Would you make it illegal for the government to kill an American holding hostages and wearing a suicide vest such that killing him is the only practical way to save lives?
I did Nazi this coming
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Those situations are already covered separately.
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How would they be “covered separately” by a constitutional amendment that says that it is illegal for the government to kill Americans? The basic issue is that all the people that the government wants to kill are on a cline from “About to set off a nuke in Manhattan” to “Posts mean tweets about a Senator” and there isn’t a clear dividing point to be found anywhere along the line.
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And that is why the blurring of the line between “at war” and “at peace” since the end of the Second World War has been so corrosive. War is, by its nature a suspension of the normal rules by which the government behaves. Which is why switching from peace to war was originally intended to be a discrete action which required action by the legislature.
I would argue that the question here is not whether the judiciary must be involved beforehand, but whether it is allowed to be involved after the fact. It appears that the administration* (and the one before) are asserting not only that it has the right to make that decision, but that the courts have no ability to review whether there was indeed a “clear and present danger” after the fact. Normally, when soldiers kill people on a battlefield, or police shoot somebody, courts, either civil or martial can review that decision and decide whether that action was justified or not.
*edited to add and the one before
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Agreed. It seems important to me that every death that the Government causes, intentional or not, American citizen or not, should go through some sort of review process, if only to get a better idea about what things are and are not allowed.
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I do remember this exact bullshit being argued under Obama with Anwar-Al-Awlaki. When I say Obama was not perfect it’s things like Guantanamo and this that I am remembering.
It was wrong then, it’s even more wrong now.
The government cannot have this as a right.
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What was the most disturbing about the policies of extra-judicial killings against ISIS is that it wasn’t ever clear to me that the government wasn’t actively involved in recruiting US and UK citizens to ISIS for the explicit purpose of droning them. To me, it seemed like the ISIS propaganda machine was enabled as part of a “Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here (and lose in court)” strategy.
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Sadly, many are.
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It’s covered under Poe’s Law.
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a phrase that does not appear in the constitution
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Except for all of us who do imagine such things in the USA and are actively working towards such changes, including a not insignificant number of people who voted against Trump and for Biden.
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I’d suggest reading replies, as several others have rightfully noted this, and most people here agree it was wrong then as it is now.
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Agreed.
Obama’s past sins/crimes do not negate nor mitigate 45’s current and ongoing ones.
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Ah yes, the Trolley Problem:
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Possibly, but from the summary, it sounds like the judges asked DOJ lawyers questions about the boundaries of the government claims, including whether it was limited to just areas outside the US and they either said “no” or ducked and weaved…
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I would. Mitigating circumstances like that can be discussed a trial, and it might even end up considered a violation of the law that requires less punishment than the reward for saving lives. But at least that way, there’d be a trial to make sure, instead of taking every government killer’s word that they simply had to do it until a cell phone video proves otherwise.
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I think the Obama administration, for all it’s sins and possible war crimes, at least only claimed this extra judicial authority outside the US - not a huge difference, but perhaps still a difference.
So in theory, a Democratic president could order the executions of treasonous US officials who have deep ties to foreign governments, and then claim it’s a matter of national security, and that’s the end of that.
Good to know.
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It kinda feels like a quaint religious superstition, this idea that we are necessarily bound by tradition to use an 18th century mechanism to solve 21st century problems.
