AL QUEDA, YEMEN, AND TARGETED ASSASSINATIONS
by Chip Pitts

Note from Blowback:  Although the topics dealt with here are complex and there are no easy answers, we reprint this in hopes of seeking solutions that have respect for international law and promote collective arrangements between governments that will prevent organizations like Al Queda from finding safe harbor in any land.

The CIA’s unofficial and unacknowledged attack on six alleged al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen Sunday raises disturbing new questions about where the Bush administration is going with its war on terror. Some of us thought that the misguided doctrine of preemptive attack would not be long for this world, due to the near universal condemnation it has received among the world’s nations, international lawyers, and the U.S. foreign policy elite (outside of the neoconservatives wedded to the notion, and the few legal defenders they’ve employed). President Bush’s going to the United Nations on Iraq was a hopeful sign that cooler heads had prevailed.

But this incident renews and heightens concerns that Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz might actually mean what they say about hunting and killing terrorists wherever they are -- even without permission from the nations concerned. This would make real the most destabilizing and counterproductive consequences of the Bush doctrine.

It’s illegal for nations to simply send a hit team into another sovereign nation to ‘take out' individuals. While there are some old rules allowing countries attacked by pirates to chase those pirates into territorial waters when attacked, this is only when the host nation is unable or unwilling to capture the pirates itself. Prior U.S. cooperation with Yemen admittedly hasn’t produced adequate results, but does that mean that the U.S. should simply step into Yemen or other nations, unilaterally decide on who might be terrorists, and then kill them itself? US pressure on a small nation like Yemen might cast doubt on the action even if Yemen consented (and it’s not clear it did).

Reacting to the news that reputed bin Laden deputy Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi (also known as Abu Ali) was killed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said (and note the passive voice here) that "[i]t would be a very good thing if he were out of business." I could not help but recall George Orwell's comment that "political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."


At the State Department briefing yesterday, Richard Boucher struggled in the breeze, first stalwartly avoiding, then obliquely justifying the incident. Without taking credit, he vaguely suggested that distinctions might exist to explain how the U.S. could continue to oppose the dangerous Israeli policy of targeted killings, but have different views ‘in other circumstances’.


There’s clearly more than one double standard operating here, with the stepped-up plans to station at least 1200 U.S. troops initially in the Horn of Africa region (containing Yemen, the Sudan, and Ethiopia, among other countries) stemming in part from the inability of those weak countries to control al Qaeda operations there. The U.S. is not about to invade Hamburg, Germany to destroy the terrorist cells. Nor would we for a minute tolerate another nation taking such actions on our own territory.


There are good reasons for the international norm against assassination, which is also reflected in domestic U.S. law. Presidential executive order 12333 was enacted largely in response to outrage at CIA assassination attempts against Castro in Cuba, and Lumumba of the Congo. Citizens and officials also realized that the rule of law would break down if nations assassinated enemies in other nations at will. Thus, though the law has been questioned many times (including by Vice President Cheney in the wake of 9/11), it has been repeatedly renewed.

Will these new aggressive actions be based on suspicions from the same intelligence folks that brought us such infallible predictions as the supposed Bay of Pigs cakewalk, the enduringly strong Soviet Union, advance knowledge of the state of Saddam's nuclear program during the Gulf War, or the Sept. 11 attacks?

Assassination is not a legitimate tool of either law or war, but lingers outside the margins of both realms, used mainly by terrorists and rogue states. Al Qaeda killed Afghanistan’s Vice President and tried to kill Afghanistan’s President earlier this year, and Iraq and Iran have killed or tried to kill political opponents (including most notoriously the elder Bush in the case of Iraq, and Salmon Rushdie in the case of Iran).

Yet we mustn’t defend against our enemies by becoming them. Assassination not only runs the risk of getting the wrong person or killing innocent bystanders. As Israel’s case shows, such actions produce less rather than more security.

Perceptions of oblivious and insensitive American military and other power are a major source of terrorism (and what originally galvanized bin Laden in Saudi Arabia). If this extreme example of preemptive action, rather than the recent renewed engagement with allies at the U.N., represents the administration’s approach to security, we could be in store for many more al Qaeda recruits.

Specters of unmanned, floating 'predators' hovering over and threatening countries like the invaders from H.G. Wells’ "War of the Worlds" -- will hardly help win the war on terror. We need a world not with more despair and fear, but with greater hopes and dreams. My own fear is that the new U.S. tactic could help bring about something closer to the science fiction nightmare.

International lawyer and businessman Joe W. (Chip) Pitts III is a frequent commentator on foreign affairs and national security.