But those wars were finite, with clear goals and well-defined endings. The war on terrorism appears to be perpetual, as there will always be terrorists no matter what we do or how many drones we launch. Therefore there’s no justification for an endless war in which American citizens can be targeted for execution. And this memo makes a case for such a plan: killing anyone who’s accused of committing or plotting to commit a crime in a vaguely-defined war.

If the administration opts to continue this policy, it should be compelled to lay out a timeline or clear ending to this war and thus an end to the president’s war powers enabling his use of drones against citizens, as was the case with Lincoln and Roosevelt. Or, if this is to be an ongoing process, like law enforcement, then we have to treat it accordingly and place restrictions on what techniques can be used, just as we do with law enforcement and due process. Specifically, the president shouldn’t be allowed to kill citizens without due process outside the confines of a declared war with a stated ending.

Anything short of this action will allow the administration — and, more menacingly, future administrations — to retain massive, unaccountable and extrajudicial executive power that could be used in far more dangerous ways, and into the foreseeable future. The notion that executive officials, including the president, could endlessly (and I underscore endlessly) hand down death sentences against American citizens ought to be shocking to anyone regardless of how they feel about the president’s accomplishments or his level of greatness.

I totally understand the justification for drones as a weapon: chiefly that they prevent the deaths of American soldiers and pilots. On the surface and used with extreme discretion, it sounds like a safe way to hit back against an opposing military force. But a risk-free weapon (price tag aside) must be used sparingly because common sense tells us that the temptation to abuse such a risk-free privilege is so great that the lure of its convenience could very easily spiral out of control into the unthinkable. A predator drone is an amazing example of American military technology, but it should be used with equally amazing discretion — used as sparingly as a piloted aircraft or a battalion of soldiers. And so there must be legally-imposed restrictions on how they’re used, otherwise it’s easy to see how the use of drones could expand into all varieties of constitutionally unsavory areas, and I’m sure a clever team of White House lawyers could fashion a slippery justification for each one.

jerseyhoya wrote:

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:It's pretty easy to see the policy being extended to a US citizen inside our own borders within the next 20 years. People can say "no chance" all they want, but look at the things that we (as a nation) accept being done PUBLICLY in our name that would've been anathema a generation ago. We brag about the death of a 16 y.o. US citizen and WH spokespersons say things like "he should've had a far more responsible father."

It is really difficult to see this policy being extended to a US citizen inside our own borders within the next 20 years. If someone is in the US, they are arrestable.

I don't think people have gotten more accepting of things done in the name of national defense than they were a generation or more ago. People are generally willing to give the government some latitude when threats or perceived threats are seen as real enough and dangerous. When the threat came from nation states who were willing to bomb our naval positions when we weren't at war with them and then fight a war with us for years, people were A-OK with us dropping nuclear bombs on two of their cities killing tens of thousands of civilians. 9/11 underlined the realness of the threat to the US from Islamic terrorism, and showed the planning and execution of catastrophic events did not require much in the way of state sponsorship to carry them out. So people are for the most part fine with us picking off leaders working with groups who would like very much to harm Americans.

pacino wrote:a terorrist whose son we also killed because maybe he should've had a better father. then, we decide that any 18yr old who hangs out on the Pakistani border or somewhere in yemen is potentially a terrorist.

if drones are legal, bring the evidence, bring it out into the open, show Congress, show the judiciary, show the American people. legality is not proven through speeches, and 'imminent threat' is one of hte vaguest terms imaginable. if it has to be secretive, fine..but based on what has been discovered, they are letting NO ONE on the intelligence committee know what it means, not even those with doublesecret probation-type clearance.

what is the process?

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:It's pretty easy to see the policy being extended to a US citizen inside our own borders within the next 20 years. People can say "no chance" all they want, but look at the things that we (as a nation) accept being done PUBLICLY in our name that would've been anathema a generation ago. We brag about the death of a 16 y.o. US citizen and WH spokespersons say things like "he should've had a far more responsible father."

