Setting the record Straight on Drones, Targeted Killings, Civilian Casualties and “Extrajudicial Killings”

First Let’s Talk About Assassinations

It is important to define “assassination” so the discussion can avoid “semantics” or making an argument based on ignorance of the appropriate terms.

Assassination, in an international legal context, is the sudden or secret killing by treacherous means of an individual who is not a combatant, by premeditated assault, for political or religious reasons. Treachery is then further defined in international law as being committed via perfidy which is to say

Acts inviting the confidence of adversaries and leading them to believe that they are entitled to protection or are obliged to grant protection under the LOAC, with intent to betray that confidence, constitute perfidy. In other words, perfidy consists of committing a hostile act under the cover of a legal protection

Specific definitions vary but the general consensus is you cannot pose as a non-combatant (hors de combat, chaplain, medic, civilian) nor can you wear the uniform of the enemy, nor can you recruit a member of the enemy to act on your behalf to kill someone who is a non-combatant.

Which means I cannot kill a politician while pretending to be a civilian. Nor can I hire the politician’s own security detachment to kill them for me. Those represent illegal actions and are defined as assassination.

Even if the person you are going to kill is classified as a “combatant”, using perfidy would still classify the act as assassination and therefore illegal. So the emphasis is on *how* the killing is conducted and less on *who* is being killed.

In the case of *assassinations*, it is illegal under international law and specifically the various laws of armed conflict to kill someone in this manner.

That being said, can the CIA kill people in some other fashion such as the “targeted killing” conducted by remotely piloted aircraft (RPA, MQ-1 or MQ-9) or as in the case of the bin Ladin raid via a subordinated military unit? Obviously, the answer is yes. But why is this so?

First of all, we need to talk about how these actions differ from what the US military is allowed to do since they also employ RPAs and special operations units to kill others.

The big difference is “authorities.” The US military (until the unit is subordinated to the CIA) operates under Title 10 authorities. CIA operates under Title 50 authorities. There are whole boat load of legal implications to that but the most basic, easiest to understand is where they can operate.

Title 10 forces are limited to areas of hostilities. Title 50 forces can go anywhere. This is why for the UBL raid, the military unit that conducted the raid was “chopped” to CIA. Under Title 10, the US military could not go into Pakistan because it is not a declared area of hostilities. Under Title 50, CIA and their allocated forces could go into Pakistan or anywhere else (short of the USA).

Beyond that is the issue of oversight. Once a war has been declared (to include via AUMF)[3] , the military is free to conduct the war as necessary subject the Laws of Armed Conflict, the relevant conventions, and the strategic guidance of the National Command Authority. But each operation (with very limited examples) does not need to be approved by the President or Congress.

The opposite tends to be true for Title 50 forces. This is where the need for a “presidential finding” comes into play.

the Hughes-Ryan Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. This amendment addressed the question of CIA covert actions and prohibited the use of appropriated funds for their conduct unless and until the President “finds” that each such operation is important to the national security and submits this Finding to the appropriate Congressional committees — a total of six committees. (This grew to eight committees after the House and Senate intelligence committees were established.)

In theory, this means that every covert operation (which would include “targeted killings”) must be approved by the President and submitted to Congressional committee. Congress doesn’t necessary “approve” of the operations but they must be made aware of them. In practice, this has become more “streamlined” shall we say with regards to how designated targets are engaged.

Following the September 11th attacks, the President issued a finding directing the CIA to covertly attack al Qaeda anywhere in the world.The exact process for how the list was executed has largely been kept a secret. When President Obama took office, he modified the process and this was reported on by a number of media outlets.

Not specifically addressed in the above graphic, there are lawyers involved in the process in both the DoD and the CIA as well as additional recommendations from the Department of Justice.However, there involvement should not be mistaken for “due process” in the fashion we think of it in terms of criminal cases in the US as there is no defense attorney, nor are the requirements for evidence the same as they would be in a criminal trial. The lawyers are there to ensure the actions correspond with the relevant laws to include international treaties, law of armed conflict, and US laws.

