Which, again, is why I asked forbidden by whom? As per this cite – and, really, all of them, so far – the US is simply doing it, while asserting a claim that we can do it, and, again, I ask: who the heck is going to forbid us?
There is an inbuilt tendency in analysing actions of “us” and “them” to use weasel words to excuse actions that we choose, while using damaging words to describe the similar actions of the enemy.
It is a case of politically irregular verbs-
My targeted assassinations are justified, yours are questionable, theirs are despicable.
Setting aside the apparent early arrival of Christmas in your post, let’s recap the positions here:
You: targeting killing is historically illegal
Me: The ACLU says that targeted killing has to follow certain procedures
You: (I’m trying to parse here because you didn’t actually write anything informative) the U.S. isn’t complying with those procedures.
So are you backing off your previous position that targeted killing is “historically illegal”?
Also, Pjen the Voice of Moral Outrage (as far as USers are concerned) foresaw civilians dying in the U.S.
The point remains that these folk have no compunction about innocents winding up in the line of fire, and we do try to prevent that as much as possible. Conventional airstrikes on targets in Afghanistan would kill and injure far more civilians.
And that’s not even taking into account that we are helping a legitimate government fight an evilly motivated insurgency.
Now, if the Obama Administration felt it was the target of a rebel assault by the Tea Party in which certain military personnel were involved in the rebel campaign*, the remaining military could not be trusted, and it was necessary to invite ISIS in to perform targeted strikes on the rebel military officers, then we’d have more equivalency with the situation in Afghanistan.
No. I am saying if people want to discuss the relative merits of Democracy versus Islamic barbarity then it should be in an appropriate thread, and would be decided very quickly.
This thread is about the general morality of targeted assassinations.
That’s not how this works. You stated that it’s forbidden, as derived from – I don’t know, the moral principle that “might is wrong,” or some such. I’m merely noting that your laughable claim – that it’s forbidden – is the one in need of a cite; and that the cites you’ve provided thus far indicate that, no, of course it’s not actually forbidden.
My thoughts are that there is incredible cognitive dissonance and fractured attributions when broadly similar acts committed by us and them are considered without careful thought.
I believe that an attack on a senior US military officer’s home by IS is equivalent to one on a terrorists home by the US.
