Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The death penalty is a punishment in response to ordinary criminal acts. Even countries that have abolished the death penalty reserve the right to kill people in war.

There is a fundamental difference between policing and military action. Applying civilian legal standards to military situations is a bad idea because it inevitably results in watering down ordinary criminal protections to accommodate the needs of military situations.

View on HN

You don't have to condescend to me. On what principle(s) was al-Awlaki subject to anything other than ordinary criminal due process?

How was I being condescending? I was simply explaining the important difference between the criminal justice system, which exists to maintain internal order and the security of individuals, and the military, which exists to protect the nation from foreign threats.

Al Awalki was in a foreign country--where U.S. criminal laws presumptively do not apply--organizing armed action by foreigners against the United States. It's an archetypal act of war, rather than a crime.

Are you really saying that whenever a US citizen is out of the country, the US government is de jure entitled to kill them?

Your question is disingenuous because it ignores the factual context. Due process is inherently concerned with the particular factual circumstances. It has never meant that you get a full trial in every circumstance. So no, the U.S. government is not entitled to kill a U.S. citizen once he leaves U.S. soil as a categorical rule. But it can do so if it provides process commensurate with the circumstances. Which brings us back to the question: What process is "due" to someone who commits something that is not a crime, but rather is an archetypal act of war, from foreign soil?

What was the "archetypal" act of war, and in what way(s) was it more serious than actually taking up arms against the US?

But even so, why ask me? You're a lawyer, you know how to provide extraordinary evidence to support extraordinary claims relevant to what is by no means a settled question.

As you may be know, CIA/JSOC statements about the people they kill are often complete fabrications. For example, for years they classified any military-age male killed in a drone strike as a combatant. This included even if the the CIA/JSOC did not have any evidence of what violent acts the men had committed or planned, did not know their names, or did not even know how many "combatants" had been killed in a strike. The victims of these strikes are sometimes just drinking tea, attending weddings or funerals, or even attempting to provide medical aid to victims of a drone strike minutes or hours before.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com