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Do You Believe Covert Warfare Is Ethical?

Do You Believe Covert Warfare Is Ethical?

  • Yes

    Votes: 14 56.0%

  • No

    Votes: 5 20.0%

  • Other (Explain)

    Votes: 6 24.0%
  • Total voters
    25
MarineTpartier

MarineTpartier

Haters gon' hate
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First off, I would like to give credit to J-Mac for this thread. He posted this story earlier and it made me wonder what others thought about this.
Covert strikes, assassinations, etc have been interwoven into warfare for as long as warfare has been around. Even the Bible shows examples of covert action. So what say you? Do you believe the United States should engage in covert warfare?

EDIT- Just for clarification, when I say "covert warfare" I'm speaking of assassinations, blowing up nuclear facilities and not claiming responsibility for it, infecting computers with viruses, etc. I am not speaking of spying on a country.
 
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Ollie North is a hero and Obama did a good job in Libya.


You mean spies? Spies are good. Three little birds, singin' sweet songs is where it's at.
 
ecofarm said:
Ollie North is a hero and Obama did a good job in Libya.


You mean spies? Spies are good. Three little birds, singin' sweet songs is where it's at.
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I mean covert warfare ie blowing up facilities, assassinations, etc., not spy craft Just mayhem in general. Not spying.
 
I'm not cool with assassinations in general and heads of state specifically, as that is giving too much credit to one person and that's not really gonna solve the underlying problem.


Spies:
 
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MarineTpartier said:
First off, I would like to give credit to J-Mac for this thread. He posted this story earlier and it made me wonder what others thought about this.
Covert strikes, assassinations, etc have been interwoven into warfare for as long as warfare has been around. Even the Bible shows examples of covert action. So what say you? Do you believe the United States should engage in covert warfare?
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Under major limitations, yes. Assassination would be something I oppose for example.
 
The current system is utterly unacceptable. The executive branch running around kidnapping, torturing and murdering people without oversight is insane, especially since American citizens are targeted.

Its not always possible to arrest someone and drag them into a courtroom and assassination may be justified in extra-ordinary circumstances. However, that is no excuse for throwing out judicial oversight. There needs to be a trial in absentia, even if it is after the fact. If the government truly must kill someone, than they must justify that before a court of law.
 
MarineTpartier said:
First off, I would like to give credit to J-Mac for this thread. He posted this story earlier and it made me wonder what others thought about this.
Covert strikes, assassinations, etc have been interwoven into warfare for as long as warfare has been around. Even the Bible shows examples of covert action. So what say you? Do you believe the United States should engage in covert warfare?

EDIT- Just for clarification, when I say "covert warfare" I'm speaking of assassinations, blowing up nuclear facilities and not claiming responsibility for it, infecting computers with viruses, etc. I am not speaking of spying on a country.
Click to expand...

Yes. It's not really an ethical question. I don't believe you can ever make war ethical. No matter how many rules you impliment, there will always be civilian casualties. And you will always find an enemy that will subvert the rules to gain the upper hand. Should we bend down to their level if we feel our way of waging war is more ethical. Well, that depends. If you care about the lives of your own countrymen, then yes. In some cases you will have to commit the unethical in order to be successful. But, only if the unethical act is a war ender, would I ever support such an act. Good example is the bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WW2. Was it unethical to drop bombs on areas you know more civilians would be killed than military? Yes! But in the end, it saved millions of lives on both sides of that way by bringing an abrupt end. It is well known and agreed upon by most historians that Japan was willing to fight to the last man, woman and child to protect the mainland from invasion. This can be seen when you look at the many battles involving American forces invading Japanese territory. Nearly all Japanese fought to the last man. Very few POW's were taken. Dropping the bomb killed hundreds of thousands of people, but it saved probably millions of people from death. As a result, Japan has become the 3rd or 4th richest country in the world and on par with the first world nations when it comes to human rights. So, yes, sometimes the unethical is justified if the end result is an ethical one.
 
I think the use of drone strikes into other nations is a very bad idea that will bite us in the buns. Makes us look like the overbearing E-Vile Empire that has no concern for the civilians we kill as long as we kill a leader of the opposition. It makes us look very cowardly and the bad guys bravely facing death on a daily basis no matter where they are.

