Drone Strikes Moral?

[dairygirl4u2c]

ty

 

i at first struggled w this issue some. i like the idea of due process etc. but i figured desperate times desperate measures.... defense of others last option n poll,  but not truly immenient. understood not normative law or ethics.... but bottomline, if u are gonna kill us very likely etc... u should die. otherwise wed just be sticking to tradiotion of whats been allowed and overlooking the point involved, and not be a little more unorthodox.
but thrn i realezed just war prob applies. same way we didnt microexamine every confederate death in the civil war and not cry about due process.

 

i could see many here as many do getting in a huff for americans and due process etc. but moralyy why does it matter if they are US citizens or not? perhaps we shou;d give them more rights as they are entitled to by our rules.... but moraly why does a US guy get more protection than a non US? morally there's little dffernce.

 

id throw a stick in anf say its all simiar to killing tiller the late term abortionist, or perhaps carhart who hasnt been shot yet.
just war could be argued. or defense of others whilr not immenient, close and certain enough. carhart does illegal abotions, and one of his patients died recently at a 33 week abortion while he was no where to be found to assist in his own procedure.political and legal methods havent worked.... yet hell kill again, against both law and morality.
why treat illegal abortionists diff than terrorists? why demarcate morally between US and nonUS?

Edited February 9, 2013 by dairygirl4u2c

[Groo the Wanderer]

killing american citizens preemptively is a violation of their constitutional rights. preemptive strikes are also a violation of just war theory, if i am not mistaken. attempts should be made to arrest american terrorists for the time being. foreign nationals who take up arms against the US however have declared themselves enemy combatants and as such are valid military targets.

 

 

drone strikes is to ephemeral a term. can apply to too many situations. can be good or can be bad. can;t lump it all into one generalized category.

[Aloysius]

if they have taken up arms against us, they are valid military targets IN military situations, while they are clearly taking up arms against us.  before they could be valid targets for assassination, they should at the very least have had a trial for treason against them (which can be taken up in absentia, and can also be done in sealed FISA court type situations if information is classified/sensitive) so that it's not being arbitrarily ordered by a dictatorial power, as the DOJ memo proves is the case in the Obama administration.  ultimately, however, the drone strike policy is also not doing due diligence to the obligation we have to do everything in our power to CAPTURE them if possible.

 

the double speak in the DOJ memo that redefines "imminent" is very much the crux of the matter.  if they're engaged in an imminent attack, responding with defensive force makes sense, but "imminent" is so arbitrary and ambiguous in the DOJ memo that we've actually had a 16 year old Colorado born American citizen and his American Citizen friend assassinated when no one has ever offered any proof of their involvement in terrorist activities (let alone showed that they were "senior operational leaders").

 

one thing we need to realize is that assassinations that amount to indiscriminate bombings of social events, weddings, and funerals are the kinds of things that directly breed more terrorists, not less.  heck, just hearing about it fires up my blood and stirs up a desire to take up arms against the US government myself, I would never do that, but then again it's not my family and friends that are getting bombed while going to weddings and funerals.  these organizations are so far beyond being made up just by radical peddlers of extremist religious views, they are largely made up of very angry people who have been driven to desperation (although they were always made up of such people, inspired by things like our starving of half a million children in Iraq and Madeline Albright being broadcast everywhere saying it was worth it).  we are also engaging in terrorist tactics like double tap strikes, and all of this is counterproductive (assuming your goal is to eventually be able to end the war and have peace, if your goal is unending war then it's very productive and profitable).

 

it's the assassination aspect of this whole thing, assassination by bomb-strike of random social gatherings, that makes this practice incredibly immoral.  it's just unsettling that we can use unmanned technology to go after someone, but it's definitely immoral that we're doing so in the manner we are.

 

ultimately the development of drone technology reinforces John XXIII's point quite poignantly: â€œit is almost impossible to justify any modern war.”

 

drone strikes, at least the way we're using them, cannot be justified according to Catholic just war doctrine, however.  It could be possible to imagine some mental backflips used to justify some limited use of weoponized drones is extremely limited scenarios, but I doubt that is even all that possible.  either way, targeting American citizens for assassination by a process that utilized no accountability is more than just immoral, it's totally unconstitutional.  the Supreme Court knocked back the Bush administration for far less than this, I hope that they will knock back the Obama administration for this (but I won't count on it)

[dairygirl4u2c]

per just war. so isnt it at best a blurred line, whether we are at war, or ighting individuals?  the civil war invikved US citizens.... and it was everything goes. why is this different?  i could see individuasl taking up arms against us as being due process oriented..... but this is al queda. so bascally why this more like individuas and nt like a war?

 

and per defense of others. why does a person have to be at gun point? if A is at his farm and about to go to a building to blow it up... why does it matter if u wait till hes about to do it? the point is hes a nurderer about to kill people

Edited February 10, 2013 by dairygirl4u2c

[reyb]

so isnt it at best a blurred line, whether we are at war, or ighting individuals?  the civil war invikved US citizens.... and it was everything goes. why is this different?  i could see individuasl taking up arms against us as being due process oriented..... but this is al queda. so bascally why this more like individuas and nt like a war?

 

Give your trust to your president and your government. It is a sign of being a good defender of your country since ‘your worst enemy is always among yourself’.  

 

Edited February 10, 2013 by reyb

[Nihil Obstat]

Give your trust to your president and your government. It is a sign of being a good defender of your country since ‘your worst enemy is always among yourself’.  

I hope you did not mean this seriously. Otherwise I will have to seriously question your sanity.

Also, the third question is impossible to answer if one says no to the first and second.

