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ABSTRACT
This article undertakes a textually oriented discourse analysis of six Obama-era arguments, delivered by key legal personnel, on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Our analysis situates these seminal texts within a broader discourse analysis of the emergent War on Terror, as articulated by President Bush between 2001 and 2003. This analysis finds that the Obama administration sought to situate their systematized killing programme within the existing confines of the law of armed conflict. In doing so, the Obama administration attempted to unilaterally rewrite the law of armed conflict to permit the killing of ‘terrorist suspects’ and ‘suspected terrorists’ outside of an active battlefield. Key to accomplishing this, our analysis shows, was the Obama administration’s use of innovative techniques of dehumanisation. Obama adopted a sanguine, bureaucratic language to veil the act of killing. The significance of our findings is two-fold. Our research contributes to critical complementary literatures on: (i) the role of dehumanization in US foreign policy, and (ii) the influence of power in the directional flows of law-making and law-receiving from West-to-East and North-to-South. Together, dehumanization and law acted as complementary enablers of political violence perpetrated by the US against those residing in the Global South.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Jeffrey S. Bachman is Professorial Lecturer in Human Rights and Director of the Ethics, Peace, and Human Rights MA Program at the American University School of International Service.
Jack Holland is the Academic Group Leader for International Relations and Security, and Co-Director for the Centre for Security Studies at University of Leeds.
Notes
1 Philip Alston, ‘Study on Targeted Killings’, United Nations General Assembly, May 28, 2010, www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/14session/A.HRC.14.24.Add6.pdf (accessed January 10, 2016).
2 Ibid.
3 Chris Woods, ‘The Story of America’s Very First Drone Strike’, The Atlantic, May 30, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/05/america-first-drone-strike-afghanistan/394463/ (accessed May 15, 2016).
4 ‘Get the Data: Drone Wars’, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/drones-graphs/ (accessed January 15, 2017).
5 Asma Jahangir, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur’, January 13, 2003, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/487674/files/E_CN-4_2003_3-EN.pdf (accessed September 1, 2018).
6 Jack Holland, ‘Obama as Modern Jeffersonian’, in The Obama Doctrine, eds. Michelle Bentley and Jack Holland (London: Routledge, 2016).
7 Christopher Fuller, ‘The Assassin in Chief: Obama’s Drone Legacy’, in The Obama Doctrine, eds. Michelle Bentley and Jack Holland (London: Routledge, 2016), 131.
8 ‘Get the Data’.
9 Ibid.
10 Alston, ‘Study on Targeted Killings’.
11 Mary Ellen O’Connell, ‘Lawful Use of Combat Drones’, US Congress, April 28, 2010, https://fas.org/irp/congress/2010_hr/042810oconnell.pdf (accessed June 17, 2017).
12 See Jeffrey Bachman, ‘The Lawfulness of Targeted Killing Operations Outside Afghanistan’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 38, no. 11 (2015): 899–918.
13 Chris Woods and Christina Lamb, ‘CIA Tactics in Pakistan Include Targeting Rescuers and Funerals’, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, February 4, 2012, https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror-drones-cia-tactics-in-pakistaninclude-targeting-rescuers-and-funerals/ (accessed June 15, 2017); see Christof Heyns, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions’, United Nations, September 13, 2013; Amnesty International, ‘Will I be Next: US Drone Strikes in Pakistan’ (2013), 44; Human Rights Watch, ‘“Between a Drone and Al-Qaeda”: The Civilian Cost of US Targeted Killings in Yemen’, (2013), 1.
14 Norman Fairclough, Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (London: Routledge, 2003), 2, 5.
15 Norman Fairclough, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis as a Method in Social Scientific Research’, Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis 5 (2001): 121–38.
16 Barack Obama, ‘The Future of Our Fight against Terrorism’, May 23, 2013, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/23/remarks-president-barack-obama (accessed September 1, 2018).
17 See Bentley and Holland, The Obama Doctrine; Daniel W. Drezner, ‘Does Obama Have a Grand Strategy’, Foreign Affairs 90 (2011): 57–68; Colin Dueck, The Obama Doctrine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
18 Wali Aslam, ‘Drones and the Issue of Continuity in America’s Pakistan Policy under Obama’, in Obama's Foreign Policy, eds. Michelle Bentley and Jack Holland (London: Routledge, 2014), 139–61; Fuller, ‘The Assassin in Chief’.
19 David Campbell, Writing Security (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1992). See also Michael Krenn, The Color of Empire (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006).
20 See, for example, Krystyn R, Moon, ‘“There’s No Yellow in the Red, White and Blue”: The Creation of Anti-Japanese Music During World War II’, Pacific Historical Review 72, no. 3 (2003): 333–52; Dong Choon Kim, ‘Forgotten War, Forgotten Massacres—the Korean War (1950–1953) as Licensed Mass Killings’, Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 4 (2004): 523–44; Nick Turse, Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (New York: Picador, 2013).