It is really difficult to see this policy being extended to a US citizen inside our own borders within the next 20 years. If someone is in the US, they are arrestable.

I don't think people have gotten more accepting of things done in the name of national defense than they were a generation or more ago. People are generally willing to give the government some latitude when threats or perceived threats are seen as real enough and dangerous. When the threat came from nation states who were willing to bomb our naval positions when we weren't at war with them and then fight a war with us for years, people were A-OK with us dropping nuclear bombs on two of their cities killing tens of thousands of civilians. 9/11 underlined the realness of the threat to the US from Islamic terrorism, and showed the planning and execution of catastrophic events did not require much in the way of state sponsorship to carry them out. So people are for the most part fine with us picking off leaders working with groups who would like very much to harm Americans.

With all due respect, that's some serious revisionist history. There was a LOT of debate after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hell, some of the scientists who helped create it (including Einstein) virtually begged FDR and Truman not to use it that way.

Besides, those were not U.S. citizens and involved a nation with which we were in a legally-declared war. If you can't see a shift further down the spectrum, then I don't really know what to say.

jerseyhoya wrote:

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:It's pretty easy to see the policy being extended to a US citizen inside our own borders within the next 20 years. People can say "no chance" all they want, but look at the things that we (as a nation) accept being done PUBLICLY in our name that would've been anathema a generation ago. We brag about the death of a 16 y.o. US citizen and WH spokespersons say things like "he should've had a far more responsible father."

It is really difficult to see this policy being extended to a US citizen inside our own borders within the next 20 years. If someone is in the US, they are arrestable.

I don't think people have gotten more accepting of things done in the name of national defense than they were a generation or more ago. People are generally willing to give the government some latitude when threats or perceived threats are seen as real enough and dangerous. When the threat came from nation states who were willing to bomb our naval positions when we weren't at war with them and then fight a war with us for years, people were A-OK with us dropping nuclear bombs on two of their cities killing tens of thousands of civilians. 9/11 underlined the realness of the threat to the US from Islamic terrorism, and showed the planning and execution of catastrophic events did not require much in the way of state sponsorship to carry them out. So people are for the most part fine with us picking off leaders working with groups who would like very much to harm Americans.

With all due respect, that's some serious revisionist history. There was a LOT of debate after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hell, some of the scientists who helped create it (including Einstein) virtually begged FDR and Truman not to use it that way.

Besides, those were not U.S. citizens and involved a nation with which we were in a legally-declared war. If you can't see a shift further down the spectrum, then I don't really know what to say.

Wiki says there was a Gallup poll in August 1945 that found the public supported the dropping of the bombs by an 85-10 margin. That's about as close to a consensus as you will ever get with an issue that's even a little bit controversial. A Washington Post poll from a year ago found Americans supported Obama's drone policy even if Americans overseas are targeted by a 65-26 margin, so not as overwhelming as the public's backing of the atomic bombs, but still a pretty sizable majority. I don't think it's engaging in revisionist history to say the American people were OK with us dropping the atomic bomb just because there was some token opposition. There's opposition now to the usage of drones too.

And of course the situations aren't exactly identical. We're killing people in the single digits or at most dozens at a time using drone strikes as opposed to killing a couple hundred thousand people with two bombs dropped three days apart. The human scale is not comparable. It's not comparable in the other direction because a land invasion of Japan would've cost orders of magnitude more US lives than any terrorist attack will cost on US soil or on US troops overseas.

It was a legally declared war, but we've killed an awful lot of people as a country over the past 65 years without declaring war. That doesn't seem to be much of a distinction in my eyes. Certainly nothing that distinguishes current activities with things done a generation ago.

