Stop worrying and love the bomb

[DarkLink]

So, Obama's claimed the authority to drone strike anyone, including US citizens, as he sees fit, so long as he can say they were a threat while keeping a straight face: [url]http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-memo-justifies-drone-war-killing-americans-164123578--politics.html[/url]

On what's probably a closely related note: [url]http://news.yahoo.com/u-even-more-unpopular-middle-east-under-obama-201400523.html[/url] and [url]http://aai.3cdn.net/5d2b8344e3b3b7ef19_xkm6ba4r9.pdf[/url]

[heretic marine]

meh, if I get killed by a random drone it would be a cool way to die. not saying that there is a reason to kill me with a drone, I'm a good person. *goes into secret bomb facility*

[Deadlift]

Seems fair enough, if I knew there was a terrorist cell plotting to kill civilians on home soil I would want something done about it by the appropriate means. I would rather see a house full of extremists blown up before they get a chance to hurt innocents.

It's not like your going to see your sky's constantly full of zooming drones in every city. Not unless the Tau have arrived.

[DarkLink]

Except, we have this thing called the Constitution. It's pretty explicit that citizens are entitled to due process, a trial by jury. Nor does the bombing process actually require Obama to have any evidence to prove an actual connection to terrorism even outside of a court. There's a reason there are limits on the power and authority of various members of the government, and not killing citizens is one of those limits the president is supposed to obey.

[White Tiger88]

i want a drone........

[eldargal]

Not to mention that drone strikes are of only dubious efficacy in foreign countries, if only because the US military has an unnerving ability to blow up weddings and nearby schools. However you cut it this is just insane.

[Necron2.0]

You know, sometimes, when I hear what comes out of Washington or out of the mouths of some of my fellow 'Markans, I think of [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7mUaKUp8Ho]this video[/url] (warning, not work safe), and think to myself, "Oh, Jesus-tap-dancing-Christ!! Could you just please keep your mouth shut and not make us any more of a pariah than we already are?"

[Mr Mystery]

To be fair, previous administration announced a right to attack anyone who is, was, or may at some point in the future become, a terrorist.

Which neatly encapsulates the globe yes?

[Psychosplodge]

Is the issue that they've defended what they were doing already? or that they're including American terrorists along with the rest?

[Nabterayl]

The best written article I've seen on this subject is [url=http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-lethal-presidency-0812]The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama[/url], which I highly recommend. I think it does a good job of dealing with the issue even-handedly.

I have to agree with DarkLink here. The issue isn't even the accuracy of the drone strikes - which, contrary to EG, I expect is pretty good. Suppose an American citizen is planning a terrorist attack. Suppose in our magical hypothetical land we know that with 100% certainty. Like Deadlift, I'd want something done. But killing that person outright? The actual method is irrelevant. Dropping a Hellfire on that person is no more defensible than the police raiding the person's house and shooting him dead rather than arresting him, or the CIA poisoning him.

I don't buy that the American legal system is predicated on uncertainty. Even if you know a citizen is planning to commit a crime, or has committed a crime - even treason - that person is entitled to a trial.

The obvious counterargument at this point, I think, is that you can't always give the suspect a trial. And I am sympathetic to what I believe is the genuine desire of elected officials to stop crimes from being committed. What if the only options are to drop a Hellfire on the suspect citizen or to let him carry out his crime? I think most of us, if our hand was on the trigger, would choose to kill the suspect citizen even before he is found guilty of a crime. I almost certainly would. There are certainly circumstances in which I'd shoot a criminal in the back as he fled the scene if he couldn't be apprehended, (or drop a Hellfire on his head a month after the fact), and the criminal being a terrorist, the crime being the mass murder of my countrymen, and the suspect being overseas planning to do it again almost fits that bill. I imagine it does for most people.

The problem I have is that as far as I know, no such doctrine has been enunciated by this administration or the last. It happens to be the case, for now, that our citizen drone victims haven't been feasibly arrestable. But as I understand it, the claim is not, "The president can assassinate American citizens without a trial when there is no chance of arresting them." That's scary enough, but at least defensible - not clearly correct, but defensible.

But instead, the claim is, "The president can assassinate American citizens without a trial if he thinks it's in the country's best interests."

I don't care if our drone killings to date have been ethical and wise (and I happen to think that most of them have been). That is still not an okay system to set up.

EDIT:

Is the issue that they've defended what they were doing already? or that they're including American terrorists along with the rest?

I think those are two separate issues. The latter is easier to get consensus on than the former, I think. Killing your own citizens without a trial is not the way we are supposed to do things, no matter their crimes (which I assume is true throughout the Commonwealth as well, though I'm not sure what the technical legal basis for it is).

Killing somebody else's citizens without a declaration of war? To be totally honest, it's not at all clear to me that that is un-American, or un-British, or un-<insert global good guys here>. If we kill a Pakistani citizen without declaring war on Pakistan, I wouldn't blame Pakistan for declaring war on us and I would blame the administration for getting us into a shooting war with Pakistan. But I have to be honest, killing somebody else's citizens just because you can't bring them to justice does not strike me as capital b Bad the same way killing your own citizens without a trial does.