When Lawyers Rule the Battlefield
5th July 2016
One of the little publicized (at least in American media) complaints by U.S. allies in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq is the growing use of lawyers and media consultants to determine who American warplanes can attack. Local civilians noticed, especially in Afghanistan where civilians complained about this first in 2009 when they were told that the reason American bombers and armed helicopters were allowing more of the Taliban to escape was because of the need to consult lawyers first to ensure that the attack was “legal” (not likely to be interpreted as a “war crime” if any civilians got hurt.) Most of the complaints, which appeared in Afghan media but rarely anywhere else, were made by rural civilians being terrorized by constant Taliban violence. Worse, the Taliban soon became aware of the new rules and quickly developed tactics to exploit the rules to obtain maximum immunity from air attack. This information spread quickly (via the Internet) to other Islamic terror groups. The civilian victims of these terror groups eventually figured it out as well but no one paid much attention to that.