Althouse: "Calling the Islamic State an 'evil terrorist death cult,' Mr. Cameron defended the decision to target Mr. Emwazi..."

November 13, 2015

"Calling the Islamic State an 'evil terrorist death cult,' Mr. Cameron defended the decision to target Mr. Emwazi..."

"'... who was born in Kuwait and is a naturalized British citizen, as 'an act of self-defense' and 'the right thing to do.' We have been working, with the United States, literally around the clock to track him down... This was a combined effort, and the contribution of both our countries was essential. Emwazi is a barbaric murderer.... He was ISIL’s lead executioner, and let us never forget that he killed many, many Muslims, too."

Mr. Cameron = British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Mr. Emwazi = Mohammed Emwazi, AKA Jihadi John.

A Reaper drone armed with Hellfire missiles attacked a car and, as an anonymous U.S. military official put it: "We think we got him."

AND: "Kurdish and Yazidi fighters retook Sinjar on Friday morning, on the second day of a major offensive to reclaim this city in northern Iraq, which has been under the brutal domination of the Islamic State for more than 15 months.... Members of the Yazidi religious minority, which faced rape, enslavement and death in large numbers after the Islamic State overran Sinjar in August 2014, took part in the fight."

43 comments:

Sebastian said...: Good.

How long before SJW lawyers start complaining about the extrajudicial killing of a British national as a violation of international law?

"Evil terrorist death cult" steps up the rhetorical battle but still misses the point. Pray tell, Mr. Cameron, where does the "cult" get its inspiration? Unless and until we can name the enemy, even useful strikes like this won't make much difference.; 11/13/15, 10:41 AM
traditionalguy said...: Now can we take their stolen oil back? Not while the Obama/Hillary duo hold the American military hostage.; 11/13/15, 10:47 AM
bleh said...: I wonder ... if the UK develops an armed drone program similar to ours, will future US administrations rely on the Brits to target American citizens suspected of being ISIS or al Qaeda?; 11/13/15, 10:48 AM
Bobby said...: BDNYC,

"I wonder ... if the UK develops an armed drone program similar to ours, will future US administrations rely on the Brits to target American citizens suspected of being ISIS or al Qaeda?"

The equivalent in precision targeting to what we did in interrogation with the practice of irregular rendition (albeit two-way)? Yeah, I could see that happening.; 11/13/15, 10:53 AM
Robert Cook said...: " Not while the Obama/Hillary duo hold the American military hostage."

Hahahahahaha!!; 11/13/15, 10:54 AM
Rick said...: Band of Brothers depicted an American born German fighting for the Germans and ultimately captured by Americans. Are we to believe they should have refused to kill or capture him in the first place?; 11/13/15, 10:59 AM
richard mcenroe said...: Wow,it's gettingto the point where you can't behead n
Men,women and children in peace anymore. What is this world coming to?; 11/13/15, 11:00 AM
narciso said...: Effendi Emwazi grows out of a 'safe spaces' at Westminster U, where Islamic militants were allowed to sprout unattended, with the Cage Prisoners, providing camouflage,; 11/13/15, 11:02 AM
Bobby said...: Rick,

"Band of Brothers depicted an American born German fighting for the Germans and ultimately captured by Americans."

It sure did- until Ronald Speirs took care of that!; 11/13/15, 11:03 AM
narciso said...: No she's not, lets not give her the benefit of the doubt,

http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/11/dershowitz-doctors-without-borders-really-is-doctors-without-morals/; 11/13/15, 11:29 AM
Rick said...: Bobby said...
It sure did- until Ronald Speirs took care of that!

Or was just a myth so, like Julius Caesar, his men would think him the baddest Samuel Jackson in the army?; 11/13/15, 11:35 AM
Bobby said...: Rick,

Nice! (I believe he used Tertius as his example, right?). Great series, great book, even if Stephen Ambrose took some liberties.; 11/13/15, 11:39 AM
narciso said...: there wasn't a deliberate attempt to attack noncombatants, which is all the Taliban does,; 11/13/15, 11:41 AM
Balfegor said...: In the old days we had a bit of procedure around this kind of thing. You know. Bills of attainder. They're illegal in the US, I suppose, but Parliament can still attaint a man as a traitor, can't they?; 11/13/15, 11:41 AM
Big Mike said...: If they really did nail "Jihadi John," then the world is a better place than it was an instant before the Hellfire exploded.; 11/13/15, 11:45 AM
Peter said...: "Why Risk Prison to Protest Drone Murders?"
"Upstate New York Speaks Out Against War"
"Bombing People Creates Terrorists"

See, really, it's all our fault. If we'd just beat our drones into plowshares then we could live in peace, and ISIS would stop killing.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/risk-prison-protest-drone-murders.html; 11/13/15, 11:59 AM
n.n said...: Mr. Emwazi... was aborted.; 11/13/15, 12:04 PM
narciso said...: A woman in Tulsa was unavailable for comment, so was a certain soldier in Woolwich,; 11/13/15, 12:20 PM
MaxedOutMama said...: I'd have to say that ISIS is pretty accurately described.