[reyb]

I hope you did not mean this seriously. Otherwise I will have to seriously question your sanity.

Also, the third question is impossible to answer if one says no to the first and second.

 

Make it four just like your early fathers did in compiling the bible so that your argument becomes believable. Hitler know how to do it. He said .....

 Make the lie big, make it simple,
keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.

Adolf Hitler

 

[BG45]

Yes they're immoral.  As to what constitutes an enemy combatant in a foreign country, any male of "military age" in a strike zone is referred to as a militant by the Obama Administration in an effort to downplay the civilian casualties..

 

Edit:  Not touching the "of Americans" issue.  Makes me shake my head in total disgust.

Edited February 10, 2013 by BG45

[Nihil Obstat]

Make it four just like your early fathers did in compiling the bible so that your argument becomes believable. Hitler know how to do it. He said .....

 

 

Are you intoxicated right now or something?

[Aloysius]

you can fight and kill people in military situations because during those situations, they are in the process of taking up arms against you and thus you are acting defensively.  (assuming the war itself is justified as defensive, Afghanistan was initially but it certainly is not any longer, neither are the other 6 countries we are bombing or the 35 African nations we've just invaded to media silence)

 

when they're attending a wedding (especially in a country that we're NOT actually at war in) and you bomb them on the President's orders, that's not anywhere near the same thing.  there has to be due process to target people outside of war zones, if you're going to assassinate/execute them they should have to have been convicted of treason at least (if not, then you get a warrant and try to capture them, they are not on a battlefield obviously fighting against you, you should have to PROVE they are a threat not just accuse and assume it).  of course the government has thought of everything, they've declared the entire world (including US soil) to be an endless war zone so they don't need due process to target anyone at any time, they don't have to prove that you're part of al quaida, or prove that you're engaged in an active plot, because "imminent" just means they're pretty sure you might eventually attack some day.

Edited February 10, 2013 by Aloysius

[dairygirl4u2c]

so what if Robert E Lee was at a wedding during the civil war? would it have been immoral to kil him or others in that situation?

surey they werent fighting 24 7

[Aloysius]

yes it absolutely would have been immoral to go in and slaughter Robert E. Lee and all the other wedding guest.  "war" is not a moral license to indiscriminately kill.  the only justified killing within a war as within any other situation is DEFENSIVE killing.  If a battle happened to break out in the course of a wedding, then you could kill Robert E Lee in the course of the battle, but just going in and slaughtering an entire wedding full of people?  Not moral, not by a long shot.

Edited February 10, 2013 by Aloysius

[dairygirl4u2c]

just to point out i dont advocate killing innocent others in weddings etc, just Lee etc... i know drones often kill others but hopefully it's a measured use, like if bombs or grenades are used.

i see little difference if hitler Lee etc were at a bunker fort, wedding etc. it's war. they will be trying to kill us soon enogh. i see little difference if they two seconds from killing or five minutes away from killing per war theory especially but also per immenence (ironically my immenence argument w abortion guys like tiller is similar to what obama is aguing now w drones)... the point is they are a bad guy about to kill.

 

what if he was at a bunker or fort he was at? even if they werent actively shooting at us etc... its commonly seen as ok to kill at a place of war etc. most drone attacks probably arent wedding situations, but merely a place where the bad guys hide out etc much like a bunker fort etc. then we have no choice but to ask if its individals against us and due process oriented, or more like al queda and war oriented.

wouldnt it be okay to use abomb or grenade etc? probably. what afect does a drone have? it makes it seem like les of a mano y mano fair fight, but war is war and we shouldnt expect ours to have to die to kill theirs

 

Edited February 10, 2013 by dairygirl4u2c

[dairygirl4u2c]

itd be hard for me to think we couldnt kill in time of war jst because of location, even per traditional morality etc. cant kill hitler cause he was at a family reunion and not in the throguhs of war? seems arbitrary counterintuitive and pointlessly ineffective

in a couple hours he will be at war again.... same difference

[Aloysius]

you're assuming that these are all "bad guys", when they haven't even been proven to be under any kind of process.  Anwar al Awaki, sure he was probably a bad guy, but his son (who was targeted a couple weeks later) has never been shown by any evidence to have been a "bad guy" and he was targeted and executed nonetheless.  the point is that the government should have some oversight and have to PROVE that the people they're targeting are indeed "bad guys" involved in an imminent threat against the US (imminent by the dictionary definition, not the DOJ 1984 double speak definition).  if you cannot PROVE that, then you have to go after them in order to try to capture them, or actually engage them defensively in a military situation.  indiscriminately bombing them without any evidence of who they are or their involvement in imminent threats against the US is just insane.

 

attacking a bunker or a fort or whatever is not against what I'm saying here, that's something that makes sense because you have not targeted an individual for assassination/execution, you are engaging in battle.

itd be hard for me to think we couldnt kill in time of war jst because of location, even per traditional morality etc. cant kill hitler cause he was at a family reunion and not in the throguhs of war? seems arbitrary counterintuitive and pointlessly ineffective

in a couple hours he will be at war again.... same difference

well for one thing, we were at war with Germany... we are NOT at war with Yemen or Pakistan.  for another, yes I don't think we should drop a huge bomb on the Hitler Family Reunion, if we go after him there and end up needing to bomb that's one thing, at least we engaged in the attempt to minimize civilian casualties, but throwing a bomb into family reunions on the suspicion of a "bad guy" being present is basically throwing all moral high ground out the window and becoming the terrorist yourself.

 

it's not so much location, it's the insane leaps of logic that assassination/execution of people that we cannot (and according to the DOJ memo, don't have to) prove are engaged in any threat against us because we've accused them of association with al quaida.