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Politics: Jus in bello?

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Hilary Clinton had some stiff opposition last week in Pakistan. Everywhere she went in her dazzling blue pants suit, Pakistanis raged about US policy in Afghanistan and along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. One woman pointedly asked, Do the US drone bombings that kill Pakistani civilians count as terrorism? Clinton of course said No.

On most definitions of terrorism, Clinton’s was the right answer. Terrorists deliberately target civilians. Bombs from NATO, mainly US, drones and jets are aimed at terrorists. We have killed civilians, no one knows for sure how many. But we don’t intent to kill civilians.

That’s an important distinction, but this precision is bound to be lost on Afghans and Pakistanis who have lost family members and neighbors to the bombs of the US and allies. And it’s not the end of the discussion about the bombings.

Pakistan has been one of the staunchest American allies in the region, so staunch that it’s regularly denounced in the region as a US puppet. Now we’re bombing Taliban who have fled across the Afghan border into Pakistan. Islamabad charges that we and our allies have killed several hundred civilians, and has asked us to stop. Islamabad sees our missions as a violation of their national sovereignty. Islamabad has nukes. But we keep sending in the drones. We’re risking that testy alliance, and also running the risk of throwing Pakistan into a domestic crisis that might topple the friends that remain.

Plus, the bombings often fail to meet the requirements of the classic standards of jus in bello, justice in the conduct of war. Daniel M. Bell has recently noted that “it is not enough that just warriors do not intend the death of noncombatants,” he writes, “they have a responsibility to exercise due care in avoiding noncombatant deaths and protecting them from harm.”

Several recent incidents fail to meet the standard of due care. In September, the Taliban hijacked two fuel tankers that got bogged down in mud near Kunduz in Northern Afghanistan, and they began dumping fuel. Relying on a assurances from an informant that all the people at the truck were fighters, the German NATO commander ordered a circling F15 to attack, and the bomb incinerated over a hundred people. It is now clear that many, perhaps most, were civilians, who approached the trucks either because they were forced by the Taliban to help dig out the truck or because they were hoping to siphon off free fuel. Gen. McChrystal ordered an investigation, but this is not the only incident where NATO has failed to do what it could to protect civilians.

Drones and bombs keep many of our ground troops out of harm’s way. That’s great for American troops, not so great for the Afghans and Pakistanis. Deprived of the discrimination that on-the-ground information provides, commanders have to decide whether the grainy images on their screens are militants or civilians, or rely on notoriously unreliable informants to let them know.

I believe in just war, but I feel the sting of John Howard Yoder’s complaint that in practice just war theory is toothless, incapable of doing anything but endorse whatever “military necessity” demands. If the church is going to be a credible witness, both in the US and to the Muslim peoples of the Middle East, that charge must be put to rest.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 5:15 pm

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Politics: Jus in bello?

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