I don't think we do real covert actions much anymore, we seem more the spy in the sky and then Hellfire from a unmanned drone crowd these days.
 
inosfar as any warfare can be claimed to be ethical, I believe covert warfare is ethical.

and as an aside ,I do approve of assassinations....I find the very idea of saying it's fine to kill commoners in great numbers, but taking out leadership is no-no to be repugnant.

besides that, covert warfare get you tons of bang for your buck
 
Covert warfare beats the Hell out of sending good American boys to die on worthless foreign battlefields.
 
In itself absolutely. On a per case basis, I believe that is where we must focus.
 
I'm with Ray410. If it saves American lives, it is worth it for us to engage in the practice. As far as I am concerned, it is the duty of those involved to do it under such circumstances.
 
Ray410 said:
Covert warfare beats the Hell out of sending good American boys to die on worthless foreign battlefields.
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Covert warfare is likely to backfire. That has happened a considerable number of times for the United States.
 
zstep18 said:
Covert warfare is likely to backfire. That has happened a considerable number of times for the United States.
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That's presuming things could not have been worse.
 
Van Basten said:
Covert warfare's rarely been about being ethically sound.
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That's an accurate assessment. I can not give blanket approval to covert warfare unless I have absolute trust in my leadership. As we have the best government "money can buy" at this time, I don't feel that absolute trust. Just observe the weasels trying to convict everyone at Guantanamo without true justice. It is the same ethical bag of snakes behind covert warfare.
 
Yes and no. Covert warfare whose execution has been okayed by the legislature or jurisprudence is acceptable in my book but under certain circumstances only. If a government is granted this power then it must be a tempered one.

However, covert operations aim to fulfill their mission objectives without any parties knowing who sponsored or carried out the operation. No government so far has shown that it can exercise due diligence as an executor of covert warfare and every single one (without exception) that has been caught has been historically proven to make cruel decisions.

Our own government has shown it is willing to destabilize entire nations and kill thousands of people in order to benefit a select group of people. This is not a power that can be entrusted to the President alone and it should require justification and record among the Branches of Power.
 
Ray410 said:
Covert warfare beats the Hell out of sending good American boys to die on worthless foreign battlefields.
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I would agree, however, many blame us for covert warfare. We had to support some pretty heinous people to do all the fighting for us during the cold war. Which is why we are in the situation we are in now. The current conflict is backlash for supporting dictators in the ME. Supporting these dictators did subject people to terrible human rights violations, but it saved the world from a nuclear end. Many people do not realize this or simply choose to ignore it because they are looking at it from the present perspective. We would have thought of it a lot differently if we had not supported covert warfare and directly confronted the USSR. If we had done that, neither the USSR or the USA would be around today. And many countries caught in between would have suffered even more.
 
MarineTpartier said:
First off, I would like to give credit to J-Mac for this thread. He posted this story earlier and it made me wonder what others thought about this.
Covert strikes, assassinations, etc have been interwoven into warfare for as long as warfare has been around. Even the Bible shows examples of covert action. So what say you? Do you believe the United States should engage in covert warfare?

EDIT- Just for clarification, when I say "covert warfare" I'm speaking of assassinations, blowing up nuclear facilities and not claiming responsibility for it, infecting computers with viruses, etc. I am not speaking of spying on a country.
Click to expand...

"Covert" Warfare simply means warfare in which the actor is hidden or obfuscated. Some of PSYOPS, for example, and yes, also assassinations, or strikes where we wish to retain plausible deniability (for example, STUXNET).

I would be inclined to say that the question of ethics here is less about the covert nature of the operation, and more to do with proportionality and CDE considerations.
 
cpwill said:
"Covert" Warfare simply means warfare in which the actor is hidden or obfuscated. Some of PSYOPS, for example, and yes, also assassinations, or strikes where we wish to retain plausible deniability (for example, STUXNET).

I would be inclined to say that the question of ethics here is less about the covert nature of the operation, and more to do with proportionality and CDE considerations.
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CDE?

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Redress said:
CDE?

~5 characters~
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Collateral Damage Estimation. So, for example, can we stop the tinpot dictator of Psychostan from invading Innocentistan next door by destroying his national lines of communication and impoverishing his entire people (overt).... or can we do it by giving an opposition group the ability to sneak an assassin into his bedroom (covert). In this instance, the tendency is to say that the covert option is ethical because it presents less collateral damage.
 
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cpwill said:
Collateral Damage Estimation. So, for example, can we stop the tinpot dictator of Psychostan from invading Innocentistan next door by destroying his national lines of communication and impoverishing his entire people (overt).... or can we do it by giving an opposition group the ability to sneak an assassin into his bedroom (covert)
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Thanks. Learn something new every day.
 
All is fair in love and war.
 
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