A president of lesser violence

Vociferous doubts continue regarding the legality of the US’ drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. The crucial factor remains the unknown facts, over which hinges the applicable law and its implications.

The point being made here is not that a conclusive case presently exists for Trump’s actions to be categorized as legal or illegal, but only that an argument can be made for its legality. The significance of that distinction has to do with present political and military circumstances.

UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo makes it clear that “no American law prohibits the targeting of specific enemy leaders. Neither the Constitution nor federal statutes prevent the direct targeting of individual members of the enemy.”

This is bolstered by the US’ long practiced “policy of using targeted strikes to kill enemy leaders. After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched a program of drone strikes and Special Forces attacks to kill leaders of al-Qaeda and insurgent groups in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not only did Barack Obama continue these policies, he also launched an air war against Libya that sought as one of its goals to kill its leader, Moammar Qaddafi, in order to trigger regime change. Few, if any, Democratic officials criticized Obama for engaging in illegal assassination or for launching strikes in Libya or, later, in Syria, without congressional approval.”

Constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz agrees: “The targeting of Soleimani was more justified, as a matter of law, than the targeting of Osama bin Laden in 2011. The killing of Soleimani was in large part an act of prevention, whereas the killing of Bin Laden was primarily an act of retaliation. Would anyone doubt that if Mr. Clinton had succeeded in killing Bin Laden before 9/11, as he tried to do, such an action would have been legal under American law? So, too, was it legal for Mr. Trump to order the targeted killing of Soleimani, who was planning to continue his killing spree against Americans.

“The killing of Soleimani was also entirely legal under international law. The Quds Force commander was a combatant in uniform who was actively engaged in continuing military and terrorist activities against Americans. The rocket that killed him and a handful of others was carefully calibrated to minimize collateral damage, and the resulting death toll was proportionate to the deaths it may have prevented.

“The killing took place in a foreign country, but so did the killing of Bin Laden and others who have been targeted… All the relevant criteria for legality under international law — using authorized and proportionate force to kill a combatant who is engaged in continuing violence — have all been met in this case.”

What complicates the issue is the confused stance people have vis-à-vis the US: simultaneously hoping it goes away with depreciated power and yet burdening it with the responsibility of securing global peace and order.

Hence, the liberal progressive establishment and news media’s puzzlingly negative reaction to President Trump’s declaration that the US “will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism,” and that the “[US should be skeptical] of international unions that tie us up and bring America down.”

Compare this with President Barack Obama’s quite interventionist (and frankly, more violent) approach to foreign policy. As The Guardian’s Medea Benjamin reported in 2017, “the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day. While most of these air attacks were in Syria and Iraq, US bombs also rained down on people in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. That’s seven majority-Muslim countries.” And yet nary a complaint in media. This considering the bombings proven overall lack of strategic success.

Thus, as Foreign Policy tersely noted, “though Donald Trump loves military parades, flybys, and the other visible trappings of military power, he seems rather leery of war.” Trump’s strikes, though more publicized, are really the exception rather than the rule.

And the relative withdrawal from the world stage that Trump seeks hark back to the US Founding Fathers’ vision. George Washington, in his 1796 farewell address, wrote: “Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course… Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?… It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world… ”

All this should urge other countries to take a more grounded view of its position relative to and its expectations of the US.

This is so particularly with regard to the Philippines, considering its recent behavior towards the US juxtaposed with its history; starting from the fact that its own 1898 Declaration of Independence was done “under the protection of our Powerful and Humanitarian Nation, The United States of America.”

Jemy Gatdula is a Senior Fellow of the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations and a Philippine Judicial Academy law lecturer for constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence.

https://www.facebook.com/jigatdula/

Twitter @jemygatdula