Are American citizens in Afghanistan fair game to "kill" with drones without any sort of due process?
if there's any issue with this its whether this guy died in the field of battle. whether or not he's an american citizen doesn't matter because he is an enemy combatant. greenwald needs more evidence of that but i don't personally.
I'm glad you don't. The point here isn't whether you need it or not, the point is does the president even have to prove an American is an enemy combatant now in order to "drone strike" him. By this standard he does not. Any American citizen can be declared an enemy combatant and "drone striked" because once the president declares him as such and issues the order there is no scrutiny, no checks & balances, no courts, no lawyers, no due process. Because he said so. Because he has seen the evidence. Like I said, enemies of presidents need to be careful where they travel since they apparently have no due process rights as long as the president says they don't.
so as in the case of us residents killed during wwII in defense of germany, should roosevelt and truman said, don't kill those guys, get their credentials first.
Yeah, I think so. But, I would put a lot of qualifiers around that. I don't think he could do it on US soil and get away with it, except in a greater context of an invasion or something. I don't think he could get away with it when the claim of affiliation with an enemy state/organization is an obvious fiction. I don't think he could get away with it (well maybe he could on this one) when it is plain that detention was an easy alternative. Congress would have good grounds for impeachment in those cases. But, in this case the target was abroad, his affiliation was credible, and it wouldn't be easy to otherwise detain him. In a war, I think you give the Commander-in-Chief some lattitude to operate. If you're next on the hit list, I think Obama will have a harder time justifying to Congress during impeachment hearings that you had a dangerous affiliation and they couldn't otherwise detain you. Same when defending himself on the campaign trail against accusations of murder. Same in defending against a lawsuit for wrongful death brought by your parents (well, on this one, they'll make everything top secret and your parents won't have any evidence you were ever alive in the first place).
I'm very curious as to what constitutes a "field of battle". Not surprisingly, most of these sorts of arguments are readily deconstructed inside my original link (which is why I post them). Furthermore...
Field of battle-a location the president says is holding enemy combatants Enemy Combatants-person(s) deemed "at war" with the United States "At War" with the United States-person(s) in a field of battle Just accept it Rhad. All questions have the same answer: Because the executive of the United States said so.
Representative government means that executives have unlimited power and the only way to deal with that is vote them out? You and I read a different Constitution.
You believe reps have unlimited power? Really? Are you aware of the Constitution at all beyond it being a piece of paper?
It's all about the monopoly on ethics. Who owns or significantly influences the perception of ethics at this point in history?
There are checks and balances, if this was a gross violation of the constitution, congress could start impeachment proceedings.
Checks and balances are there to make sure that they CAN and WILL do so (if appropriate). How have you convinced yourself that they can and would do so if appropriate? What does the track record look like? What are the current circumstances? Does the public have the necessary access to information to initiate these actions? Come on. You may be indifferent to the presence of clear, measurable, etc checks and balances, but I still can't see how you've been convinced that there are checks and balances if the system has not been tested. It's like a radio with no power: theoretically, the button will turn the device on, but that's only if we're sure the device turns on at all.
What about the Civil War? Lincoln was adamant that the South was still part of the Union, after all. If he had the option of having commandos gun down Lee, and it occurred, is that illegal then? Citizenship is not a blank check. Speculation. You can't prove that a SoF raid to grab/kill al-Awlaki was in fact militarily feasible. Different military circumstances can merit different military options.
You guys arguing about this stuff are funny, sometimes you just have to take action.... I am proud of this administration for doing exactly that rather than arguing about it while the terrorists continued to plot and plan against us. Sometimes, you have to get your hands dirty and do more than just talk about it. DD
