Defense Articles

Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers by Ronnie Cummins and Ben Lilliston (Marlowe, $12.95; online at www.purefood.org)

Like it or not, “you and your family are now part of a vast culinary and biological experiment–dining on an expanded menu of genetically engineered foods,” warn authors Cummins and Lilliston, of the Organic Consumers Association and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, respectively. If you’re uncomfortable with being a guinea pig but frustrated with the difficulty of making informed choices about genetically engineered foods because none of them are labeled, you’ll find this book to be a useful guide.

Exploring the current debates on the health and environmental risks of biotech foods, the authors present research on U.S. food companies’ use of genetically engineered ingredients. They list the foods and brands that do not contain genetically engineered material and expose those that do.

“The debate over genetically engineered foods and crops may last decades,” the authors note. “However, as Europe has shown, the ultimate arbiter of power … is the consumer.” By providing the tools to find out exactly who is engineering what foods, they are equipping consumers to engage in a policy debate that has been dominated by corporate PR echoed by a gullible press (see “Spinning Science Into Gold”). If the government ever gets the nerve to properly monitor and regulate the biotech industry, it could start by demanding that food labels contain the sort of information presented in this book.

ov. Bob Riley signed a bill, SB 283, to allow a citizen to legally use lethal force in self-defense.

The measure removes language from current law that says a resident should not use deadly force during a break-in if he or she can “avoid using force with complete safety.”

Similar legislation has recently been adopted in Florida, Indiana and South Dakota and bills are pending in several other states.

Gov. Bob Riley signed a bill, SB 283, to allow a citizen to legally use lethal force in self-defense.

The measure removes language from current law that says a resident should not use deadly force during a break-in if he or she can “avoid using force with complete safety.”

Similar legislation has recently been adopted in Florida, Indiana and South Dakota and bills are pending in several other states.

The legislature voted final approval for a bill, SB 2426, to legalize the use of deadly force for self-defense.

The bill that now goes to Gov. Haley Barbour gives business owners, homeowners and motorists the right to use a gun to ward off attackers without fear of prosecution.

“This allows law-abiding citizens the right to shoot and defend themselves and the law will not second guess them,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Charlie Ross, who sponsored the bill.

The Mississippi Prosecutors Association opposed the bill, saying that it would be a boon for gang members and appealed for a gubernatorial veto.

An abstract of the authors’ legal analysis published in the Spring 2002, 31 University Baltimore Law. Review 157.)

When we send fine young Americans into harm’s way, we have a moral and legal obligation to provide them with Rules of Engagement (ROEs) that protect their right of self-defense. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines must expect ROEs that best ensure their safe return, to the maximum extent possible consistent with the mission parameters. Indeed, this is the stated policy of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Standing Rules of Engagement (SROEs). (1) The SROEs are silent, however, concerning that ultimate and maximum exercise of self-defense–the use of deadly force. Simply stated, the SROEs fail to answer, clearly and unequivocally, the foremost question of those at the tip of the spear: “When can I pull the trigger?”

Silence at the strategic level regarding the use of deadly force level has resulted in the confusing and potentially life-threatening absence of operationally specific guidance at the tactical level. (2) As recently as March 25, 2001, the roles of engagement in place for soldiers serving in the peacekeeping action in Kosovo gave specious guidance on the use of deadly force that required them to “shoot to wound.” (3) This order should not be surprising considering the restrictive guidelines given in Bosnia for NATO’s Implementation Force (IFOR): “If you have to open fire, you must: Fire only aimed shots, and fire no more rounds than necessary and … stop firing as soon as the situation permits.” (4) Further, warning shots were permitted, even encouraged, and the use of deadly force against assailants fleeing an attack was not even covered. These rules remained the same for the Peace Stabilization Force (SFOR), as well. (5) More disturbingly, many commanders have imposed “no rounds in the chamber” roles for perimeter security and patrols. (6)

