Glenn Greenwald’s Mitt Romney Surrogacy

[TiberiusB]

180. My problem is with the expansion of the pool of "unlawful combatants"

The question here, I thought, was the legality of drone strikes in countries which have not clearly authorized them (sovereignty violation) and against targets which have not been proven to harbor militants or other combatants. Such targets include rescuers arriving to aid those injured in earlier strikes and funeral attendees. Consider as well the expansion of the program to include people the DOD and the Administration can't even name but have identified as targets simply based on a behavioral profile, along with the generous inclusion of anyone in the attack zone killed who was of military age, a range vague enough to effectively let them off the hook for nearly every male killed in a drone strike. Imagine if a drone strike killed a dozen boys and men between 14 and 25 working in a field tending some sort of crop. Using the established definitions for "militant" currently in use, can there be any doubt that such an attack would be labeled a success and everyone killed deemed a militant or suspected terrorist? For all we know that is exactly what has happened any number of times, but thanks to the lack of transparency, we are forced to simply take the government's word for it. Remember the nonsense conservatives used to spout that domestic spying isn't a problem unless you have something to hide? Isn't it ironic that many of the same people who held average Americans to that standard now strive to build an impenetrable wall of secrecy around our government and elected officials?

Besides, unless I'm mistaken, the designation "unlawful combatant" cannot simply be hung around the neck of anyone in a target zone. It is meant to be applied to detainees after evidence is presented to a competent tribunal. A case involving just that was Hamden vs Rumsfeld and it was the abuse of the "unlawful combatant" designation that was the source of a great deal of the controversy surrounding Guantanamo and the suspension of Habeus Corpus.