The killing of American citizens
 

*This is a very disturbing story. If you have any conflicts at any time you will need to leave immediately for your own safety. You have been warned*

In the concept of brevity (for me anyway...), I will point to the story of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American living in Yemen with supposed links Al Qaeda. He never had the chance to meet those claims because President Obama ordered him assassinated, which occurred Sept. 30th to a drone attack.

What's even more troubling is what has occurred within the last few weeks. The US government has killed his 16 year old son. His son was born in New Mexico, but what truly troubles me is this passage here:

The fact is, our government is known for a ton of collateral damage. In order to take out one target, they'll take away 10 innocent lives. This story is a warning. Our government has done a number of things in the US name that have taken away the basic freedoms and rights of those inside and outside of the country.

Whether you're an immigrant, detainee, or US citizen, it's rather telling that the government decides who has a right to live or die based on whims.

While I agree in principle, claiming this is on a whim is pure idiocy. The heads of state didn't wake up one morning and think "Ehhh this guy is a nuisance, he dies today".

Whether or not what they did was right (I don't see us making a foreign arrest of someone who was fairly public in his actions against the US, but that's a horse of a different color) you can't just spuriously claim it was done on a whim. That's every bit as misleading as the spin they put on to support these kind of actions.

Perhaps it's better to say it's based on terrorist claims.

That's better! Okay putting an american citizen to death without ensuring his right to a fair trial, and making this decision based on the information provided by dissidents and known enemies of the state: BAD.

I was okay with killing al-Awlaki. Some American citizens joined the German army in WWII. If they were killed in a bombing attack on a German army barracks, would you say it was wrong? If they were a high-level German officer and were directly targeted for assassination, would you say it was wrong?

Really it depends upon how they are defined, either as enemy soldiers (or "combatants" as they seem to enjoy using) or as criminals. The U.S. has been hewing towards the former name (although unfortunately decided that despite this meaning prisoners are technically P.O.W.s, they can be tortured with impunity, in all disregard to their human rights and rights as soldiers). In the former case, a bombing attack is perfectly fine, in theory, although its unfortunate that if they cannot think of another way to get to these terrorists that they choose something with such a high chance of collateral damage and civilian deaths.

Now, if they are defined as mere criminals, obviously criminals are not usually targeted for bombing runs. But then again they rarely have assault weapons, bombs, etc. So that is probably why terrorists are considered "enemy combatants" and not mere criminals.

actually in the grand scheme, compared to most other nations the US is rather surgical in these matters. Most nations would just carpet bomb the place and call it a day or burst in and shoot anything that moves. They usually take a utilitarian approach, possibly killing a few civilians is better than letting them kill go and kill ten times as many.

I cant really argue if this was the proper course of action. There was no doubt alot of thought and consideration put into this. To me its more about, was there a better alternative? I frankly dont know, but not so cynical to think they didn't atleast consider potential collateral

On a tangently related note. You know we are the nation that nuked civilians? I mean if the populace and world can tolerate that, I dont think this will serve as much of a "warning"

By "most" I mean "all approximately decent."
 

Most nations would not contemplate any kind of military action against citizens of a nation with which they are putatively not at war, including their own.

You can't compare the way the U.S. does this shit because nobody else does this shit. It isn't like police brutality, where everyone everywhere has some kind of police and most of them engage in some degree of excess violence & it's always possible to find more egregious offenders.

You know, we do try to make an effort not to kill civilians on a regular basis. Our people don't go using religious sites as shelters/bases or hide where civilians are the densest. We also don't shoot off a few RPGs/Rockets/Bullets and run or use bombs that could be set off by remote.

No, we are the American people and we do our best to put the fight in your face. If we can't, well we fixed that too so it is as surgical as possible (Drones, Cruises Missiles, artillery).

These Terrorists are slime, scum, crap and deserve no mercy seeing as they give none. They hide behind masks when they behead people, run into places shooting, burn schools down for trying to teach girls, etc. and I could go on with this but you get the point.

We do our best to not target people not involved. We mess up yes, but at least when we do it's typically bad intel.

They on the other hand harbor only a respect for death and none for living. That should say everything.

Having said that, the standard we claim to hold ourselves to makes our collateral damage pure hypocrisy.

Robin apparently lives in a world where terrorists are Captain Planet villains. They're bad guys, sure, but there's a point where you have to ask yourself if you're actually describing them or if you're describing a nonsensical caricature.