It would be an understatement to say that confusion exists among commanders and judge advocates as to what constitutes a reasonable use of deadly force by U.S. forces and when that force is authorized. (7) It is no wonder that commanders are left with insufficient legal guidance and ad hoc methods for training their troops on when and how to use deadly force. The United States military forces, whose mission was once described as “to kill people and break things” has a 300-page regulation on the issuance of I.D. cards, (8) but lacks any specific guidance on the use of deadly force for its soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines on world-wide deployments. (9) After having examined some sources upon which to base that guidance, this article concludes with a proposed appendix to the SROEs on the use of deadly force as the benchmark mechanism with which to provide that specific guidance. In light of the recent terrorist activity in this country, the need for clear and robust guidance is essential.

International law, as well as the common law of the United States, provides ample support for the establishment of vigorous guidelines concerning the use of deadly force. As discussed later in this article, every relevant legal system in the free world makes aggression a crime and protects the right of self-defense. This right is often referred to as an “inherent right” or a “divine right.” Our own federal common law, as well as many latter-day constitutional law cases concerning this right, strongly defines and permits a rigorous force protection stance. Judge advocates and commanders crafting rules of engagement have ignored this rich source of law favorable to a vigorous defensive posture.

Incorporation of federal constitutional law and common law into the development of enhanced force protection and self-defense rules will only enhance our forces’ ability to accomplish their missions. From humanitarian assistance to force-on-force conflicts, if potential opponents believe our forces vulnerable, the mission is compromised. Recurrent, hands-on tactical exercises that provide service members an opportunity to viscerally experience the psychological and physiological dynamics of tactical encounters recognized by the law is a critical requirement for effective training. Those so trained however, need clear and concise legal guidance demonstrating that both legal and political support is present if deadly force is used.

The Present SROE Use Of Deadly Force Policy

“The purpose of these SROE is to provide implementation guidance on the application of force for mission accomplishment and the exercise of the inherent right and obligation of self-defense.” (10) So begins the unclassified Enclosure A to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3121.01A and yet, this purpose is not being served. The policy appearing on virtually every page of the SROE states that the Rules “do not limit a commander’s inherent authority and obligation to use all necessary means available and to take all appropriate actions in self-defense of the commander’s unit and other U.S. forces in the vicinity.” The use of deadly force, however, is not accompanied by any implementation guidance. In fact, the words “use of deadly force” never appear in the SROEs, which begs the question–Is it any wonder that confusing, confounding and dangerous tactical rules of engagement (ROEs) exist? While cognizant of the fact that some of this confusion stems from improper training, without clear and unhindered rules, we may have fumbled before the kickoff.

A U.S. defense official expressed dissatisfaction during a recent visit to Japan over Tokyo’s interpretation that it cannot exercise collective self-defense under the country’s pacifist Constitution, a Japanese lawmaker said Wednesday.

Richard Lawless, the U.S. deputy defense undersecretary for Asia and Pacific affairs, was quoted as saying it would be ”crazy” of Japan not to shoot down a missile clearly heading toward the United States even when capable of doing so, apparently suggesting a change in interpretation.

Former Defense Agency Director General Shigeru Ishiba, who heads the ruling Liberal Democratic Party National Defense Division’s subcommittee on defense policies, said Lawless also told him that such a situation does not exemplify the U.S.-Japan alliance.

Ishiba introduced Lawless’ remarks relating to Japan’s missile defense scheme at the subcommittee’s meeting in the morning. The deputy undersecretary was in Japan until Wednesday to attend talks with Japanese counterparts.

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer has also voiced hope for debate on Japan’s role in a joint missile defense system with the United States, such as the legality of Tokyo’s intercepting missiles including those flying near its territory toward the United States.

In December 2003, when the Cabinet decided to go ahead with introducing a missile defense system, then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said in a statement the deployment ”is aimed solely at defending our country.”

”It will be operated at our independent-minded discretion and will not be used for the defense of a third country, so poses no problems in terms of collective self-defense,” the statement says.

