Oct 19, 2017 06:48 PM
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-bloody-fi...ion-drones
EXCERPT: [...] According to the accepted legal conventions governing the contemporary conduct of war, the exercise of armed force is to be restricted to existing and formally declared zones of conflict. Yet today it is the presence of a would-be target that’s increasingly being invoked to justify the use of force in a given location, wherever that might be. The US has notably attempted to provide legal cover for its drone strikes by arguing that they are all part of an ongoing global armed conflict waged against Al-Qaeda and its associates since 2001. Under this expansive and seemingly indefinite framing of the War on Terror, the kill box serves to open up a brief operational and purportedly legal space upon the surface of the planet within which the employment of deadly force is both possible and permissible. At the same time, the scale of each kill box is tending to shrink to that of the specific individual designated as an ‘imminent threat’ to be neutralised in a targeting exercise that the US military refers to as ‘putting warheads on foreheads’.
Drone operations amount to an employment of deadly force that is more akin to the hunt than to classical war
According to a 2015 article by Colonel Glenn Voelz in the journal of the US Army War College, a new model of ‘individualised warfare’ is presently coming to the fore, breaking with several centuries of established convention. In the interstate wars of the past, the particular identity of combatants was incidental and essentially irrelevant. The individual actions and personal biographies of men were immaterial to their right to kill or their corresponding exposure to being killed. Such permissions were accorded solely by their membership of a larger collective engaged in a recognised armed conflict.
In contrast, the modality of warfare emerging today is one in which targeting decisions are made through personalised judgments on the role and behaviour of specific individuals....
MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-bloody-fi...ion-drones
EXCERPT: [...] According to the accepted legal conventions governing the contemporary conduct of war, the exercise of armed force is to be restricted to existing and formally declared zones of conflict. Yet today it is the presence of a would-be target that’s increasingly being invoked to justify the use of force in a given location, wherever that might be. The US has notably attempted to provide legal cover for its drone strikes by arguing that they are all part of an ongoing global armed conflict waged against Al-Qaeda and its associates since 2001. Under this expansive and seemingly indefinite framing of the War on Terror, the kill box serves to open up a brief operational and purportedly legal space upon the surface of the planet within which the employment of deadly force is both possible and permissible. At the same time, the scale of each kill box is tending to shrink to that of the specific individual designated as an ‘imminent threat’ to be neutralised in a targeting exercise that the US military refers to as ‘putting warheads on foreheads’.
Drone operations amount to an employment of deadly force that is more akin to the hunt than to classical war
According to a 2015 article by Colonel Glenn Voelz in the journal of the US Army War College, a new model of ‘individualised warfare’ is presently coming to the fore, breaking with several centuries of established convention. In the interstate wars of the past, the particular identity of combatants was incidental and essentially irrelevant. The individual actions and personal biographies of men were immaterial to their right to kill or their corresponding exposure to being killed. Such permissions were accorded solely by their membership of a larger collective engaged in a recognised armed conflict.
In contrast, the modality of warfare emerging today is one in which targeting decisions are made through personalised judgments on the role and behaviour of specific individuals....
MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-bloody-fi...ion-drones