The Redhunter

The bottom line is that our strike met the two principles of fighting a Just War (justifying going to war is a different matter)

Discrimination

We did not directly target noncombatants. If they were truely innocent(which can be debated), they were killed as a byproduct.

The issue of our accepting a level of risk to protect innocents did not enter into the equation, as only those who have watched too many James Bond movies can believe that commandoes could have carried out this mission.

Civilian homes are normally off-limits. However, when enemy soldiers(whether they are legal or illegal combatants does not matter) occupy them, their status changes. More importantly, when civilians willfully shelter enemy soldiers they themselves must accept a level of risk.

That we fired Hellfire missiles shows that we exercised great care in our selection of weapons. In previous wars entire hillsides or towns would have been desctroyed.

To be sure, the selection of the Hellfire had as much to do with being sure we "got the bastard" as any concern for civilians. I am not naive about this. Nevertheless, it cannot be overemphasized that a very small area was actually destroyed.

Any reasonable person can only conclude that we met the test of discrimination.

Proportionality

To recap, proportionality "requires that the good to be achieved by the action be proportionate to the damage done."

In other words, did we prevent more future deaths than we caused?

I do not see how this can be answered by anything but a "yes."

We cannot allow our enemies a sanctuary, whether it be geographic by hiding across a border, or social by hiding among civilians. To do so prolongs wars and allows our enemy to kill more of us and our allies, and this is morally unacceptable.

Proportionality accepts that there is and can be no perfect war, where civilians are never killed and mistakes are never made. This would be foolishness of the worst order.

That Most Terrible of Nazis

Reinhard Heydrich was second-in-command of the dreaded Schutzstaffel, or "SS", reporting directly to Heinlich Himmler, who himself reported to no one but Adolf Hitler.

The SS was esentially the private military of the Nazi party. It was not part of the Germany Army. The SS ran the concentration camps, and carried out much of the Nazi terror within Germany once Hitler came to power.

(Note: Yes I know it's all more complicated, I'm trying to be brief)

In short, the SS was a very evil organization. Heydrich was head of the Sicherheitsdienst, or "SD", also known as the SS Security Service.

Heydrich himself was a very nasty individual. It is said that he intimidated everyone he met, including Himmler.

He oversaw the mass arrests that followed Hitler's seizure of power in 1933, and it was he who founded Dachau, one of the most notorious concentration camps. He led the mass murders of the SA (storm troopers), a separate organization who helped the Nazis gain power but that Hitler later saw as a rival organazion.

Once Germany had captured Poland, Heydrich organized the Einsatzgruppen, or "extermination squads", who started the mass murder of the Jews, first by shooting, then by gas in the concentration camps.

Bear with me now

He also chaired the 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which the top Nazis decided on the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem", which I do not think needs further explanation.

In short, one of the most evil men of his day, indeed in history.

In 1941, he as made "Protector of Czechoslovakia", and settled into headquarters in Prague.

Free Czech agents, smuggled into the country by British Intelligence, assassimated him. The Nazis, furious at this, murdered at least 1000 Czechs in retaliation.

Do you see where I am going with this?

Are the Equal?

On one level, no. Heydrich was part of a regime that murdered millions. For all the terror al-Qaeda has unleashed, they have come nowhere near the Nazis.

On the other hand, that al-Qaeda has not murdered millions is more due to lack of opportunity than anything else. Does anyone doubt that if they had the means to kill millions "infidels" they would?

Some readers will no doubt object to my comparison in this post, and so be it. But for our purposes here I believe that the two operations , the one to kill Heydrich, and the other to kill al-Qaeda leaders, are roughly equivalent.

Decision Time

Despite the differences between the two incidents, the problem for decision makers is the same; do the benefits outweigh the inevitable loss of innocent life?? The British and Czech agents both knew that if their attack was successful the Nazi retaliation would be brutal. The American leaders knew that civilians would be killed in the missile attack, and we might not even kill any terrorist leaders.

The British and Czechs didn't have to worry about bad PR as we do today. For them the calculus was one of lives lost to others saved. The WOT is as much in the sphere of public opinion as it is on the battlefield, and so such things must be taken into account.

By my reconing, no matter what we do we'll take heat from someone. It is to be expected that we'll face criticism from Al Jazeera, and unfortunately, the American left (read this again if you don't believe how bad they can get).

But I don't want to turn this into an anti-left post, that's too easy. My real purpose was to lay out the difficulties that decision makers face, and some of the principles that should guide us in making the hard calls.

Update

Bill Roggio at ThreatsWatch provides an update on who was killed:

al-Qaeda’s losses in Damadola may be even worse than thought last evening. Since the death of Abu Khabab al-Masri, Khalid Habib and Abd Rahman al-Maghribi were reported, two more al-Qaeda commanders are believed to have been killed. Dan Darling provides a breakdown of the al-Qaeda leaders thought to have been killed in the nightime airstrike:

Abu Khabab al-Masri (WMD committee head) Abd Rahman al-Masri
al-Maghribi (al-Zawahiri’s son-in-law, al-Qaeda commander)
Abu Ubeidah al-Masri (Kunar operations chief)
Marwan al-Suri (Waziristan operations chief)
Khalid Habib (southeastern Afghanistan commander)
Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi (southwestern Afghanistan commander)

Mr. Darling includes Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi as one of those reported killed, however Newsday states that while he was invited to the dinner, “it was not clear whether Al-Iraqi attended and there was no report that he was missing.”

In addition, the government of Pakistan was pretty involved too. Roggio concludes that

Perhaps recognizing the trend, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz issues the obligitory diplomatic concerns over the attack while confirming joint operations along the border will continue

No doubt.