Why is there a difference? Because the individual is not being targeted as a criminal to be executed but “the elimination of a particular enemy officer in the field as an act of war.”In other words, they are enemy combatants who could be legally engaged by the US military in a designated theater of war but because they are outside of that theater, they are being engaged by Title 50 forces instead. They are still legitimate targets for all of the same reasons they would be in Afghanistan but they are not going to be allowed to escape simply because they were able to slip across the border. This is not a kid’s game of being on “base” and therefore safe from being “tagged.” As long as they present a threat to the United States (and that’s where the lawyers come in, to confirm that they represent a threat in accordance with the applicable AUMF), then they are “enemy combatants” and their targeting is not a form of execution but a “an act of war” no different than if they were shot by a sniper in Nanghar province or killed by a JDAM in Helmand province. Geography dictates the means of attack not the characterization of the target.

To that end, it would be illegal for the CIA to use the above referenced presidential finding to target a Russian supporting separatists in Ukraine or a drug dealer in Mexico. Not because Mexico or Ukraine are off-limits but because they do not represent legitimate targets under the standing authority associated with that presidential finding. CIA efforts to target bin Ladin prior to 9/11 ran into this problem on at least two occasions which allowed him to live to direct 9/11. Neither had to do with bin Ladin as a legal target but did have to do with situation under which he was being targeted and the implications that went along with that.

So yes, the CIA can kill people. No they cannot commit assassinations. There is a legal review process in confirming the targets are valid enemy combatants subject to a given authority (such as an AUMF) but they are not afforded any further legal protections because of citizenship or geographic location.

What are targeted killings?

There is a reason why the word assassination is specifically called out in President Ford’s Executive Order and all subsequent Executive Orders. Assassination means something specific as discussed above. And that meaning is what differentiates it from “targeted killings.” It isn’t semantics, there is a legal definition and it carries with it certain international implications as well.

A “targeted killing” on the other hand is undertaken as part of hostilities in a “state of war” against individuals who have lost their protected status of the Geneva Conventions based upon their activities. If you plan, facilitate, or conduct hostile actions (regardless of whether you wear a uniform), you are considered a legitimate combatant under the Geneva Conventions. That means that you can’t claim protected status and it also means that when captured, you must be treated as a POW. (Arguments about the POW issue to the contrary, to include those made by the Bush administration, are not grounded in international law. If you are a legal combatant for targeting purposes, you are legal combatant for POW status.)

Hostilities exist between the US and al Qaeada (and its associated movements) as established by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force. Congress has also established the boundaries of the “war zone” for the purposes of the employment of that force.

To differentiate between an “assassination” and “targeted killing”, you generally have to answer three questions:

1. Is the target considered a legitimate combatant per the Geneva Conventions?
2. Is the attacker considered a legitimate combatant per the Geneva Conventions?
3. Is the method of attack in accordance with the Laws of Armed Conflict (which are largely enumerated within the Geneva Conventions)?

For example,

Kim Jong-nam was a private citizen who resided in Macau. He was not a member of any acknowledge belligerent force nor did he participate in any hostile activities (to including planning, facilitating, or taking part in attacks). He was killed by two prostitutes hired to smear a chemical agent (likely VX) on his face under the guise of a prank show while traveling through a civilian airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Let’s ask the 3 questions:

1. Is the target considered a legitimate combatant per the Geneva Conventions? No. This distinction has never been made to include by the north Korean government (which is suspected of having planned and executed the attack)
2. Is the attacker considered a legitimate combatant per the Geneva Conventions? No. The two women who have been arrested for the attack were not members of any known belligerent force and were not operating as combatants at the time of the attack. (The north Korean diplomats who were later sought were also operating in diplomatic, not combatant roles.)
3. Is the method of attack in accordance with the Laws of Armed Conflict (which are largely enumerated within the Geneva Conventions)? No. The attack utilized a chemical weapon which is against various international conventions. It was also conducted with perfidy, which is to say, in a manner to disguise the nature of the attack as being noncombatant. In this case to civilian women participating in a prank show.