What did jolt me a bit was that Cameron's statement implied the need to explain or justify the action, which I don't think was necessary at all. It stands at the pinnacle of the obvious.; 11/13/15, 12:24 PM
narciso said...: now what do these folks have in common,

http://news.sky.com/story/1587048/target-list-of-british-islamic-state-jihadis; 11/13/15, 12:30 PM
Roughcoat said...: Good on the Yizidis for retaking Sinjar. Yizidis are good people, their fighters are working closely with Assyrian Army troops to clear the Nineveh Plain.; 11/13/15, 12:38 PM
Skeptical Voter said...: You know what goes around comes around.

In some cases, it's a knife in your hand sawing someone's head off; in other cases it's a Hellfire missile coming through your car window. Of course that means you get to go out with a bang--so there's that.

I'm not going to bleed much over the demise of Jihadi John. And if at first the Brits and the American's didn't succeed with that Hellfire missile, I urge them to try, try again.; 11/13/15, 12:39 PM
Unknown said...: isn't calling it a "hellfire" missile a violation of the separation of church & state?; 11/13/15, 12:48 PM
Bobby said...: Roughcoat,

Honestly, if there's a people who have been more beaten on (and yet still persist) than the Yazidi, I've never heard of them.; 11/13/15, 12:55 PM
mikee said...: Rick & Bobby - perhaps it helped to have the soldiers under his command think that Lt. Speirs shot those German-American prisoners, whether he did so, or not.

As to the fate of a person known absolutely to have executed civilians: killing such persons immediately by any legitimate soldiers has been the norm in combat since the Treaty of Westphalia, if not longer. Just ask former Romanian dictator Ceausescu, who got such treatment in the opening hours of the revolution there. Or dont since he is still dead, along with his bitch wife.; 11/13/15, 1:18 PM
JPS said...: Rick,

"Or was just a myth so, like Julius Caesar, his men would think him the baddest Samuel Jackson in the army?"

I remember a history teacher at Fort Benning making just that point: Did Speirs actually do what he was rumored to do? Maybe, maybe not; but he made no effort at all to quash those rumors.; 11/13/15, 1:24 PM
Etienne said...: As in all Armies, the best soldiers take the victories, and they move on to the next objective. Leaving behind the junior varsity team who is always over-rated.

Like in Iraq and Afghanistan, the special forces won the war, and then handed it over to the Infantry who promptly squandered the victory, and came home in body bags.

You can bet the varsity team is in Mosul. You can also bet they are ready to tango.

The first order of any war, is to dehumanize the enemy. This is necessary to get 18 year old kids to shoot humans in large numbers. It has worked since caveman times.; 11/13/15, 2:17 PM
jr565 said...: People are protesting that we went after Jihadi john? That son of a bitch chopped off peoples heads while they were cowering and screaming in pain. and he didn't lop their heads off in one fell swoop. No, he used a small knife and cut through all their tendons while they were still alive. Can you imagine the horror? A quick death by a drone strike was too good for him.
If you would protest this guy being targeted you are a ghoul. I don't care that he was a former british citizen.; 11/13/15, 2:29 PM
jr565 said...: If his body is found in the wreckage the army should dig it up and do some propaganda videos. A little before and after show showing him standing over someone he's about to murder, followed by a close up of his mangled corpse. If they want to pee and shit on his body and then cut off his limbs and put them on the ramparts, go to it. Maybe throw the body in a pig pen and let the pigs eat the body. Or bury it with pork. Desecrate the shit out of his body. throw a yarmulke and jewish star in with the corpse.
He deserves absolutely zero respect.; 11/13/15, 2:33 PM
walter said...: "Let us never forget that he killed many, many Muslims, too."

Whew..Duly noted. Duly noted.

ISI(S/L/icle) is pretty media saavy.
when will they release a touchy feely music video based on "In my life"?
Good times.; 11/13/15, 2:50 PM
Clyde said...: Are you sleeping,
Are you sleeping,
Jihad John?
Jihad John?
No, they say you are dead,
No, they say you are dead,
Burn in Hell.
Burn in Hell.; 11/13/15, 3:16 PM
JPS said...: Coupe,

"Leaving behind the junior varsity team who is always over-rated….[T]he special forces won the war, and then handed it over to the Infantry who promptly squandered the victory...."

I yield to no one in my admiration for SOF, but with all due respect, sir: Bullshit.; 11/13/15, 3:20 PM
elcee said...: The Afghanistan invasion was mainly SF. The Iraq invasion was mainly regular Army.; 11/13/15, 4:47 PM
Balfegor said...: Re: mikee:

As to the fate of a person known absolutely to have executed civilians: killing such persons immediately by any legitimate soldiers has been the norm in combat since the Treaty of Westphalia, if not longer.