I don't think it's a shift farther down any spectrum. We're using more precise methods to limit collateral damage, where with the atomic bombs the collateral damage wasn't really collateral. On the other side of the coin, we killed a single American citizen on purpose this go around, which wasn't the goal of the atomic bombs. They're bad and morally objectionable in different ways, but also both arguably necessary for national security and so worth doing. If you want to place them on a single, two dimensional spectrum of anathema-tivity I don't think we're shifting further down the spectrum so your lack of knowing what to say means we have to agree to disagree.

drsmooth wrote:The power a nation-state's people has - especially a people whose government is of/by/for them - is to demand that it have a say in how those murders might take place; who decides and what the state's obligations are with respect to them.

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:The power a nation-state's people has - especially a people whose government is of/by/for them - is to demand that it have a say in how those murders might take place; who decides and what the state's obligations are with respect to them.

And if the people decide through electoral choices and my #$!&@ polls to say they're good with having little to no input in how the murders might take place?

td11 wrote:if the pres had to go through courts and/or a legislative process to ok drone strikes, we wouldn't have gotten al-awlaki until 2030

also, who besides al-awlaki and his sons have been US citizens? (not that that really matters as housh and jh have pointed out)

Monkeyboy wrote:

td11 wrote:if the pres had to go through courts and/or a legislative process to ok drone strikes, we wouldn't have gotten al-awlaki until 2030

also, who besides al-awlaki and his sons have been US citizens? (not that that really matters as housh and jh have pointed out)

There's a court that will meet on very short notice in secret. I remember it being a big deal during Bush II, but I can't recall the name of the court or exactly what it oversaw. Anyway, there are ways to work with this, imho.

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:The power a nation-state's people has - especially a people whose government is of/by/for them - is to demand that it have a say in how those murders might take place; who decides and what the state's obligations are with respect to them.

And if the people decide through electoral choices and my #$!&@ polls to say they're good with having little to no input in how the murders might take place?

I really can't believe that a small government conservative such as you believes that.

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:The power a nation-state's people has - especially a people whose government is of/by/for them - is to demand that it have a say in how those murders might take place; who decides and what the state's obligations are with respect to them.

And if the people decide through electoral choices and my fucking polls to say they're good with having little to no input in how the murders might take place?

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

td11 wrote:if the pres had to go through courts and/or a legislative process to ok drone strikes, we wouldn't have gotten al-awlaki until 2030

also, who besides al-awlaki and his sons have been US citizens? (not that that really matters as housh and jh have pointed out)

There's a court that will meet on very short notice in secret. I remember it being a big deal during Bush II, but I can't recall the name of the court or exactly what it oversaw. Anyway, there are ways to work with this, imho.

FISC's jurisdiction is limited to warrants.

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:The power a nation-state's people has - especially a people whose government is of/by/for them - is to demand that it have a say in how those murders might take place; who decides and what the state's obligations are with respect to them.

And if the people decide through electoral choices and my #$!&@ polls to say they're good with having little to no input in how the murders might take place?

I really can't believe that a small government conservative such as you believes that.

jerseyhoya wrote:

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:The power a nation-state's people has - especially a people whose government is of/by/for them - is to demand that it have a say in how those murders might take place; who decides and what the state's obligations are with respect to them.

And if the people decide through electoral choices and my #$!&@ polls to say they're good with having little to no input in how the murders might take place?

I really can't believe that a small government conservative such as you believes that.

How does that make any more sense then me saying I can't believe a big government liberal like pacino has problems with drones?

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:The power a nation-state's people has - especially a people whose government is of/by/for them - is to demand that it have a say in how those murders might take place; who decides and what the state's obligations are with respect to them.

And if the people decide through electoral choices and my fucking polls to say they're good with having little to no input in how the murders might take place?

teach them. teach them in elementary school. Teach people what it means to be part of the greatest self-governing experiment in human history - what the possibilities are. What the benefits are. What the risks are. It doesn't take deep learning, or even imagination, to understand you're obliged to do so in the democracy we've erected.

Your attitude seems to be "what they don't know won't hurt them", which is of course rank nonsense.

How is it that you've chosen to devote your professional life to a topic so closely tied to matters for which you evidently have the lowest possible regard?