So let’s discuss a “targeted killing”

Mullah Akhtar Mansour was the acknowledged leader of the Afghan Taliban, an organization which is a declared beligerent in the fight against the Afghan government and the allied forces (to include the US). He planned, facilitated, and directed attacks against Afghan government and Coalition forces. The U.S. military conducted an airstrike against Mansoor on 21 May 2016, near the Pakistan–Afghanistan border.

And the 3 questions:

1. Is the target considered a legitimate combatant per the Geneva Conventions? Yes. The Taliban are openly engaged in armed conflict and Mansoor was their acknowledged leader.
2. Is the attacker considered a legitimate combatant per the Geneva Conventions? Yes. The US military is openly engaged in armed conflict with the Taliban and used a military aircraft for the attack itself.
3. Is the method of attack in accordance with the Laws of Armed Conflict (which are largely enumerated within the Geneva Conventions)? Yes. There was no attempt to disguise the attack as anything other than a military strike. The smallest amount of force necessary to conduct the operation was used.

You can do this with most attacks to determine if it is an assassination (a pair of attackers riding on a civilian motorcycle, wearing civilian attire, pull up alongside a civilian car and place a bomb on it designed to killed the scientist inside) or a “targeted killing” (a sniper team shoots a bomb maker as he crosses the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan).

The weapon employed (a military RPA vs a bomber vs a military sniper) is irrelevant, so long as there is no attempt to disguise the attack as something innocuous (a child approaching soldiers with a hand grenade, a truck bomb built into an ambulance).

The fact that only one person is being targeted is again irrelevant, so long as that person is a legitimate combatant and not under some form of protected status.

Why Drones?

Using a B-52 to carpet bomb a village that includes suspected insurgents saves just as many American lives as using an RPA. The insurgents do not possess sufficiently capable weapons to engage the B-52 which only has a small crew compared to the number of ground troops that would be necessary to enter the village and search for the insurgents

Similarly, a nuclear weapon would quiet down much of the FATA and given the negative press the US already receives with regards to “drone strikes” in the area, one can’t imagine the collateral damage would be much worse.

My point being, if it really was about just saving the lives of US troops, we have many, many other options. So that can’t be the *only* reason for doing so. At the very least, since we could have remotely piloted bombers if we decided and therefore accomplish the above without even putting an aircrew in danger, then there must be something about the RPA itself that makes it well-suited to this particular mission set.

Furthermore, the US military is not advancing RPA technology as quickly as it could. It has not converted its fighter or bomber craft or even its transport fleet. There are a number of different reasons for this but one of the key ones is that a human pilot in the cockpit provides superior situational awareness in truly dynamic battlefield situations whether it is air-to-air combat, Close Air Support, or precision strike in a high threat environment.

So the RPA is not designed for those situations. Given that, what is it designed for?

Well, it flies slow…so we aren’t trying to racing down highly mobile threats. It is unprotected, so it’s not going into contested airspace. And it has incredibly long endurance which gives it the ability to loiter over a target for an extended period of time. Why would we need that?

In a conventional fight, it doesn’t take that much to determine that the horder of tanks screaming across the desert toward you are enemy tanks. The variety of imagery sensors we currently have on our varous ISR platforms go a long way to defeat camoflage and other deception matters. Better than what we are flying on RPAs at the moment. So we don’t need that loiter time for conventional threats (and since they would have air defense weapons, it wouldn’t be a very smart tactic).

The RPA, it turns out is ideally suited for one particular target set. Unlawful combatants who insist on violating the Laws of Armed Conflict by intentionally mingling with the civilian population and not wearing the required distinctive uniform/patch/identifier to indicate their membership in a beligerent force. The RPA’s long loiter time, its highly capable video sensors, and the extremely limited blast effects of its very limited number of weapons, only serves to allow it to do the best we can to separate unlawful combatants from the civilian population they deliberately hide amongst.

Should we find ourselves in another conventional, for example with North Korea, there would be little to no utility in keeping RPAs around. They would no last the first few hours of the war and the capabilities they bring to the fight to find the enemy are excessive compared to the capabilities we have on so many other platforms better suited to that threat environment.

