Repost as OP: All this talk of "right to retaliate" and "insurgents" is just legalistic twaddle

[Lydia Leftcoast]

23. Problems with your arguments, Mr. Conventional Wisdom

The Constitution applies within US jurisdiction. Thus they can't do the same drone strikes inside the US because all the due process rights that people are now complaining about actually apply.

Of all the evil policies that the Bush administration instituted, one of the little noticed but potentially most dangerous ones is that due process doesn't apply outside the U.S. (not even for U.S. citizens) and that the president can therefore do whatever he wants.

Does this mean that if you were a dissident American who decided to go live in a foreign country and kept criticizing the U.S., then some future president would be within his rights to target you for assassination? We were horrified when the Rumanians did that to one of their dissidents in London in the infamous umbrella murder a few decades ago.

Does this mean that we can do anything we damned please to foreigners, just because, fuck yeah, we're Americans and we RULE and those foreigners better bow down and worship us or else?

First of all, the people killed have friends and extended families, and their cultural norms will require them to seek revenge.

Yep. Too bad we didn't think of this when we overthrew the Shah. If you happen to have a time machine, we might be able to undo that damage.

Ever hear the saying, "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging"? Since we can't undo the past, we're supposed to keep on the same immoral path?

Killing the individuals reduces the danger to the US of the movement - they can't plan and prepare for a large-scale attack on the US because they keep having key people get blown up by drones.

Large-scale attack on the U.S.? You mean one that could actually hurt us? (9/11, shocking as it was, was a bee sting compared to what the U.S. has done to both Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Yep. But unfortunately turning our back now has been shown to not be an effective way to stop the radicals motivated by our historical fuckups.

So we keep giving them motivation?

If you'd like us to invade Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, we could put these terrorists on trial too. But there could be just a few negative repercussions of those invasions.

How about putting the guys in Guantanamo on trial with real civilian trials? That would be a good start.

I just have to shake my head when I consider that Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Aileen Wuornos, and Jeffery Dahmer, all known to be sociopathic serial killers were given standard civilian trials, and yet the guys in Guantanamo are said to be "too dangerous" to allow on American soil.

Because disengaging has resulted in attacks in the US.
I'm wracking my brain trying to think of a time when the U.S. wasn't meddling in the Middle East.

Your arguments are standard Beltway bullshit, the same kind of nonsense we were given during the Vietnam War. "We can't back down now. The Communists will take that as a sign of weakness. I don't want to be the first president to lose a war." And so on and so on.