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Search: battlefield robots

24 Jan

...suffering. In 1965, David Henry Mitchell II, who was eventually convicted of willful failure to report for induction, challenged the legality of Lyndon Johnson's war. He raised basic constitutional issues: the absence of a formal declaration, broken treaties, a pattern of war crimes on the battlefield. No soldier, Mitchell argued, should be forced to participate in criminal policies, to choose between near-sedition and the commission of war crimes. Federal Judge William Timbers refused to hear the evidence. When Mitchell's attorneys argued that under the Nuremberg Principles soldiers have a duty...
24.01.07 | |

22 May

...Article 5 hearing designed for battlefield-collected captives to contest their status as enemy combatants, lawful or otherwise?? [The CSRTs were knock-off frauds of such hearings, as even military judges have had to concede when finally forced to it in a case or two, as will likely happen again with another captive next month in Guantanamo.] Captives denied POW protection and lawful Article 5 tribunals can hardly appeal to their MILITARY CAPTORS for a fair opportunity to be heard in an Article 5 hearing - which that same military has already...
22.05.10 | |

31 Jul

...forces struggle to address the challenges of the asymmetrical battlefield, it is at least worth contemplating whether such initiatives might just increase respect for the jus in bello during such conflicts, and in so doing mitigate the asymmetry as it relates to the law. Seamus Professor Alford, As it pertains directly to your post, I suspect you would be interested in Dr. Avi Bell's piece, 'Human Rights Watch's Q&A on Lebanon War: Selective and Distorted Application of International Law,' found at NGO Monitor: Promoting critical debate and accountability of human...
31.07.06 | |

31 Jul

...you know he was recruited and trained by al Qaeda (who ran that camp) and can assume he was a soldier unless he can show that he returned to civilian life (and that does not mean that he retreated from a general battlefield defeat). Such a person is subject to detention under the laws of war, but should be treated as a POW. He generally cannot be charged with a crime, because being an enemy soldier cannot be criminalized no matter what nasty things you say about his army. The...
31.07.08 | |

23 Sep

...territory of a state or territory that it occupies or the equivalent of its territory (e.g., its war ship) under the "effective control" test? Does human rights law under the major international treaty, the ICCPR, change anything on the battlefield with respect to persons who are not within the "effective control" of a state? federico sperotto Among the legal requirements to identify a conflict as a NIAC, there is also the territorial one. A NIAC occurs within a State. This is not the case in the US-AQ so called war....
23.09.13 | |

06 Sep

...a US government agent. We went through this in the civil rights movement in the mid-60's. Nothing new under the sun. Best, Ben Ed White Kevin, Could you explain the grounds on which you would permit killing of a U.S. citizen w/o judicial authorization in armed conflict (by which I presume you also mean to include the limiting condition of "on the battlefield" or "in the zone of armed conflict") but not permit the killing, absent judicial authorization, of a U.S. citizen engaged in hostilities against the U.S. but not...
06.09.10 | |

13 Mar

John C. Dehn Bravo, Kevin. I would add only a historical note to your excellent analysis. It was concern for the victims of war, primarily those injured in the Battle of Solferino, that led Henri Dunant to help found the Red Cross. His original goal was to provide care for those wounded in battle but still living (who were strewn across the battlefield and uncared for until Dunant arrived and assembled help), not to prevent their deaths in battle. Hence, Dunant is credited with helping to bring the Geneva Convention...
13.03.13 | |

23 Jan

...an essentially open-ended nature, neither battlefield-type tribunals nor the CSRTs are really adequate. I don't have space here to go into what the correct form of procedure should be, but this principle seems to me the essential starting point. John Knox Geoffrey Corn says, ""Doubt" is the trigger for an Article 5 Tribunal. However, nothing in that provision of the Third Convention indicates that such doubt exists whenever an individual questions his status. Nor does state practice support such an assertion." As I noted earlier in response to one of...
23.01.07 | |

16 Jul

...not have in advanced military technology, asymmetric warfare, and international law. “Reports” from HRW and Amnesty claiming to dissect complex battlefield events are a mix of unverifiable “eyewitness” allegations and speculation based on a few scraps of questionable (at best) information. Look at HRW’s latest bogus “report” on IDF use of drones or Amnesty's 127-pager on Gaza. A few people collecting "testimony" and looking at damage after a battle cannot possibly be able to reach the conclusions claimed by the authors. And the obsessive focus on Israel gets HRW and...
16.07.09 | |

25 Jan

...Commander in Chief for 4 years. His power therein is not contingent on his current poll numbers. He should certainly heed the opinion of the people, but ultimately, the judgement call is his. For true democratic control of the war, the people would require access to all our battlefield knowledge and information. Security makes this impractical, and the limitations of each citizen's time does as well. William J. Neill As a preface to what you read below, I am neither a Constitutional scholar nor an academic. I served in the...
25.01.07 | |

28 Jul

...detain people on the battlefield who are "innocent." There is simply no incentive for this behavior -- yet many on this board think it happens on a daily basis and would stretch any norm to keep it from happening. Meanwhile, I do deeply worry that the occasional innocent capture will be covered up by the administration, because it has every incentive to do so. Please note, I am not saying that what the Bush administration does is either lex lata or lex ferenda, I am just saying that there are...
28.07.08 | |

19 Oct

...value of a drone on the battlefield as anything more than a novelty. Once the war on terror started, and the value of drones became apparent to everyone. The Air Force jumped into the game and tried to muscle out the CIA. Unfortunately, almost immediately the Air Force drone program was caught in the inevitable Pentagon procurement death spiral where large numbers of a good enough system (predators/reapers) are sacrificed for fewer of a perfect-but as yet undeveloped system, see F-35. In the war on terror the drone's best asset...
19.10.11 | |