RPAs do not exist to save American lives. They exist to counter one particular threat, the unlawful combatant who hides among the civilian population. (Unlawful is a legal term derived from the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties regulating the conduct of warfare. It is not intended a s judgement on the legitamacy of the conflict or the belligerents motivations for combat.)

Civilian Casualties and Drone Strikes

It is very difficult to accurately account for “non-combatant” casualties. (Since the Taliban and other insurgent are not part of any uniform military, they are “technically” civilians.)

Many attempts by outside observers have been made to calculate the number of non-combatants killed but there are some rather substantial flaws in their methodology, their understanding of the technology, and their dismissal of other possible sources for the attacks.

While the collateral damage for all drone strikes is certainly not zero, there appear to be genuine issues with the way collateral damage reports are currently being collected by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International:

From War is Boring:

Indeed, of all the methods the U.S. and Pakistan have used to fight insurgents and terrorists in the tribal areas, drones might actually be the safest for civilians.

In its latest investigation, published in mid-October, the rights group portrays robot strikes as uniquely damaging to innocent people in the target zone. “Everyone is scared and they can’t get out of their house without any tension and from the fear of drone attacks,” a resident of Esso Khel village told Amnesty. “People are mentally disturbed as a result of the drone flights.”

But just because Khel said his village is harassed by American drones doesn’t make it true. It’s not at all clear that pilotless warplanes were truly responsible for all the attacks Amnesty studied. The Pentagon and CIA declined to discuss the drone campaign with the rights group.

Some of the eyewitness accounts in the new report are inconsistent with known drone tactics and the well-understood limitations of unmanned aircraft in general. The attackers could have been manned warplanes, and Pakistani rather than American.

It seems that some Pakistanis in the tribal areas describe all warplanes and even helicopters as “drones” and as American. They apparently just assume that explosives raining from the sky necessarily come from robotic planes flown by the U.S.

You can read the full piece here. The Washington Post also did a good piece on addressing Civilian Casualties in Drone Strikes here and so did the Small Wars Journal here.

All around, “drones” are the best option of some very bad choices. The Taliban and their allies are very bad people and need to be stopped. Pakistan and Afghanistan do not have the ability to do it themselves. And whenever they try, the human toll is much higher. So “drones” provide a limited capability to go after the worst of the worst, ideally creating sufficient disruption to allow Pakistan and Afghanistan to go in and finish the job.

In the case of Pakistan, for example, when Pakistan has attempted to go after the militants in the North West Frontier (where the US conducts “drone” strikes), it is a bit bloodier with many, many more civilian casualties:

Is it Legal to kill an American Citizen with a Drone Strike?

On September 30, 2011, a U.S. drone air strike killed Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American citizen with ties to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula whom the U.S. government had specifically targeted for death or capture. Awlaki was cut down in Yemen where he had been hiding and reportedly had been helping plan terrorist plots against the American homeland.

Awlaki was considered to be the most dangerous terrorist threatening the lives of American civilians following the death of Osama bin Laden. He turned on his fellow American citizens by calling for violent jihad to kill them and leading efforts to carry out his threats. For example, he had reportedly provided instructions to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man accused of attempting to detonate a bomb aboard a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day 2009. He was also said to have had a connection to the effort in 2010 to use explosives-laden printer cartridges to blow up cargo planes bound for the United States.

Yet despite the U.S. government’s expressed concern regarding Awlaki’s expanding Al-Qaeda operational role and his ability to communicate widely with an English-speaking audience to recruit more jihadists, the government had not publicly charged Awlaki with any crime, much less issued any warrant for his arrest. Instead, he was reportedly the first U.S. citizen added to a list of suspected terrorists the CIA was authorized to kill, without charge, trial, or conviction.

Civil libertarians, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, are aghast that any American citizen, no matter how dangerous, could be targeted for execution by his government without due process of law pursuant to the U.S. Constitution and international law. The ACLU, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, had even gone to court on behalf of Awlaki’s father to challenge the government’s decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son. They had sought an injunction prohibiting the government from intentionally killing Anwar Al-Awlaki “unless he presents a concrete, specific, and imminent threat to life or physical safety, and there are no means other than lethal force that could reasonably be employed to neutralize the threat.” They argued that where there are means other than lethal force that could reasonably be employed to neutralize any threat that Awlaki may have posed, his targeting for execution violates (1) Awlaki’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures and (2) his Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of life without due process of law.