But in mid-November, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe suggested reviewing Fukuda’s statement, calling for studying whether Japan can intercept U.S.-targeted missiles under its Constitution. Tokyo’s official interpretation of the Japanese Constitution bans Japan from coming to the aid of an ally militarily.

Defense Agency Director General Fumio Kyuma has pointed out that Japan as yet has no capability to intercept missiles.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, all but certain to be Japan’s next premier, again expressed his strong ambition Tuesday to revise the nation’s pacifist Constitution and enable the exercising of the right to collective self-defense on specific occasions.

But Abe, known for his hawkish position on security issues, also did not rule out the possibility of just changing the government’s interpretation of the war-renouncing Constitution to achieve the goal. The current interpretation prohibits Japan from exercising the U.N.-guaranteed right.

”Given the expectations for Japan to contribute actively on the international stage and to maintain stability and security in the region, we must consider more seriously specific cases (to exercise the right),” Abe told a news conference in response to a reporter’s question, citing changes in international affairs since the Constitution was written 60 years ago.

”Of course I think that revising the Constitution and enacting a new one should be the next thing to be put on the political schedule. We should, however, also consider (enabling the exercising of the right) under the current interpretation or a new interpretation,” he said.

The top government spokesman also said Japan needs new legislation to enable the overseas dispatch of Self-Defense Forces at any time without having to pass special laws on each occasion as is currently required.

Abe is the front-runner in the race to succeed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Revising the 1947 Constitution, drafted by the U.S. postwar occupation, is top on his policy agenda, in which he also calls for a greater role by Japan in diplomacy and by its troops in international missions.

He has said that removing the self-imposed restrictions on exercising the right of collective self-defense will enable Japan to work ”more effectively” with the United States in their security alliance. Under the current interpretation, Japan cannot take action to defend its ally even when the ally is under attack.

Shinzo Abe, the front-runner in the Liberal Democratic Party presidential race, said Friday he wants to set up a new section in the government to consider if Japan can exercise the right to collective self-defense on specific occasions.

He also said in a news program of public broadcaster NHK that the government has already started studying in which cases Japan may be allowed to exercise it.

Under the current government interpretation, Japan cannot take action to defend an ally even when the ally is under attack.

Abe, the chief Cabinet secretary, said, however, ”It is necessary to review the current interpretation so Japan will be able to defend itself and play its roles in the world.”

Citing as an example a case in which a U.S. vessel traveling side by side with a Japanese one in international waters is attacked, Abe said, ”Is it possible for Japan to turn a blind eye to the U.S. ship under attack?”

His comments came after he officially filed his candidacy for the Sept. 20 LDP leadership election, together with Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki and Foreign Minister Taro Aso.

Abe also showed his willingness to visit Asian countries first if he becomes prime minister, while suggesting he may raise the consumption tax in fiscal 2009 to boost the government’s share of contributions to the basic pension.

As night fell on December 29, 1837, a small British force crossed the Niagara River from Canada into New York. Their mission was to destroy the American steamboat Caroline, which had been carrying supplies to a group of Canadian insurgents. The Caroline was boarded, fired, and set drifting downriver, towards the Falls. At least one U.S. citizen was killed, several were wounded, and the U.S. came close to war with Britain. Rather than trigger war, however, the “Caroline incident” spawned the modern international-law doctrine of “anticipatory self- defense,” a doctrine on which the U.S. now intends to rely heavily to justify military action against terrorist states. Speaking at West Point’s recent commencement, President Bush laid out the compelling policy justification for this doctrine, noting that “we must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.” Far-reaching changes in strategy and force posture are already being made in order to implement this doctrine.

