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Search: battlefield robots

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 | |

12 Oct

...standard. Whether it is the proper legal standard for necessity or not, it appears to address the necessity of the resort to force in a country without a battlefield. Unfortunately, I am not sure whether it can be said that the fact sheet contains an ad bellum proportionality standard, though it purports to impose a strict in bello standard. Jordan For evidence that the Obama Doctrine is in the alternative (i.e., both law of war paradigm and self-defense paradigm -- Koh, et al.) see http://ssrn.com/abstract=2402414 However, the U.S. cannot be...
12.10.14 | |

20 Oct

...or militia, or a law enforcement agency or civil defense force, they would meet combatant immunity criteria under the third Geneva Convention, or even the API provision Michael cites above. I, like Michael, have read in (unclassified) places that the CIA is being trained in the laws of war by JAGs. This may help to ensure that their means and methods in use-of-force operations comply with the laws of war, but it does not change their "battlefield status" under the laws of war. In other words, the particulars of their...
20.10.11 | |

12 Dec

...person should be held (as was done over and over in the First Gulf War) and their status, rather than the kind of blanket fiat approach of the Presidential terribly erroneous February 7, 2002 order. For persons captured away from the battlefield or in countries in which we are not in conflict, it is possible that Cole is seeing a possibility of them being detained and held upon some basis that can stand up for review by a court. Those persons are being assimilated to security detainees in an occupied...
12.12.08 | |

03 Oct

...Afghanistan, could the Taliban permissibly attack the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan or Central Command headquarters in Florida (from the perspective of IHL, not domestic criminal law)? To take that example further...if so, and if the Taliban elements exercising command and control of those attacks happened to be in a quiet neighborhood in Karachi, could the U.S. not counter those attacks with an armed attack against the command group operating beyond the battlefields of Afghanistan so long as its actions were consistent with IHL? In other words, why can't the...
03.10.11 | |

03 May

Benjamin Davis Great stuff Mary Ellen! The battlefield discussion is a big one. Here is my take over at Jurist. http://jurist.org/forum/2011/05/benjamin-davis-post-osama.php Best, Ben Kumahito Respectfully, Professor O'Connell, I don't believe this operation followed a law enforcement model. If the press is to be believed, the Navy SEALs were the ones pulling the triggers. Either the Air Force or the CIA had a UAV overhead providing a live feed to the Situation Room. The SEALs didn't show up with a warrant or any judicial writ. I doubt they knocked and announced...
03.05.11 | |