DRONE ATTACKS ARE LAST RESORT

I have posted blogs in support of Obama’s drone strikes. I realized there is another aspect to the problem. In addition to the huge dangers and logistic problems of capture verses drone “kills”, it deals with how we handle the ill-defined enemies of America we capture.  Are they prisoners of war. According to the Geneva Convention dealing with prisoners of war, we could hold them until the war ends, then release them. However, these people are not like soldiers in a routine shooting war—if there is such a thing as a routine war. We generally look at terrorist as criminal subject to court hearing and judgments. This is not as simple as trying and convicting someone for a crime planned and committed in the United States. Americans plotting with foreign collaborators that commit crimes in a foreign country against U.S. installations or embassies in a foreign country challenge the courts to be fair and do justice.  The permutations and combinations are obviously complex.

The result is we have prisoners who we know are not guilty of anything languishing in Guantanamo in perpetuity along with those we are sure are guilty of plotting such horrific events as 9/11. Do we fool ourselves into thinking that in either case this is American justice. Add to this, legislators like Lindsey Graham, who blocks everything our government tries to do thus prevents these prisoners from ever receiving a court trial—he and others have created an American dark site were innocent people are condemned to stay until they die of old age—he is a disgrace.

If Obama has a “kill list”, which he does and if the people on that list are investigated by the Pentagon, FBI, and CIA and in essence found guilty of terrorist crimes, even without a formal trial, then so be it. World circumstances as well as the political right and the left have forced the President into this worst-case scenario—there seems no other option. Drone attacks, with collateral deaths, seems to be the only way we can protect ourselves from terrorist and our own self-righteousness until we find a better answer.