The rule of anticipatory self defense, as described in the correspondence between Britain’s Lord Ashburton and America’s secretary of state Daniel Webster over the Caroline incident, holds that a state need not absorb an enemy’s attack, but may anticipate it and lawfully strike first. In accepting the British explanation that the Caroline was destroyed in “self-defense,” because she would otherwise have continued to assist the Canadian rebels, Webster articulated the circumstances in which the doctrine properly applies: where the need is “instant, overwhelming, and leav[es] no choice of means and no moment for deliberation.”

Anticipatory self-defense had been a common practice even before the Caroline. In 1587, for example, Queen Elizabeth I sent a fleet, under Sir Francis Drake, to attack Spanish and Portuguese harbors in a preemptive strike against the “Invincible Armada.” Forty years later, international-law theorist Hugo Grotius acknowledged the practice as a rule of law.

For all that, however, anticipatory self-defense remains controversial. The European view generally appears to be that a U.N. Security Council resolution is necessary before armed force can be employed. A number of European leaders claim that force can be used only to repel an armed attack on one’s territory. But this position — which would require states to wait until the smokestacks of an enemy fleet rose over the horizon and the first broadside was fired before responding — was hopelessly unrealistic even a century ago. Today, when advance warnings may be calculated in seconds, rather than weeks or days, it is all the more so.

Nevertheless, opponents of the anticipatory-self-defense doctrine appear more concerned with the possibility that it could be abused — by states seeking to cloak aggression in the mantle of self-defense — than with the increasing danger that a delayed response will result in disaster. These criticisms are often laced with a heavy dose of anti- Americanism, since the U.S. is currently viewed as the most obvious beneficiary of the anticipatory-self-defense rule.

Some commentators argue that allowing states to attack based upon suspicions or intelligence warnings would make the use of force a more frequent occurrence; their underlying assumption is that misperceptions, mistakes, and hair-trigger military postures — the World War I mentality — are destabilizing and the main causes of wars. When pressed for modern examples, they describe the current Pakistan- India standoff as an illustration of the dangers posed by preemptive military postures. These criticisms, however, are misplaced. The real danger in today’s world comes from rogue regimes and terrorist organizations that don’t care about international law, and whose propensity to use violence is not affected by game theory or exegeses of international treaties. Such regimes and groups understand only the language of military force. A robust preemptive posture offers the best hope both of deterring them and, if necessary, of defeating them.

Perhaps recognizing the weakness of their policy arguments, opponents also advance legal claims. They argue that the anticipatory-self- defense doctrine, however venerable or consonant with the national interest, did not survive the 1945 adoption of the U.N. Charter — which requires all U.N. members to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force” and limits application of the “inherent right of individual or collective self-defense” to circumstances in which an armed attack already has taken place. This argument, however, relies on a crabbed reading of the charter, and reflects the erroneous (albeit widely held) view that the charter superseded the entire preexisting body of international law.

Moreover, the notion that anticipatory self-defense is barred by the U.N. Charter has not been supported by the actual practice of states in the years since the U.N. was established. And that, in the final reckoning, is the critical question. Anyone attempting to determine what international law truly provides on any particular point would do well to heed the Marquise de Merteuil’s maxim in Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Don’t listen to what people tell you, watch what they do. Here, the evidence is overwhelming that the traditional law of anticipatory self-defense survives. In 1967, for example, Israel preemptively struck Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, rather than suffer the attack of their massing forces; Israel was neither condemned nor sanctioned by the U.N. for this action. Similarly, she attacked and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear-power facility in 1981, again citing “self- defense” as justification; this time, Israel’s action was condemned in the Security Council, but no action was taken to address the supposed “aggression.” Recalling the marquise’s maxim, this strongly suggests a fundamental recognition that Israel acted in accordance with her rights under international law to anticipate, and foil, attacks before they were launched.

I came into self-defense through martial arts. In 1992, I took a five-minute self-defense class at a women’s festival: how to use your voice, do a power yell and a palm heel strike, where you strike the nose with the heel of your palm. It had never occurred to me that I could protect myself because I’m a woman and I’m small and not that strong. The next day I signed up for a class.