The federal district court dismissed the ACLU case on the grounds that the plaintiff, Awlaki’s father, did not have legal standing to challenge the targeting of his son, and that the case raised “political questions” not subject to court review.

Did the president of the United States have the legal authority to order Awlaki’s killing without any supervening judicial oversight and review? After all, the courts have placed some restrictions on presidential assertion of wartime powers as commander-in-chief. Judicial limitations on the circumstances and conditions of detention of suspected terrorists provide an obvious example.

Awlaki’s actions would seem to match the definition of treason in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

However, this same section also contains restrictions on the proof necessary to convict someone of treason, requiring “the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.”

But it is a mistake to regard the military action that resulted in Awlaki’s death as punishment for the criminal act of treason, or for any other crime for that matter. It was a military action to kill an enemy jihad warrior before he had an opportunity to plan and implement more acts of war against Americans. As General George Patton said about warfare, “our task is to kill the enemy before we are killed.”

There are at least two reasons that, when considered together, would appear to strongly justify the president’s decision to authorize the killing of Awlaki in Yemen and the carrying out of that decision.

Firstly, the president’s inherent constitutional authority as commander-in-chief to prosecute the war against Al-Qaeda, which had declared war against the United States and carried out attacks against Americans including the 9/11 assault on our homeland, should reasonably include the authorization of the use of force against Al-Qaeda leaders still actively engaged in planning and carrying out further war activities against the United States. In the case of Al-Qaeda, the president’s own constitutional authority as commander-in-chief is buttressed by Congress’s 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which is still in effect. It authorized the president

to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons.

Yemen was already part of the zone in which Al-Qaeda was conducting its war against the United States even before 9/11. It had previously conducted a suicide attack against a United States Navy destroyer, the USS Cole, on October 12, 2000 while it was harbored and refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen American sailors were killed, and 39 were injured.

Al-Qaeda has continued to plan and launch further attacks against Americans from bases in Yemen and other countries. The U.S. government determined that Al-Qaeda’s most active operational affiliate was in Yemen, led by Al-Awlaki. In such circumstances, the president was exercising his authority as commander-in-chief and operating within the scope of the congressional authorization “to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States” when determining the most efficient means of defeating Al-Qaeda. The president’s choice of means should necessarily include his decision to eliminate the top leaders of Al-Qaeda in Yemen and other Al-Qaeda strongholds, who are still actively planning and implementing attacks on Americans from those strongholds. Whoever fits within that enemy category, whether or not an American citizen, should be fair game if he remains within the area deemed to be seedbeds for terrorism that threatens the United States. Al-Awlaki was thus a legitimate military target.

Secondly, add to the president’s choice of means to prosecute the war against Al-Qaeda, of which Awlaki was one of its most dangerous leaders, Awlaki’s own choice of actions in Yemen. He waived his rights to hide behind the U.S. judicial system by evading U.S. law enforcement authorities, spurning all opportunities to request access to the U.S. courts (whose legitimacy he completely rejected), calling for jihad against the West, and engaging in operational war planning from Yemen for an organization that has already carried out terrorist attacks against the United States.

As the court in the ACLU case noted, there was

nothing preventing him from peacefully presenting himself at the U.S. Embassy in Yemen and expressing a desire to vindicate his constitutional rights in U.S. courts. Defendants have made clear — and indeed, both international and domestic law would require — that if Anwar Al-Aulaqi were to present himself in that manner, the United States would be “prohibit[ed] [from] using lethal force or other violence against him in such circumstances”… [H]e has made clear his belief that “international treaties” do not govern Muslims, and that Muslims are not bound by any law — U.S., international, or otherwise — that conflicts with the “law of Allah.”

Awlaki made his own choice. He could have availed himself of the U.S. judicial system. But as the court in the ACLU case concluded, all available evidence as to Anwar Al-Awlaki’s intentions and preferences based on his public statements and actions “suggests he would have no desire to use the U.S. judicial system as a means of preventing his alleged targeting by the United States.”

