A Note On 'Drone Strikes', Ladies And Gentlemen

[JDPriestly]

94. I understand your view, The Magistrate.

Here is my problem with it.

Who defines who belongs to the external but combatant body?

How is that external combatant body to be defined?

Most important, who defines who DOES NOT belong to that combatant body?

And how are non-combatants to be defined? And how are the interests of innocent non-combatants to be protected?

In my opinion, our Patriot Act defines terrorists so vaguely, so broadly, that it could, whether due to malice or misinformation, define as terrorists a lot of innocent people, and especially a lot of people who are in fact political dissidents, people who simply support human rights or people who simply happen to be in the vicinity of actual terrorists.

When is the friend of your enemy your enemy? When does the fact that someone simply has a different point of view or defends the right of another to have a different point of view or to blow the whistle on the wrongful or questionable acts of the authority (the one with the drones) make them a terrorist supporter? a combatant?

George Washington formed an army. He did not represent a recognized country. He fought as a revolutionary against an imperial army (of which he had formerly been a member).

Our Revolution was fought by what we now view as an army of revolutionaries, but that army was supported by innkeepers, newspaper publishers, farmers, all kinds of people including women and children who lent a hand to feeding and caring for the revolutionaries.

If our Revolution were fought today, how many of our heroes would be the targets of drone attacks? How many innkeepers, newspaper publishers, farmers, supporters or suppliers of the revolutionaries who maybe had no opinion other than that the revolutionaries were their families or friends?

I am not supporting terrorism. It is a terrible thing. But, how do we know it.

Someone once said that they knew art when they saw it.

That's OK for art.

But when you are targeting people for drone attacks, you cannot just say "I know terrorists when I see them." And you can't claim to be leading a democracy if you can't let your own citizens know the specific, and I mean specific, criteria you are applying in determining whether someone is a legitimate target for a drone attack in your view.

Speech is also not a test, not under our Constitution. Because we are supposed to have a right to free speech and assembly, etc. even though that right has been eroded and is being eroded during the Obama administration.

It is very easy to write a nice, intellectual justification for drone strikes. I am reminded of an article by Sartre concerning the dehumanizing of war that occurred when we began dropping bombs on civilians from the sky. Drones carry that dehumanizing to an extreme. Terrorists make the world worse for all of us. Drones could too.

Our Constitution guarantees due process for US citizens.

One of the problems with drones is that the process by which the decision is now made as to when, where and against whom to use them invites the arbitrary abuse of the power to kill anyone who is inconvenient. I have no reason to think that is happening now, but I also have no reason to think we have any procedures in place to prevent that from happening now or in the future.

We need checks and balances on the authority to use drones. We need to have judges with secure, lifetime appointments and juries of the people to determine whether these extrajudicial murders should take place or not -- especially when the lives of American citizens are at stake -- but even if they aren't. Blowback is something to be feared.

If drones are to be used as weapons, then there must be some process for deciding on their uses other than a president seated with the counselors and officers he appointed to office sitting in a comfortable office somewhere deciding the fates of people they don't know based on hearsay evidence.

It's an abomination.