I won't speak to whether it has been the norm or not, but summary executions of prisoners have been illegal throughout the entire 20th century. That said, it was quite common in the past. Witness the words Shakespeare put in the mouth of Henry V, who went forth to Normandy with grace and might of chivalry:

I was not angry since I came to France
Until this instant. Take a trumpet, herald;
Ride thou unto the horsemen on yon hill:
If they will fight with us, bid them come down,
Or void the field; they do offend our sight:
If they'll do neither, we will come to them,
And make them skirr away, as swift as stones
Enforced from the old Assyrian slings:
Besides, we'll cut the throats of those we have,
And not a man of them that we shall take
Shall taste our mercy. Go and tell them so.

There follows a comic scene in which Pistol extorts a French captive with the threat of execution.

All that said, though, this is rather different since the fellow was blown up with a missile, not taken captive and shot. I'm not sure what the rules are in this case, but it's certainly not the case that mass killing with bombs is against the rules of war -- otherwise we'd have hanged all our air force commanders from the Second World War as war criminals. The nicety here is, I think, the targeting of a subject of the British crown (or, in other cases, a citizen of the United States) for assassination without any legal process.

Bills of attainder used to be the practice in this sort of case, I believe. The man would be attainted a traitor and be stripped of his citizenship, his rights, etc. In the US, the Constitution bans bills of attainder, but we get around that dead letter by providing even less process and letting the President target American citizens for assassination without any sort of legal process at all.

And this isn't really a modern development -- we've been able to secure the public benefits of bills of attainder without actually calling them "bills of attainder" for quite some time. One historic benefit of bills of attainder was that the royal government could seize the property of attainted traitors using a legal process. During the Civil War, we seized Robert E. Lee's estate in Northern Virginia through the amusing expedient of assessing back taxes, refusing to accept the back taxes tendered by the Lees' agent, and then "purchasing" the estate at a forced tax sale. The Supreme Court ruled this had been illegal years later, after the war was safely over, but in the meantime we had filled his lawn with dead people, so after the estate was returned to the Lees, they promptly sold it back to the government.; 11/13/15, 5:22 PM
exhelodrvr1 said...: Coupe,
That's an insult to the rest of the Army. It was "squandered" because of political decisions made by President Obama, not because of actions by the Army.; 11/13/15, 5:29 PM
elcee said...: exhelodrvr1:
"It was "squandered" because of political decisions made by President Obama"

Indeed. See:
UN Recognizes 'Major Changes' In Iraq (link) by VP Joe Biden on behalf of the UN Security Council.
Withdrawal Symptoms: The Bungling of the Iraq Exit (link) by OIF senior advisor Rick Brennan.
How Obama Abandoned Democracy in Iraq (link) by OIF official and senior advisor Emma Sky.; 11/13/15, 5:41 PM
MAJMike said...: What jr565 said.

I want to party with him.; 11/13/15, 6:38 PM
Etienne said...: Youtube is full of American infantry videos of troops smashing their trucks into civilian cars because they were supposed to yield the right away. You can hear the troops laughing. They must know they were injured or even killed, but they kept going, so as to not get killed in a riot.

These guys were the reason Iraqi's shot the invaders in the head while they were standing around slurping on an ice cream.

When Bush installed Nouri al-Maliki, you could predict what is happening today. With Iran coming in now to help the Shiites, it should be quite a disaster. I wouldn't get too comfy in your homes right now.

Squandered.; 11/13/15, 7:38 PM
Michael K said...: You might read "Jawbreaker" which is the story of the Afghan war that was won by SF and local allies. The The Big Army came in and told all those SF guys to "shave and get into uniform." The Chairborne troopers are a big part of the modern army. I wonder how many lawyers the Army has now ?; 11/13/15, 7:58 PM
Achilles said...: Coupe said...
"As in all Armies, the best soldiers take the victories, and they move on to the next objective. Leaving behind the junior varsity team who is always over-rated.

Like in Iraq and Afghanistan, the special forces won the war, and then handed it over to the Infantry who promptly squandered the victory, and came home in body bags."

Without getting too specific Special Forces and Special Operations get confused a lot. JSOC is much more inclusive and I think that is what you are aiming at. SF is a part of that and has a particular job.

The regular army guys/gals had a different job. I did not envy their job. They essentially were in charge of affording everyone room to maneuver. This boiled down to driving around until they got blown up or shot at. Their ROE's sucked even more than ours. But their job was necessary.

During the initial invasion they did great things. The problems came when they were given a shit job.; 11/13/15, 10:33 PM
Achilles said...: "The Chairborne troopers are a big part of the modern army."

Also known as fobbits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Oq2LdbSIu0; 11/13/15, 10:52 PM
elcee said...: Coupe: "When Bush installed Nouri al-Maliki, you could predict what is happening today."

Incorrect.

For insight on how the US relationship with Maliki changed dramatically after President Obama took over from President Bush, see this and this by Ali Khedery, possibly the longest tenured OIF official.

Also see the 3 sources linked at 11/13/15, 5:41 PM.; 11/13/15, 11:41 PM
BN said...: Wait, he had to "defend" his action to eliminate this guy?

Signs... lots and lots of signs.

The end is nigh!; 11/14/15, 12:13 AM