But look on the bright side, with this available to satisfy his murderous urges, he doesn’t have to go trolling schools with an assault rifle.
If you’re discussing the legality under US law of extra-judicial killings, whether or not the dead person is a US citizen (or located in the US) certainly does matter. Constitutional rights to due process or the Fourth Amendment don’t apply to everyone in the world, but it does apply to US citizens.
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Wow. Really? You don’t think wantonly dropping bombs on innocent civilians, whether they’re American or Afghani or Pakistani, creates more terrorists than it kills? I know if my family were suddenly blown up by a flying death machine piloted by some computer nerd in Nebraska, I’d probably join the nearest militant group who promised vengeance against the U.S., even if they held some assinine beliefs about feminine oppression and violent proselytizing.
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If you go back and read what I wrote again, you will note that I didn’t say anything about whether this will or won’t make new terrorists. I’m fairly sure it will. That doesn’t mean that the strikes aren’t effective, however, since they are mostly targeted at the terrorists command and control…i.e. their leadership.
Drone strikes are the worst possible action the US could take…except for all the others, including the ever popular ‘do nothing’, which we tried for decades in Afghanistan after they kicked out the Soviets.
I qualify ‘effective’ as keeping the terrorists off balance, disrupting their command and control and also making them have to take elaborate steps to avoid eating a missile…all of which we are doing. Win the war? What war? It’s not a real war, and we’ll never win it. You can’t stop terrorists or terrorist acts…you can merely strive to contain them, to make it hard for them to act freely, and to make them have to focus on the immediate (namely, eating a missile or an air strike or having a SEAL team drop in for a chat) so that they don’t have the time or energy to plan something spectacular in your own neck of the woods.
BTW, why isn’t it going ‘swimmingly’ in your opinion? Seems to me that it’s going about as well as one could expect in such a fucked up situation.
No, I meant what I said…drones do the least harm all around, assuming you are going to do anything at all. Air strikes, artillery strikes and, worst of all putting boots on the ground all do much, much more harm. They all kill the enemy…and as you cleverly noted, ‘and civilians’ too. But they do a lot more harm, kill a lot more people (on both sides) and do a lot more physical damage.
I totally disagree with your statement that this creates more terrorist than it stops. If that was the case then the world should be awash in terrorists by now, since we’ve been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for nearly a decade now with no end in sight. Do you have any data showing that the number of terrorists, and more importantly terrorist operations have gone up substantially in that period of time?
No, they aren’t. Something like 2% of all drone casualties are high ranking terrorists - you kill more children than terrorist C&C.
I’m shocked the very first kid murdered by one of these didn’t get the things banned permanently. Sometimes what people will and won’t get outraged about baffles me.
Actually, it’s 98.7462612%.
(That, or it’s actually completely unknown, as documented at length in the excellent NYU/Stanford report.)
From here:
This only refers to al-Quaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, however.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/05/al-qaida-drone-attacks-too-broad
From the piece:
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/05/drone_blowback_is_real/
From the piece:
From the piece:
Well, you say, these are just media outlets. What about a legitimate study that concludes drone strikes create more terrorism than they stop? Here you go:
http://livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Stanford_NYU_LIVING_UNDER_DRONES.pdf
Also, here’s some food for thought, since you seem to be of the misguided opinion these drones strikes target terrorists and their leadership infrastructure.
From the piece:
I think it’s a terrible decision. I am not necessarily opposed to the drone strike program, but I am certainly opposed to any claim that the administration doesn’t have to explain why it has the authority to conduct them.
I’m as hawkish as anyone on the WoT, but Americans should never loss their Constitutional rights!
So no one should ever lose their liberty, i.e. be incarcerated, regardless of what they do?
In addition to what Marley posted, Awlaki was considered part of the organization that did plan, authorize, ect. even if he did not personally do those things. It’d be like not being able to kill a soldier because he joined after the war started. A marine is a marine is a marine. or, AQAP is closely enough connected to AQ as to be the same organization. That organization attacked us on 9.11
You can imagine how this can start to get tricky. Lots of judgment as to which affiliated group is connected enough and which is not. AQAP is, others are just terrorist groups that would not fall under the Sept 2001 AUMF.
No, what I meant (was unclear sorry), was that no matter where they are ALL Americans are entitled to due process.
I guess during the civil war we should have just arrested all the rebels and put them through the court system and given them due process, rather than shooting them and killing them on the battlefield.
Again, shooting at enemy combatants on the battlefield is not what the government is doing.
Good to know that the President can unilaterally decide to kill US citizens without judicial oversight based on “may haves”. What could possibly go wrong?
The thread is about a court ruling, so what is legal is one of the issues.
OK. Do you think the killing of innocents during war or law enforcement operations should always be a crime, or do you think there are situations where (no matter how regrettable it is) it comes with the territory- that it can’t be avoided because of the nature of war and policing?
The alternative being what? Ask him nicely to turn himself in? Invade Yemen and arrest him? When you declare yourself an enemy of the United States and flee to a lawless region of a country embroiled in civil war in order to lead a resistance movement against an allied government, I think it’s pretty safe to say that you’ve forfeited your right to due process.
Well, ideally, yeah… In the same way, I favor treating terrorism as a criminal activity, and dealing with it via law-enforcement means…when possible.
The problem is when a criminal organization gets so big that the police can’t take them on. The Branch Davidian siege is one example…and the American Civil War is another. If 50 or 60 chaps had pulled a cannon off a courthouse lawn and fired a few ill-aimed shots at Ft. Sumter, we’d expect the police to have handled the matter.