“Without a problem?” Really? The Bush administration argued exactly that when they asserted that the detainees in Guantanamo had no habeas corpus rights. Guess what? They lost. Rasul v. Bush.
I’ve never said that the President isn’t empowered to take actions against immediate threats. I only said that your broad assertion that “the constitution places no limits on the presidents ability to make war except for the requirement that such war be funded by congress” was patently false. And it is.
Your grand statement remains wrong, and I’ve provided you with multiple examples of how it is wrong.
Congress did not declare a general war on terror. They declared waragainst those nations, organizations, and individuals responsible for 9/11. There has been no evidence that this applies to the people being killed. In fact, some of the people killed are in groups that were not even in existence in 2001.
So when said making war, you didn’t mean the wide panoply of actions the President can take while pursuing a war, like detaining prisoners, trying enemies, seizing ships, or attempting to secure the necessities for warmaking, but rather only military actions on the battlefield? Because that seems to be the only possible way for you to continue to insist you were somehow correct.
Exactly. The situation as described in the OP. Nice of you to get back to the topic.
That’s the only point I’m arguing. In general I agree with you and the others outside of direct military action against our enemies, i.e. killing them where we can find them. As I noted earlier, I’d hope for the conviction of any president or anyone else who knowingly acted against someone who was not an immediate threat.
Then I don’t understand why the president cannot say Mitt Romney is a terrorist (part of a group invovled in 911) and order him killed. All Congress could do is remove the funding or impeach. But since your posisition is that the president does not have to present any evidence, I don’t see how the Congress could find a high crime or misdemeanor. Wouldn’t they just have to accept the president’s designation of Mitt Romney as a terrorist without evidence?
Just because no prosecutor has done this before doesn’t mean it cannot be done. One of the things that makes this cases easier to bring charges is because the pilots are operating in the US.
I see now. You make a massively incorrect, poorly phrased comment, and when I point out that you are blatantly wrong, it’s on me for not understanding your misuse of the phrase “making war” to mean only one aspect of “making war”. Gotcha.
Not unless they have violated the UCMJ…just like any other soldier, sailor or marine in a combat situation. If you locked up the drone pilots then you’d need to lock up every other combat pilot who flew a mission involving firing a weapon, and every marine and soldier who did the same. Since no one is crazy or stupid enough to actually try that (you are talking about literally 10’s or even 100’s of thousands of individuals who have pulled trigger or launched weapons…or aided those who did those things), it’s a non-starter.
So, simply answer to ‘Should drone pilots face homicide chargers’ would be an emphatic no, plus a strange look at the person asking such a ridiculous question. Possibly with a quick look around for some escape exits in case the person asking such a silly question is serious…and possibly demented.
It is clear that YOU (and possibly 60 Minutes) don’t know what procedures are used. I’ve seen a bit of the procedures a drone pilot goes through to get weapons release authorization on the History/Military Channel (possibly you should tell the good folks at 60 Minutes to check it out sometime…and maybe watch a bit of it yourself). Regardless of whether what I’ve seen is accurate or isn’t accurate, however, you do realize that the military is under civilian control and oversight, right? That means that even if you don’t know the procedures, and I’m wrong, that there are civilians in our government who DO know and have approved of those procedures. Just like there are civilians who know and have approved the rules of engagement for drone operators…and everyone else that might be in a combat situation.
Um, no. If the drone operators did in fact commit a crime, they would be charged and tried under the UCMJ for it. There is no conspiracy here, only delusion and ignorance.
What you’d need is a bat shit insane prosecutor who got their law degree out of a Cracker Jack box and who has only practiced law in their own head space.
The term ‘at war’ is in question here.
For the past decade we, the USA, have been ‘at war’ with a terrorist agency.
They have been harbored and supported by more than one nation.
We declared that any nation who did so was our enemy.
If Yemen has been harboring al-Qaeda militants, then we are justified in attacking those militants in that country, regardless of the method employed.
We could have sent in tanks, troops, and infiltration units.
We could have struck using cruise missiles from a destroyer hundreds of miles away.
We could have sent jet fighter/bombers to immolate a targeted area.
All of these actions would have been lawful as Congress would have supported them.
Or, we could have sent remote armed robotic drones.
Piloted by men and women in Arizona.
The difference is difficult for me to determine.
Is it merely because of the distance?
The fact that a drone pilot doesn’t die if the drone crashes?
Does anyone here think that the man or woman who directs a cruise missile strike that inevitably cause civilian deaths is culpable of murder?
It is clear that YOU (and possibly 60 Minutes) don’t know what procedures are used. I’ve seen a bit of the procedures a drone pilot goes through to get weapons release authorization on the History/Military Channel (possibly you should tell the good folks at 60 Minutes to check it out sometime…and maybe watch a bit of it yourself). Regardless of whether what I’ve seen is accurate or isn’t accurate, however, you do realize that the military is under civilian control and oversight, right? That means that even if you don’t know the procedures, and I’m wrong, that there are civilians in our government who DO know and have approved of those procedures. Just like there are civilians who know and have approved the rules of engagement for drone operators…and everyone else that might be in a combat situation.
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There is no evidence that the civilians ordering the strikes have gone through the proper procedures. Even if the pilots are following orders, they have responsibility to make sure the killings are proper. They have a duty to make sure every killing is legal. There is no evidence that the people billing killed are an imminent threat or part of a group responsible for 911. If the strikes are improper, everyone is responsible, top to bottom. There is enough evidence to charge, and the if the defendants want to argue justification, they can bring forth the evidence.
There is no evidence that the targeted people are an imminent threat or a part of a group responsible for 911. Until that evidence is brought forth, charges should be brought. We should not just assume that there is a viable affirmative defense.
Everyone seems to be assuming the drone strikes are valid acts of war, but that is only true if the targeted people are an imminent threat or part of a group responsible for 911. I challenge any person claiming these are valid acts of war to present evidence that each is killing involved an imminent threat or a person that aw part of a group responsible for 911.
I continued to be confused when you went on to compound your original error and incorrectly asserted in a later post that: “Presidents have discarded habeus without a problem” and I had to point out, once again, how that was factually inaccurate in light of Rasul v. Bush. I know that you NOW want to draw limits around your inaccurate original statement, but when you continued to make incorrect assertions and seemed to think “making war” included denial of habeas, or when you yourself emphasized how “grand” your statement was, I concluded that you had not, in fact, had such a limited definition of “making war”.
But now that we seemingly understand that “making war” refers only to “drone attacks”, I guess I’ll ask if you think the President can, without offending the Constitution, order drone attacks on an apartment in Chicago to kill a US citizen who was a suspected terrorist?
Well anyone in the Taliban or Al Quaeda is part of the group responsible for 9/11. They don’t have to have been doing that in 2001. We didn’t stop to investigate the background of Japanese soldiers we killed in WWII if they weren’t soldiers when Pearl Harbor was attacked. I challenge you to name a case where any strike was intentionally conducted against someone not in your classification.
There are rules of engagement and rules of war. You would have to show that these were intentionally violated before you can demand a defense from the soldier. All you have is collateral damage.
These pilots dont just randomly fly over some hostile area taking pot shots and targets of opportunity. There are procedures to minimize unnecessary collateral damage. The rules of war do not require us to eliminate collateral damage.
