Resolved: Targeted killing is a morally permissible foreign policy tool against terrorism

1. -Targeted killing has increases bombing and attacks Andrew Cockburn, an investigative journalist and author, 11/10/2011 (“The Hydra Effect: Assassination Blowback” The Council for the National Interest, http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org...)//sbhags) Early in 2008, however, Rex Rivolo, an analyst at the Counter-IED Operations/Intelligence Center attached to U.S. headquarters in Baghdad, briefed his superiors on some hard realities of the campaign. With access to any and all information relating to U.S. military operations in Iraq, he had identified about 200 successful missions in which key IED network individuals had been eliminated. Then he looked at the reports of subsequent bomb attacks in the late insurgent leader’s area of operation. The results were clear: IED attacks went up, immediately and sharply. One week after the hit, on average, incidents within about three miles of the dead leader’s home base had risen 20 per cent. 2. Killing leaders makes things worse - Terrorist leaders are replaced in 24 hours, and they’re more charismatic and less open to negotiation Andrew Cockburn, an investigative journalist and author, 11/10/2011 (“The Effect: Assassination Blowback” The Council for the National Interest, http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org...)//sbhags) Why, with the commander dead, did the enemy fight with such reinforced vigor? Eliminated enemy commanders, intelligence revealed, were almost always replaced at once, usually within 24 hours. “The new guy is going to work harder,” Rivolo told me. “He has to prove himself, assert his authority. Maybe the old guy had been getting lazy, not working so hard to plant those IEDs. Fresh blood makes a difference.”Once posited, this consequence may appear obvious, but Rivolo’s study, so far as I am aware, was the only time that anyone with access to relevant data had looked at the consequences of our principal national security strategy in a systematic way. However, even as he submitted his conclusions, the same strategy was being exported to Afghanistan on a major scale. Ever-increasing special forces “night raids” have indeed subsequently succeeded in killing large numbers of insurgent commanders (along with many civilians), but the consequences have been depressingly predictable. “I used to be able to go talk to local Taliban commanders,” a journalist long resident in Afghanistan told me, “but they are all dead. The ones who replaced them are much more dangerous. They don’t want to talk to anyone at all.” Nongovernmental groups similarly report that the new breed of Taliban leadership is unwilling to allow the free passage of aid workers permitted by their assassinated predecessors. Neither in Afghanistan nor Pakistan, where high-value targets are the responsibility of the CIA‘s burgeoning killer-drone bureaucracy, is there any indication that the enemy’s military capability has been diminished. 3. Targeted killing isn’t effective statistically Andrew Cockburn, an investigative journalist and author, 11/10/2011 (“The Hydra Effect: Assassination Blowback” The Council for the National Interest, http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org...)//sbhags) So, now that assassination is an official tool of U.S. foreign policy, along with trade embargoes and overseas aid, it is surely time for an open debate on whether it is indeed effective. Surprisingly for some, evidence based on hard numbers demonstrates unequivocally that the answer is No. The numbers are derived from a study conducted in Iraq during the “surge” campaign of 2007-08 that enabled the U.S. to declare victory and wind down the war. Key to the surge was an intensive and ruthless hunt for key individuals in the “IED networks” that were organizing homemade bomb attacks against U.S. troops. Cause and effect — more dead network leaders leading to fewer bombs — seemed so self-evidently obvious that nobody bothered to check. 4. Targeted killing is terrorism - 2 reasons a. Targeted killing works like terrorism - the whole idea is to mobilize a group of people by scaring them using death b. The war on terror has a net result of dead innocents – it’s morally equivalent to terrorism Dr. Charles Webel, University of New York in Prague; Fulbright Senior Specialist in Peace and Conflict Resolution, and Dr. John Arnaldi, Ph.D. in Counselor Education M.A. in Rehabilitation Counseling B.A. in Psychology, January 2012,(“The Global War on Terrorism: How Ethical and Effective?”, Journal of International Relations Research,http://www.journalofinternationalrelationsresearch.com...) When violations of noncombatant “immunity” become an intrinsic part, and the foreseeable effect, of such strategic policies as the bombing of cities (resulting in hundreds of thousands of casualties during and after World War II) and the occupation of nations “that harbor terrorists” (also resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties and millions of displaced persons since the U.S.-­‐led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq), the theoretical separation of “ends” (“defeating totalitarianisms” and “vanquishing terrorists”) and “means” (aerial bombings, “renditions,” “targeted assassinations,” “enhanced interrogation techniques,” drone attacks, etc.) collapses, as do claims of proportionality (given the massive destruction of civilian lives and cities as compared to the relatively low losses incurred by the U.S.-­‐led coalition). These failures to meet requirements for non combatant immunity and proportionality violate the principles of jus in bello and both international and U.S. domestic law. Furthermore, the “Global War on Terror” has not been fought “as a last resort,” with a realistic “goal of peace” and a reasonable” chance of success, which are among the necessary conditions required by jus adt bellum for the initiation of a “war to be just.”9 The ongoing “just war on terror(ism),” no matter how comprehensible as retaliation for TFB atrocities and mass murders, is unjust because the costs to civilians greatly exceed any perceived “benefits” in terms of revenge and “national security.”Instead, the conflict endures and escalates, without an endpoint in sight or a clear means of achieving, or recognizing (measuring), “victory” or even “defeat.”