Instead, Awlaki chose to evade U.S. law enforcement and reject the U.S. legal system’s jurisdiction over him. And, most significantly, he chose to use the area in which he was taken down to continue plotting terror attacks against American civilians as part of Al-Qaeda’s declared war against the United States.

Swap out Al Qaeda for Nazi Germany and a drone for a B-17 and we wouldn’t even be having this ridiculous conversation each time.

We are not engaged in a criminal investigation of Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is not a criminal organization. It’s not a drug smuggling ring or a mob outlet. It’s an international enemy force with tens of thousands of soldiers.

Its members are not American citizens no matter what passports they hold. They give up being Americans when they join it.

Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States. That’s not a metaphor or a figure of speech.

In August of 1996, Osama bin Laden issued his first fatwa, a 30-page polemic entitled “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” against the United States and Israel, and it was published in a London newspaper called Al Quds al Arabi.

Al Qaeda members reject the Constitution of the United States and the idea of the nation state. They believe that Islam is supreme over the United States and over all other allegiances.

Al Qaeda members take an oath of allegiance to Al Qaeda and its leaders. They place their Bayat, their oath to Al Qaeda leaders, above any and all other commitments. Their Al Qaeda oath is considered the equivalent of the oath to Mohammed.

An Al Qaeda member cannot break his oath without becoming a Kuffar, an infidel. To remain a Muslim in good standing, he must remain loyal to Al Qaeda.

1. Any Al Qaeda member who had American citizenship has already given it up by joining Al Qaeda. He is not engaged in a criminal enterprise, but in a war against the United States.

2. Al Qaeda members don’t need to be prosecuted. They’re not shoplifting in our stores or mugging passerby. They’re engaged in a war with us. We can either kill them or they can kill us.

3. There is no need to “gather evidence” against enemy personnel. The correct term is gathering intelligence. It’s not a job for the Justice Department, but for the military.

4. It might be helpful to capture some enemy combatants for intelligence purposes, but that’s often risky in enemy territory.

5. Finally, it’s not a slippery slope. Not unless you move to Yemen and join Al Qaeda and make videos calling on your followers to kill Americans. And in that case, it’s not a slope at all.

6. American citizenship is not magic. It doesn’t mean that you can join an enemy army and expect to be shielded from attack because you have to be prosecuted first.

That’s not how war works.

One of the latest demands from advocates of increased judicial oversight is for a “targeted killing court.” In a similar vein, Senator Marco Rubio has called for the creation of a “Red Team” review of any executive targeting of American citizens, which would include a 15 day review process “decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch” be damned. A 15 day review process of targeting decisions would horrify Alexander Hamilton and all the framers of the Constitution. No doubt our 16th President would be horrified as well imagine Abraham Lincoln applying for targeting permits on American citizens suspected of assisting the Confederacy. (“Today, we begin a 15 day review of case #633,721, that of Beauregard Birdwell of Paducah, Kentucky.”) War by lawyer might in the not too distant future include these types of targeting decisions, followed by endless appeals to unelected judges. All of this is a prescription for defeat.

Conclusion:

By definition, the enemy has set up a situation in which non-combatants are going to die. The US has gone far, far out of its way to develop capabilities to minimize those casualties. Whenever possible, it strikes only when there will be NO non-combatant casualties. However, that is not always possible. So the US does as little harm as possible to achieve its military goals. The limits the US places on its actions go well beyond those required by LOAC and very often prevent the accomplishment of the military objective in favor of preserving lives.

Military personnel are held accountable when their actions were malicious or negligent. If they did everything they could to minimize non-combatant casualties and such deaths still occurred, they are not held accountable. Such deaths are actually permitted under international agreement and the laws of armed conflict.

By the time World War II was over entire cities had been devastated and hundreds of thousands of civilians had been killed by the Allies in one of the last wars whose virtue we were all able to agree on. The civilians were not limited to enemy German and Japanese civilians, but included French civilians in occupied territory, Jewish prisoners and numerous others who were caught in the war zone.

