a January 11, 1991 telegram sent in response to a December 1990 memo that the ICRC distributed (to nations who might participate in the then pending Gulf war conflict) about the applicability of what the ICRC terms “International Humanitarian Law.”
In short, the position Haque criticizes is not a recent invention of “DOD” or the “Army” but rather has been the view of the US government for almost 25 years. Equally importantly, consider how the ICRC interprets the US position in its 2006 study of customary international law (emphasis added):
Interpretation
The United States has emphasized that the obligation to select an objective the attack on which may be expected to cause the least danger to civilian lives and to civilian objects is not an absolute obligation, as it only applies “when a choice is possible” and thus “an attacker may comply with it if it is possible to do so, subject to mission accomplishment and allowable risk, or he may determine that it is impossible to make such a determination”.
In other words, the ICRC does not relate the US view as wholesale rejecting the “obligation” but says the view is merely as an interpretation explicating the precise circumstances in which it applies. While the US had — and continues to have — many objections to ICRC study, this particular rendition of the US view has not drawn complaints from the US government.
You be the judge, but I don’t think that the US interpretation is “legally and morally unsustainable,” and my bet is that others would agree. In fact, this may be why it hasn’t drawn much in the way of criticism over the years. The interpretation reflects, I would suggest, a keen understanding of the realities of war and hard experience in the importance of clarity about something that could easily be misunderstood (as it seems, Haque has done).
However, what may be a bona fide criticism of the manual is that the ICRC interpretation may be a clearer and better explanation of the US position, and ought to be considered for adoption in the next iteration of the manual.
Another important note: Haque likens his attack on the US’s interpretation of targeting requirements to his assault on the DOD position on human shields which he similarly characterized as “both legally and morally indefensible.” In my response to his human shields piece, I did not take a personal position on the issue, but rather tried to illustrate that there are plausible arguments contrary to his position that I thought need to be considered in the debate.
I did not find much in Haque’s response to substantively dislodge what I had already addressed. I do observe that he now is claiming that “most involuntary shields are not hostages.” Really? As a Syrian activist recently put it, ISIL “uses civilians as human shields to claim that the US-led coalition is targeting innocent people during the strikes.” Are we to assume that most of those “innocent people” are not ISIL hostages in some way?
Here’s the question to be explored in Haque assertion: Does someone who is not seized, detained, or otherwise coerced by a belligerent (and hence not likely a hostage), yet who nevertheless stays, to paraphrase a passage from the Digest “within or in the immediate vicinity of a legitimate military objective” assume “a certain risk of injury”? Indeed, is such a person really an “involuntary” human shield?
Most puzzling, however, is Haque’s predilection in his posts to brand any disagreement with his view as “morally indefensible,” yet at the same time not comprehend that doing so would be seen as an attack on those that hold the views he labels that way. For example, in his original post, Haque variously describes the “DOD’s position” as “morally unintelligible,” “morally incoherent,” and with “no obvious basis in … morality.” But in response Haque makes a very odd argument: he claims that “[n]owhere in [his] post [does he] question the character of the manual’s authors. [He is] sure that they are fine people. Instead, [he] questions the soundness of the manual’s position.”
Who then is being, as Haque might put it, “morally unintelligible” or “morally incoherent” or who entertains views having “no obvious basis … morality”? Of course, the manual itself does not have an independent moral existence as it is simply paper (or electrons), so when one attacks the morality of a “position” reflected in that manual, one is questioning not just the legal acumen but the verymorality of those who drafted and approved it. It really is that simple.
Allow me to close by saying that I believe that the academy (of scholars) has much to offer those operators who day-in and day-out face ruthless adversaries such as ISIL who are well-schooled inlawfare techniques. These belligerents are indifferent to the law of war, except to the extent they might exploit it. In fact, they embrace even the most egregious violations of the law of war, including not just the horrific use of mentally-disabled youngsters as suicide bombers, but also burying children alive.
Accordingly, if the academy really wants to have a genuine impact on practitioners, it would be well-served to better understand the harsh realities of war. Given the extraordinarily complex battlefields of the 21st century, the academy also must refrain from too cavalierly labeling efforts of those “in the arena” doing their best to try protect civilians from the perils of war as nevertheless exhibiting “morally indefensible” views. Of course, disagree when you must, but respectful disagreement can be a far more effective advocacy technique in the proverbial real world.
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NATO missiles hacked remotely by ‘foreign source’by Joseph Fitsanakis
A Patriot missile system stationed in Turkey by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was allegedly hacked by a remote source, according to reports.
Evolving Terrorist Threats to the Homeland: From al-Qaida to ISIS by In Homeland Security Staff
By Jeff GardnerFaculty Member, Homeland Security at American Military University
For the next decade plus the U.S. focused on fighting the away game by aggressively going after AQ overseas while strengthening our home game to prevent any more terrorists from entering the country. The Transportation Security Administration was created within DHS to increase airport security while Customs and Border Protection focused on keeping terrorists out and the FBI became very adept at managing watch lists and no-fly lists with their interagency partners.
Report: Lockheed Nears $8B Deal for Sikorsky
Published on Jul 10, 2015
The United States is watching carefully the dangerous alliance that is growing between Russia and Iran. CNN's Barbara Starr reports.
The country's latest package of offers is getting serious consideration, with a decision from the EU coming this weekend
 Politico |
On Twitter, Scott Walker Says He Is Running for President
New York Times In what appears to be either a premature presidential announcement or a tease of one to get attention, the Twitter account of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin sent word on Friday afternoon that he was seeking the 2016 Republican nomination for president. Whoops: Scott Walker accidentally announces his 2016 campaignWashington Post (blog) Wisconsin governor to take the plungeLos Angeles Times Walker to sign budget, release vetoes on Sunday, just 1 day ahead of ...Minneapolis Star Tribune Bloomberg -STLtoday.com all 88 news articles » |
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Dr. Farid Fata admitted he had inflicted needless pain and suffering on more than 500 of his patients
Huffington Post |
So Many People Want To Hear Donald Trump Speak, They Need Bigger Venues
Huffington Post WASHINGTON -- The size of the crowds who want to hear Donald Trump speak has pushed organizers to find larger venues for two upcoming events in Arizona and Arkansas featuring the 2016 Republican presidential candidate. In Arizona, a planned rally ... No, Donald Trump won't win N.C.Charlotte Observer Univision Hires Bush Lawyer to Defend Donald Trump LawsuitHollywood Reporter Steve Kraske: Donald Trump and crowded GOP field for Missouri governor make ...Kansas City Star (blog) TIME -Slate Magazine (blog) -Washington Post (blog) all 862 news articles » |
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Report finds industry body turned blind eye to interrogations
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Jozef Wesolowski, a former archbishop and papal ambassador to the Dominican Republic, will go on trial on Saturday accused of child sex offences in a case seen as a test of Pope Francis's drive to clean up the church.
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