{"id":3812,"date":"2015-09-08T17:18:23","date_gmt":"2015-09-08T17:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=3812"},"modified":"2015-09-08T17:18:23","modified_gmt":"2015-09-08T17:18:23","slug":"are-drone-strikes-self-defence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=3812","title":{"rendered":"Are Drone Strikes Self-Defence?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe big story of the day is the news<\/a> that a UK drone strike took out an ISIS terrorist in Syria; one who used to be a UK citizen. After all, ISIS claims to be a nation state and so their "fighters" (actually terrorists) could be said to have given up their previous citizenship.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tArguing about whether it was justified is completely pointless without access to all of the relevant information which we won't get. It would be a very<\/em> good idea for someone sensible (i.e. not a sleezy politician) outside of the intelligence community to review that secret information and to be the one authorising such activities.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBut is a drone strike self-defence? It may well be under military terminology or even under international law.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn terms of ordinary understanding of self-defence, it is not – in terms of someone assaulting you, it is self-defence to break someone's arm as they are striking you; it is not<\/em> self-defence to break their arm because they have promised to assault you tomorrow.As ordinary people understand the term, a drone strike is not<\/em> self-defence.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIt might be somewhat less contraversial to call a spade a spade and term this attack a "pre-emptive defence againt an imminent mass terrorist act" (or whatever phrase would fit the facts). On the face of it, using a drone strike to kill two terrorists only<\/em> who are about to launch a terrorist attack, is the least-worst action. \n<\/p>\n

\n\tThat does not justify so-called "collateral damage" (in honest spade terms, that would be the indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians), and anyone who authorises drone strikes that results in murder should be prosecuted.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big story of the day is the news that a UK drone strike took out an ISIS terrorist in Syria; one who used to be a UK citizen. After all, ISIS claims to be a nation state and so their "fighters" (actually terrorists) could be said to have given up their previous citizenship. Arguing […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[1339,1211],"class_list":["post-3812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-politics","tag-drones","tag-isis","category-7-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-Zu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3813,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812\/revisions\/3813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}