To the professional pacifist these numbers appear to disprove the morality of war, any war, but they were the blood price that had to be paid to stop two war machines once they had been allowed to seize the strategic high ground. There was no other way to stop the genocide that Germany and Japan had been inflicting on Europe and Asia except through a way of war that would kill countless civilians.

A refusal to fight that war would not have been the moral course. It would have meant that the Allies would have continued to serve as the silent partners in genocide. The same thing is true today.

As we can see the way that American soldiers and Afghan civilians paid the price for Obama’s morality.

As I Daniel Greenfield wrote in The Great Betrayal, “the number of Afghan civilian casualties caused by American forces had dropped between 2009 and 2011, but civilian casualties caused by the Taliban steadily increased… 2009 proved to be the deadliest year for Afghan civilians with over 2,400 killed… with the Taliban accounting for two-thirds of the total. While the percentage of casualties caused by US forces fell 28 percent, the percentage caused by the Taliban increased by 40 percent making up for American restraint. This fell into line with the increase in NATO combat deaths which rose from 295 to 520.”

“By 2011, the ISAF forces were responsible for only 14.2 percent of Afghan civilian deaths, while the Taliban were responsible for 79.8 percent of them.”

American soldiers were killing fewer Afghan civilians, but more Afghan civilians were dying. The rules of engagement allowed the Taliban to win which meant that they would be able to kill more civilians. Instead of helping Afghan civilians, we were causing more of them and more of us to be killed.

Obama’s moral approach to war was what the Jewish sages had called the “righteousness of fools.”

This issue takes on a renewed urgency as the United States confronts ISIS genocide in Iraq and Syria. To stop ISIS, we will have to do what we were unwilling to do when it came to fighting the Taliban. We will have to hit them and hit them hard.

War is ugly. It is made moral by why it is fought, not by how it is fought. If we are fighting a war to prevent mass murder, our moral obligation is to win it as quickly as possible. Not as cleanly.

Our attempt to streamline the ugly parts into a drone taking out a terrorist target with no collateral damage is a moral fiction. Civilians die in drone strikes as in any other form of attack and believing that we can have our moral cake and eat it too has convinced some that any other kind of war is immoral.

If we had set out to win World War II as cleanly as possible the price for our morality would have been paid by our own soldiers as well as by the countless victims of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

As we can see the way that American soldiers and Afghan civilians paid the price for Obama’s morality.

The White House was panicked enough to relax the rules on “near certainty” allowing more freedom of action against ISIS, but it’s also not nearly enough. ISIS is not a group of terrorists hiding in caves. It operates like an army. It sustains its forces by maintaining a constant forward momentum. This is something that it has in common with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, both of whom were running fragile military and economic enterprises that depended on a steady stream of new conquests.

The lesson that we should take away from Afghanistan is that finicky attitudes about civilian casualties only end up costing more civilian lives.

Ending a war requires the use of decisive force. The alternative is the miserable situation in Israel in which it hurts Hamas enough to buy some time, but not enough to stop another war two years later.

Sparing terrorists to save civilians is morally and practically backward. Terrorists kill civilians. Sparing terrorists means that more civilians will die.

On the battlefield we have to be willing to accept that if we use large scale bombing to go after a military group that uses civilians as human shields, there will be large numbers of civilian casualties. But that number will be far less than what it would be if ISIS gets to carry out its genocides and continues to drag out the war across the region.

On September 10, 2001, Bill Clinton said that he could have had Bin Laden taken out if not for the collateral damage in Kandahar. As a result of his inaction, 3,000 people in the United States and countless civilians in Afghanistan died. By trying to prevent 300 civilian casualties, he actually caused ten times and then a hundred times that many civilian casualties.

We can’t afford any more Clinton moralizing that sacrifices the World Trade Center to spare Kandahar and then has to bomb Kandahar anyway. We can either learn the lessons of Afghanistan or continue losing thousands of Americans to wars that never end.

War is ugly. It is made moral by why it is fought, not by how it is fought. If we are fighting a war to prevent mass murder, our moral obligation is to win it as quickly as possible. Not as cleanly.

with contributions from BK Price