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In 1993 some Asian women friends and I started RUCKUS. We thought we’d start a school for Asian women, but martial arts is a little hard; it needs commitment and it’s a “no pain, no gain” situation. Attrition is high. So the conversation turned to self-defense. Our way of teaching self-defense is about instilling confidence. We talk about internal strength, prevention, being smart. We talk about being a bitch, able to say what you want to say, set up a boundary and get the hell out. It goes from prevention to after-care. In between you might have to fight back. I teach them to go against vulnerable places. We go for eyes, nose and knees. We give women the chance to test their strength by hitting a pad. It doesn’t take much pressure to break a knee, so when you hit a pad and see that you’ve hit it hard, you know you can knock someone down. It’s a great way for women to imprint on their bodies that they have physical strength.

Asian women deal with specific issues; we tend to be smaller, and we’re supposed to be easy to attack. Attackers assume that we won’t do anything. We’re submissive, we’re gentle. Those assumptions make us vulnerable. Asian men also deal with the stereotype of being more submissive, more feminine, not as strong, thinner, weaker. For men, it’s very easy to go from zero to 100, and they have to learn when it’s okay not to fight. We also expanded to teaching queer communities, where people are often faced with multiple attackers, or need to get away with a partner. We have discussion, games, role plays and techniques. We talk about violence from people we don’t know and violence from people we do know. We talk about self-defense in domestic violence situations, where you have to see the person the next day.

It’s important to put violence in the context of our culture. Sometimes women give a racial description for their attacker. We don’t get “this white guy approached me”–he’s just “a guy”–but the men of color get identified. When it comes up, we try to separate the identity from the behavior: what actually happened, what he actually did.

I started teaching in Japan in 1997, when predominantly men or the police were teaching. I heard a lot of stories that the men didn’t believe women could defend themselves. It was hierarchical, with the big judo sensei teaching all these little women things they wouldn’t be able to do anyway. One woman came to my class and didn’t talk at all. Often people who don’t talk are thinking, thinking, thinking. After class, she handed me a thick envelope with her story. She ran away from home to Tokyo when she was a teenager. She was wandering and a man struck up a conversation with her. She told him she didn’t have a place to stay, and he said, “Why don’t you come with me?” He took her to a hotel and tried to rape her. She fended him off but he was very strong, so she feigned asthma and had a coughing fit. She kept it up for five and a half hours. He’d get her water, tell her “get better” and then try again. Every time he’d try to rape her, she’d start coughing. Finally it was like a war of attrition. He said, “I’m leaving.” I had started that class by telling self-defense stories, pointing out the maneuvers that women had used. Like coughing, or sometimes waiting, talking, cajoling, flattering. She said, “Please tell my story to as many women as you can so they can be inspired to get away, too.”

There was another woman who was blind. She had been told all her life that she should not go out, that she was a nuisance because she needs a caregiver to take her around. That was the first time I had taught someone who couldn’t see, so I had to learn about her instinctive reaction to her environment. I stood away from her and asked her to touch my nose; she touched it right away. I moved a little bit and asked her to touch my shoulder, and she did. She also had the guide stick that collapses into a bundle, or extends to six feet. I said, “Let me see your stick, it looks like a great weapon.” She said, “Oh my God, I’ve been told never to use that as a weapon.” I took it and started wielding it around, to see how she could hold it. We came up with all these great moves she could use, not to puncture anybody but to keep people away from her, to make it a shield.

All it takes is for somebody to tell you “this can be a weapon,” and your whole perspective changes. You see that your body is a weapon. Your voice is a weapon. Your hair-clip is a weapon. Your high heel is a weapon. But the biggest shift was her feeling that she has the right to protect herself. She’d always been taught that because she is disabled, she has to be protected. Two years ago in Japan domestic violence became a crime. In the last five years, there have been a lot of speak-outs about domestic violence and rape. That’s helped because people want this. They seek it out and it’s not a secret.