Intelligence Squared is a moderate’s best friend. Each debate includes top experts in the relevant field, and you generally discover by the end where the acceptable range of disagreement is. The debate on drones is no exception.
The new “Versus” debates conspicuously use Google’s Hangout technology, which leads to some troubles, most notably with the ill-conceived “Hip-Hop on Trial” debate which quickly descended into farce. This debate is a more limited attempt, but there are still some technical problems. The basic format remains the same, four debaters, three rounds. Now, however, the four debaters are cross-examined by four other debaters over Google Hangout. A few times the debate dissolves into chaos, ad hominem and non sequitur, but most of the time it says civil and on-topic.
There are some points I think are worth highlighting.
First, there’s a pretty extensive debate about the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) numbers; Dr. Christine Fair really hits on methodology here, and it’s clear she’s thinking of the infamous Lancet Iraq War studies (which, because of bad methodology, estimated 600,000 civilian casualties). But it’s useful to note that nearly all of the other studies of civilian casualties in the Iraq War were pretty similar, at around 100,000 (meaning that the Lancet study was an outlier). In this case most of the numbers from organizations like New America Foundation and the Long War Journal are pretty similar. An Associated Press study and a Stanford NYU study (discussed in the debate) both lend credibility to their numbers. Granted, we still need more research, but even the CIA has admitted civilian causalities.
Second, there’s some really great discussion of alternative options and especially of the importance of due process in these types of proceedings. There’s a good discussion on how drones allow the executive branch to circumvent the legislature. The negative team insinuates a lot of Nixon/Reagan/Kissingeresque executive actions going on without any congressional oversight.
Third, the point about U.S. international standing is key. We lost more than 3,000 Americans in 9/11, but our response was even more disastrous The amount of freedom and life that has been squandered is abhorrent. David Foster Wallace wrote in 2007,
…what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?
I think this is an question that those arguing against drones are afraid to ask and those arguing for drones (or really any neo-con) might wouldn’t be able to answer.
Fourth, Mr. David Aaronovitch asserts (around 1:37) that although critics of American foreign policy (usually on the left) accuse the United States of war crimes or violations of international law, the United States has never actually been convicted of crimes in a court of international law. This claim was never debunked as thoroughly as it should have been. First, sadly, international law is often a winner’s court. The late Christopher Hitchens wrote in The Trials of Henry Kissinger:
In January 1971 there was a considered statement from General Telford Taylor, who had been chief U.S. prosecuting counsel at the Nuremberg trials. Reviewing the legal and moral basis of those hearings, and also the Tokyo trials of Japanese war criminals and the Manila trial of Emperor Hirohito’s chief militarist, General Yamashita Tomoyuki, Taylor said that if the standard of Nuremberg and Manila were applied evenly, and applied to the American statesmen and bureaucrats who designed the war in Vietnam, then “there would be a very strong possibility that they would come to the same end [Yamashita] did.” It is not every day that a senior American soldier and jurist delivers the opinion that a large portion of his country’s political class should probably be hooded and blindfolded and dropped through a trapdoor on the end of a rope.
Moreover, the United States was actually tried and found guilty of violations in the World Court. In 1984, Nicaragua brought the United States to the International Court of Justice for it’s role in aiding the Contras. The U.S. was found guilty but used its seat on the Security Council to veto the decision.
Most importantly, unlike the fatuous debate about drones that happened in the wake of Rand’s quixotic filibuster, this debate actually focuses on those who are dying in Pakistan and Yemen.