Capital punishment is extremely costly, and yet it’s well documented how many people are executed for crimes they didn’t commit. Drones get cheaper all the time, and the US military gets an inconceivable amount of money it can use on things like them. It is supposed to: we ask them to kill terrorists, and so little do we worry about errors, we don’t even acknowledge that other adult males could be collateral damage.
So calling out costs as a safeguard is laughable. I can think of nowhere in the world where the simple cost of killing someone ensures their rights are represented.
Adding a court review is better if it’s actually another layer of oversight, but there needs to be a way to ensure they do, instead of acting as a rubber stamp. Secret courts have a pretty clear track record in this regard. Suggesting one without any special way to keep it independent, then, amounts to much the same thing as before: asking that we have faith that nobody would be targeted without good reason.
But soldiers do usually go on the battlefield conscious that they are soldiers, and that they need to either surrender or expect the enemy to try and kill them. Probably people who join Al Qaeda know the same, but there is no point someone innocent mistaken for a target has that opportunity. They live their life until they’re killed, and we never learn our mistake so call it a job well done, and wonder why the Middle East is still so hostile.
So again, the only safeguard that you offer their rights is the hope that the executive will take pains not to target anyone innocent, despite there being even less advocacy for their rights than abused prisoners and the condemned on death row have received. And that’s the model we take going forward, as drone strikes become more and more common. I don’t know if you’ll acknowledge it, but that model means mistakes.
So how should we describe those mistakes? Back at the beginning, we heard Obama called
But now we know how wrong and needlessly emotional that terminology is. What’s really happening is remotely killing folk for being probable terrorists - without giving them any knowledge we are at war with them (like soldiers), or chance to defend themselves against that charge (like accused criminals), or advocate for their rights beyond what the same executive decides is important. An important clarification!
