Comment by nsajko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nsajko | Hacker News Reader

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So currently the "logic" is that CIA can kill anyone (even a US citizen) using drones as long as it happens somewhere far away like in Yemen or Pakistan? Am I getting this right?

I wonder if POTUS has to at least sign all the kill orders.

EDIT FOLLOWS:

The problem is (independently) verifying that the targeted person was a combatant and in a war against USA. If anybody can be a combatant, CIA can kill anybody. See the following, regarding the Obama presidency:

> It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

The obvious questions are:

* Does belonging to Al-Qaeda or similar make you eligible for a drone strike? I don't really think of (potential) terrorists as combatants.

* What about another organization designated as "terrorist"? The executive branch unilaterally puts organizations and people on that list. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_St...

* What oversight and control should there be over the decision to kill someone?

Another interesting point is that it seems that only a fraction of persons killed in drone strikes were intended as targets: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-comp...

> So currently the "logic" is that CIA can kill anyone (even a US citizen) using drones as long as it happens somewhere far away like in Yemen or Pakistan?

No, the logic is that the US government may target enemies in war by all the means lawful against enemies inwar, even if those enemies are US citizens, anywhere in the world, including within the US.

And there's plenty of precedent for that.

There may be good reasons given the nature and mechanisms of modern warfare to establish some additional limits on that now, but we can't have the discussion effectively if we start with a false premise about the rationale and the false idea that prosecuting war without special limitations when some of the individual enemy combatants are citizens is novel.

> I wonder if POTUS has to at least sign all the kill orders.

In general, no, the President is not required to personally sign orders to kill enemies in war, regardless of their citizenship.

> No, the logic is that the US government may target enemies in war by all the means lawful against enemies inwar, even if those enemies are US citizens, anywhere in the world, including within the US.

> And there's plenty of precedent for that.

There is clearly precedent for criminally charging US citizens for such things, or in the case where they're either subject to the UCMJ or otherwise acting as a lawful uniformed combatant, maybe a court martial.

But what is the precedent for allowing unilateral lethal military targeting of known US citizens outside the US, or anyone within the US, outside of moments when the accused is actively engaging in physical violent warfare? I'm not aware of any before 9/11.

> in war ... including within the US

one would think that a formal declaration of war (at least minimally specifying who the US is at war with) would be needed otherwise anybody can be killed just under umbrella of "War on Terror" or "War on Drugs" or "War on Littering and Jaywalking"...

> one would think that a formal declaration of war would be needed

The legal existence of a war has established rules in US law, and a Congressional declaration is one way they happen (though not exclusive what you probably mean by a “formal declaration of war”, which suggests magic words).

> otherwise anybody can be killed just under umbrella of "War on Terror" or "War on Drugs" or "War on Littering and Jaywalking"...

The War on Terror has a legal declaration, which is expressly conditioned only on Presidential determinations, so requiring declarations doesn't actually meaningfully prevent that scenario when Congress is feeling lazy.

It seems to me that if we are going to go with that approach then we would need to start actually declaring wars again.

We never stopped declaring war; declarations of war don't require particular magic words; the Afghanistan and Iraq AUMFs, for instance, were each valid conditional (and, in the former case, broadly open-ended) declarations of war.

When in the last 30 years did the US Congress declare an act of war?

> When in the last 30 years did the US Congress declare an act of war?

The grandparent post is a single sentence and identifies two instances that answer that question (they aren't a full answer because there are more examples in that timeframe.)

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