Terrorist protection from SEAL raids; children as human shields
Information on Somali SEAL raid leaked
If I were an Islamist terrorist warlord/sheikh, what would I gather from this news report? Well, I would definitely make sure that every place I lay my head for the evening has a load of kids running around. This unnamed official basically just announced that we are not willing to accept collateral damage even when trying to capture some bastard who is more than willing to order the deliberate slaughter of innocents.
Oddly, when blowing up Islamist a-holes will Hellfires we don't seem to worry about the kids that get splattered.
Maybe the SEALs should have just pulled back and let a Hellfire or JDAM take care of the problem.
It's hard to say without knowing more about the target and what the US intended to do with him. If the Tripoli raid is any indicator it may have been an attempt to capture for prosecution. I can't believe we are still doing that. When do stop treating terrorism as a crime and begin to accept that they are committing acts of war against us? The whole purpose of treating terrorists as common criminals instead of as unlawful combatants was to deny the motivations of the terrorists any sort of recognition or validation. That quaint little concept has been overtaken by reality for decades. Islamists view terrorism as a valid form of warfare and much of the Muslim world accepts it as such as well. All we are doing by treating them as criminals is handicapping our ability to deal with the terrorists. They are engaged in unconventional warfare against us. Dealing with them as if they were disgruntled postal workers in absolutely pointless. We cannot effectively hunt down and kill terrorists if we are trying to abide by US standards for probable cause to arrest. Besides, if we violate the sovereignty of a foreign nation, break any number of their laws as we illegally snatch terrorists, how can we try them in a US criminal court? It is beyond insane. If we identify an unlawful combatant who is committing acts of war against US citizens or interests we should deal with them as such. It is time for a paradigm shift. International terrorists are very similar to the pirates of centuries ago. They operated outside of the normal laws and conventions of civilized nations and were dealt with as what they were; unlawful combatants. They could be tried by courts martial and summarily executed. This is the model we need to use for terrorists.
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