[InclinedPlane]

The only oversight in the use of lethal force in furtherance of either identifying or killing senior al qaeda leaders lies with the administration itself.

What is the legal process for being declared an al qaeda leader? What is the legal process for anywhere outside of the US being declared a battlefield? What is the legal process for summary execution of someone who the administration has decided is an al qaeda leader? In each case the answer is: it is entirely up to the administration.

Yes, as a matter of constitutional law it is certainly possible for congress to declare war on a transnational entity and effectively designate the entire world outside the borders of the US as a potential war zone, under the discretion of the president, but I would say that rather twists the spirit of the constitution rather too far.

[tptacek]

What does "oversight" mean? We killed 25,000 innocent people in Dresden in WW2. Predator drones will never kill as many civilians as we did in Tokyo. What judicial opinion can I go look up to justify that?

If you want to come back and tell me that the problem is that we declared war on an ideology or a label, I will ABSOLUTELY sign that petition. Just be aware that a majority of Americans probably won't be signing it with us.

[InclinedPlane]

The 25,000 people in Dresden knew they were in a war, they were citizens of a country the US had declared war against. And calling them innocent is a stretch. They were complicit in the actions of their country (just as we are in the actions of our own). They made the ammunition and grew the food that fed the German war machine. Whether they did so of their own volition or were substantially coerced into doing so is somewhat academic when it comes to war. The folks building V2s were slaves, but was it unjustified to bomb those facilities and kill them to stop the V2s from being built?

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. Today we have a situation where the entire world could be a battlefield and we haven't the slightest clue how to deal with the troubling problems that entails. So far our best efforts have been for the administration to draw up a secret internal white paper on how to make sure they only execute the right people and for everyone else to rely mostly on hope. This is not a situation our existing laws are remotely up to tackling, and yet it will surely become more and more the norm over the next few decades. We need something more than "well, the administration thinks they killed the right guy".

[tptacek]

Here I exercise my option not to debate the ethics of warfare with someone who thinks the mass incineration of children is less fraught than the targeted killing of individual suspected terrorists.

[yew]

I feel rather the same way about anyone who's comfortable just assuming the opposite; viz, that the mass incineration of children during at least semi-procedural wartime bombing is more fraught than obscure peacetime military action carried out for reasons that are themselves highly obscure to non-specialists. Said non-specialists who are at least theoretically supposed to have some involvement in the decision process in question. So, there you are.

I'm not even opposed to the idea of military drones, really. I just think you have a bad habit of responding to people who disagree with you by telling them that they're too stupid for you to talk to. Pity.

[lostlogin]

I think your reply misses the point. The children weren't targeted (although everyone knew they would be hit), while the terrorist might be targeted by the drone, but everyone knows they regularly hit non-combatants (weddings, kids etc) and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. At least everyone agrees WW2 was a war, how many places that drones operate in have actually got a declared war in progress?

[InclinedPlane]

Does it make you feel morally superior to reduce warfare to such facile terms? Maybe you should become a pacifist.

You haven't answered the question on the morality of bombing Peenemunde (the V2 construction facilities), over 700 Polish civilians were killed in one bombing alone. Do you have an answer?

I refuse to shy away from the moral complexities of warfare, but that doesn't mean I refuse to acknowledge that there are moral issues in warfare. There very much are. And right now our country is installing legal and formal precedents which are sincerely disquieting in that regard.

In regards to your quip, the phrase "individual suspected terrorists" should have about 10 metric fuck-tons of asterisks after it. Because "suspected terrorists" are pretty much anyone the administration designates as such. And "individual" is pretty much defined as "anyone within the blast radius of a hellfire missile when a 'terrorist' is chosen to be executed". Not that drone attacks are even the entirety of the problem. Go read up on the war we've been fighting in Yemen and in the horn of Africa for the past several years.

[mpyne]

> You haven't answered the question on the morality of bombing Peenemunde (the V2 construction facilities), over 700 Polish civilians were killed in one bombing alone. Do you have an answer?

Was that ever a question? He was replying to your points.

The implication that I was drawing from the line of argumentation is that if you can find it moral to carpet bomb whole cities during WWII then you should be able to find a moral justification to bomb specific aggressors in 2013, especially given the insanely higher risk of collateral damage during WWII.

The converse would then apply: If you can't find it moral to ever have collateral damage occur in 2013 then you shouldn't be able to find it moral to have been done in WWII, as the atrocities during WWII were of horrifyingly higher orders of magnitude.

So the question wasn't for him; it was for you.

Even if "suspected terrorists" had the 10 metric fuck-tons of asterisks that you say should be there, there would still have been much more accurate planning going into each military operation in 2013 than there was in 1941-1945 (and probably by an order of magnitude). I'm presuming that you found at least most of those WWII bombing attacks could be justified as the grim price of war; what is the difference now? That would help better clarify your position.

[anigbrowl]

We need something more than "well, the administration thinks they killed the right guy".

Then lobby for the repeal or amendment of the AUMF by Congress. The executive Branch is currently authorized by law to make those sorts of decisions.

[pdonis]

The only oversight in the use of lethal force in furtherance of either identifying or killing senior al qaeda leaders lies with the administration itself.

This is not true. Both the Senate and House Intelligence committees have the right to see everything the President and the intelligence community see. If they aren't happy with how the decisions are being made on drone strikes, they can change the law that ultimately dictates how those decisions are made.

And that is the real problem with what Rand Paul is doing. If he has a problem with how drone strikes are being conducted, then he should be pushing to change the law that governs drone strikes. He should not be holding up a Presidential nomination.