21 Anthea Elizabeth Roberts, ‘Traditional and Modern Approaches to Customary International Law’, American Journal of International Law 95 (2001): 768.
22 This is especially true of the US in recent years, from Bush’s justification of the invasion of Iraq, to the responsibility to protect, to Obama’s killing program.
23 George Rodrigo Bandeira Galindo and César Yip, ‘Customary International Law and the Third World: Do Not Step on the Grass’, Chinese Journal of International Law 16 (2017): 252.
24 Campbell, Writing Security.
25 Krenn, The Color of Empire.
26 Albert Bandura, Bill Underwood, and Michael Fromson, ‘Disinhibition of Aggression through Diffusion of Responsibility and Dehumanization of Victims’, Journal of Research in Personality 9 (1975), 255.
27 Ibid.; Adam Waytz, Juliana Schroeder, and Nicholas Epley, ‘The Lesser Minds Problem’, in Are We All Human? eds. Paul Bain, Jeroen Vaes, and Jacques Philippe Leyens (New York, NY: Psychology Press, 2013).
28 Adam Galinsky et al., ‘Power and Perspectives Not Taken’, Psychological Science 17 (2006): 1068–74; Kurt Gray et al., ‘More Than a Body’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101 (2011): 1207–20.
29 Nick Haslam, ‘Dehumanization’, Personality and Social Psychology Review 10 (2006): 252–64.
30 See Jackson, Writing the War on Terrorism.
31 Jackson, ‘Writing Wars on Terrorism’, 9.
32 Jack Holland, Selling the War on Terror (London: Routledge, 2012).
33 For analysis, see Holland, Selling the War on Terror. For the use of the language of frontier mythology, see George W. Bush, ‘At O'Hare, President Says ‘Get On Board’, September 27, 2001, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010927-1.html (accessed January 13, 2017); id., ‘International Campaign Against Terror Grows’, September 25, 2001, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010925-1.html (accessed January 13, 2017); id., ‘Remarks by the President upon Arrival at Barksdale Air Force Base’, September 11, 2001, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010911-1.html (accessed January 13, 2017).
34 George W. Bush, ‘National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims of the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001’, September 13, 2001, https://georgewbushwhitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010913-7.html (accessed January 13, 2017).
35 John Collins and Ross Glover, ‘Introduction’, in Collateral Language, eds. John Collins and Ross Glover (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 9.
36 Lee Jarvis and Jack Holland, ‘‘We [for]got him’: Remembering and Forgetting in the Narration of bin Laden’s Death’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 42, no. 2 (2014): 425–47.
37 Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 494–95.
38 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’; Brennan, ‘Strengthening Our Security’, id., ‘The Efficacy of Our Fight’; Johnson, ‘National Security Law’; Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’; Obama, ‘The Future of Our Fight’.
39 Obama, ‘The Future of Our Fight’.
40 Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’.
41 Brennan, ‘The Efficacy of Our Fight’.
42 Ibid.
43 Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’.
44 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’; Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’; Brennan, ‘The Efficacy of Our Fight’; Johnson, ‘National Security Law’; Obama, ‘The Future of Our Fight’.
45 John Tirman, The Deaths of Others (London: Oxford University Press, 2011), 9.
46 Neisser, ‘Targets’, 144.
47 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’.
48 Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’.
49 Brennan, ‘The Efficacy of Our Fight’.
50 Ibid.
51 Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’.
52 Obama, ‘The Future of Our Fight’.
53 Brennan, ‘The Efficacy of Our Fight’.
54 Laura Rediehs, ‘Evil’, in Collateral Language, eds. John Collins and Ross Glover (London: New York University Press, 2002), 72.
55 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’; Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’; Brennan, ‘The Efficacy of Our Fight’; Johnson, ‘National Security Law’; Obama, ‘The Future of Our Fight’.
56 Rediehs, ‘Evil’.
57 Neta Crawford, Accountability for Killing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
58 Brennan, ‘The Efficacy of Our Fight’.
59 Ibid.
60 Johnson, ‘National Security Law’.
61 Brennan, ‘Strengthening Our Security’.
62 Quoted in William Lutz, Doublespeak Defined (New York: Perennial, 1999), 32.
63 Philip Neisser, ‘Targets’, in Collateral Language, eds. John Collins and Ross Glover (London: New York University Press, 2002), 148.
64 Johnson, ‘National Security Law’.
65 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International law’.
66 Brennan, ‘The Efficacy of Our Fight’.
67 Johnson, ‘National Security Law’.
68 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.; Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’; Brennan, ‘The Efficacy of Our Fight’; Obama, ‘The Future of Our Fight’.
72 Ibid.
73 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’. The process of identifying and killing individuals is also known as the ‘kill chain’. Lauren Wilcox describes the kill chain as follows: ‘[T]he kill chain consists of target identification, dispatching forces or weapons to the target, the decision and order to attack the target, and finally destruction of the target’. See Lauren B. Wilcox, Bodies of Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 139.
