[PhantomGremlin]

I think its (probably) wrong to kill US citizens without trial. I won't use the word "assassinate" since it perhaps dignifies the action too much. Also I highly respect John McCain's position against torture, aka "enhanced interrogation".

However, the US isn't fighting against opponents who are playing by Marquess of Queensberry Rules. And the average American is willing to descend a little way down a "slippery slope". To quote a White House official:[1]

   "If Anwar al-Awlaki is your poster boy
   for why we shouldn't do drone strikes,
   good fucking luck."

Yeah, sometimes right and wrong isn't completely black and white. There are shades of gray. There is a dark side that tries to seduce everyone.

[1] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-rise-of-the-ki...

[xnull1guest]

Interesting quote and a good article by Michael Hastings (before his mysterious death) for those interested in the controversial subject of drone strikes. Thanks for the link!

Given the use of the quote in the article to cast the CIA as dismissive of Constitutionality and of fundamental human rights would you say that you diverge from Hastings in your understanding (i.e. the CIA are 'right'?). I might be: I'm much more upset at the death of 76 children and 29 adult bystanders accidentally (?) killed while trying to target Ayman al Zawahiri (who is still reportedly at large) or in general the estimated 28:1 ratio of untargetted causualties to successful targets (themselves suspect in international law). Then again, even while Anwar al-Awlaki was no cupcake if his case were applied as a standard of justice in America any true sense or illusion of justice in the legal system we have would be lost.

[PhantomGremlin]

There are many people who feel that the large amount of collateral damage from drones only inflames people against us. There's a lot of truth in that. But still, take the case of Bin Laden. He was living down the block from Pakistan's West Point. It seems logical to conclude that quite a few important people in Pakistan knew he was there.

So maybe it doesn't matter? Maybe the additional people we are alienating already hated us before we greatly increased the number of drone strikes?

Aside: the cynical me would bet even money that 95% of the 3rd world people who profess to "hate" us would jump at the chance to immigrate to the USA.

As for "justice", in order to remain happy living in the USA I have to believe that, overall, this country is basically good, that we're perhaps the best country in the world in terms of allowing people "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". I do believe that.

I'll leave you with the title of a book that was published about 19 years ago:[1]

   Pick a Better Country:
   An Unassuming Colored Guy
   Speaks His Mind about America

Ken Hamblin's basic point in that book is that we might not be perfect, but it's hard to find a country that, overall, is better than the United States of America.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Hamblin

[xnull2guest]

While I'm not likely to agree with most of the speculation here, you might find me agree that there are much, much worse places in the world than America. We are lucky to have inherited this wealth that America has.

America is extremely wealthy (it is 4% of the world population and has 25% of global wealth). With great prosperity and opportunity the conditions are laid for great freedoms. This is nearly universal. The contention for the means to survive and thrive creates strife that interrupts peace, and furthermore muddling (as was laid around the 'third' world by imperialists and globalists and proxy war - in the Middle East by Sykes-Picot, Palestine by British Mandate, Korea by General Order 1, Vietnam, Malaysia, Laos, Cuba, and Tibet all by proxy war, Africa, Philippines, countless others by colonialism) exacerbate this strife.

America did not merely innovate herself to her prosperity. Nor is 95% of the third world to blame for their poverty.

I also would bet that 95% of slaves, who would have professed to 'hate' their masters, would have jumped at the chance to become one. The two need not mutually exclusive.

America is blessed to have been culturally couched on the opportunity to steal an unstripped continent through the marginalization and genocide of millions of established native peoples, outsource the labor of its major national products to an enslaved race of kidnapped peoples and separated families up until (and to large degree after) industrialization, to have been a war profiteer of two of the world's most deadly wars (and used this leverage to establish itself as the primary gold lender of the world), and to have established itself as the world's primary protector by being the only country to have used a nuclear bomb against a civilian population and by banning the development of such weapons by others, and today by pulling strings around the world to engineer its own success.

Thank you for the Ken Hamblin book. It's now on my queue. I'll trade for a quote from a speech by Mr. President John Quincy Adams:

"She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power, and emerging right.

Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example."