74 See Leila Hudson, Colin S. Owens, and Matt Flannes. ‘Drone Warfare: Blowback from the New American Way of War’, Middle East Policy 13, no. 3 (2011): 122–32.
75 Quoted in Sassan Gholiagha, ‘Individualized and Yet Dehumanised? Targeted Killing via Drones’, Behemoth: A Journal of Civilization 8, no. 2 (2015): 136. From Claire Garbett, The Concept of the Civilian: Legal Recognition, Adjucation and the Trials of International Criminals (London: Routledge, 2015), 158.
76 Gholiagha, ‘Individualized and Yet Dehumanised’, 136.
77 Mary L. Dudziak, War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
78 See Derek Gregory, ‘The Everywhere War’, The Geographical Journal 177, no. 3 (2011): 238–50; Gerry Kearns, ‘Naturalising Empire: Echoes of Mackinder for the next American Century?’, Geopolitics 11, no. 1 (2006): 74–98.
79 See Jack Holland, ‘From September 11th, 2001 to 9–11’, International Political Sociology 3, no. 3 (2009): 275–92; Dirk Nabers, ‘Filling the Void of Meaning’, Foreign Policy Analysis 5, no. 2 (2009): 191–214.
80 See Richard Jackson, Writing the War on Terrorism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).
81 Richard Jackson, ‘Culture, Identity and Hegemony’, International Politics 48, no. 2 (2011): 390.
82 Bachman, ‘The Lawfulness of Targeted Killing Operations’.
83 Harold Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’, March 25, 2010, https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/179305.pdf (accessed September 1, 2018).
84 John Brennan, ‘Strengthening Our Security by Adhering to Our Values and Laws’, September 16, 2011, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/16/remarks-john-o-brennan-strengthening-our-security-adhering-our-values-an (accessed September 1, 2018).
85 Richard Jackson, ‘Writing Wars on Terrorism’. Paper prepared for the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Conference (2005).
86 Eric Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University School of Law’, March 2, 2012, https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-eric-holder-speaks-northwestern-university-school-law (accessed September 1, 2018); Jeh Johnson, ‘National Security Law, Lawyers and Lawyering in the Obama Administration’, Yale Law & Policy Review 31 (2012): 147.
87 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’; Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’; Johnson, ‘National Security Law’, 147.
88 Brennan, ‘Strengthening Our Security’.
89 Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’.
90 Johnson, ‘National Security Law’.
91 Alston, ‘Study on Targeted Killings’.
92 O’Connell, ‘Lawful Use of Combat Drones’.
93 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’; Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’; Johnson, ‘National Security Law’; Brennan, ‘Strengthening Our Security’.
94 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’.
95 Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’.
96 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’.
97 O’Connell, ‘Lawful Use of Combat Drones’.
98 Obama, ‘The Future of Our Fight’.
99 Brennan, ‘Strengthening Our Security’.
100 Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid.
103 John Brennan, ‘The Efficacy and Ethics of U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy’, The Wilson Center, April 30, 2012, www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-efficacy-and-ethics-us-counterterrorism-strategy.
104 Ibid.
105 Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’.
106 Brennan, ‘The Efficacy of Our Fight’.
107 Obama, ‘The Future of Our Fight’.
108 Holder, ‘Attorney General Speaks at Northwestern University’.
109 Obama, ‘The Future of Our Fight’.
110 Brennan, ‘The Efficacy of Our Fight’.
111 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’.
112 Brennan, ‘The Efficacy of Our Fight’.
113 Johnson, ‘National Security Law’, 148.
114 Michael L. Gross, ‘Assassination and Targeted Killing: Law Enforcement, Execution or Self-Defense?’ Journal of Applied Philosophy 23, no. 3 (2006): 326.
115 Ibid.
116 Koh, ‘The Obama Administration and International Law’.
117 See, for example, Peter Malanczuk, Akehurst’s Modern Introduction to International Law (London: Routledge, 1997); Martti Koskenniemi, Sources of International Law (Burlington, VT: Ashgate/Dartmouth, 2000).
118 Christine Gray, ‘Targeted Killings: Recent US Attempts to Create a Legal Framework’, Current Legal Problems 66 (2013): 99.
119 Alston, ‘Study on Targeted Killings’.
120 Charles de Visscher, Theory and Reality in Public International Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 149.
121 Daniel Bodansky, ‘The Concept of Customary International Law’, Michigan Journal of International Law 16, no. 3 (1995), 668.
122 Anna Leander and Tanja Aalberts, ‘Introduction: The Co-Constitution of Legal Expertise and International Security’, Leiden Journal of International Law 26, no. 4 (2013): 783–92.
123 B.S. Chimni, ‘Customary International Law: A Third World Perspective’, The American Society of International Law 112, no. 1 (2018): 44.
124 Susan Marks, ‘International Judicial Activism and the Commodity-Form Theory of International Law’, The European Journal of International Law 18, no. 1 (2007): 199–211.
125 China Miéville, Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law (Chicago: Haymarket, 2006), 8.