Can A President Use Drones Against Journalists?
The New Yorker
By Amy Davidson
In thinking about drones strikes and targeted killings, it can be instructive to picture them hitting people you know, either deliberately or as collateral damage. Doing so may not even be much of a stretch, nor should it be. It’s already the case for people living in parts of Pakistan and Yemen.
Last week, I moderated a live chat on the ethics of drone warfare with Michael Walzer, the author of “Just and Unjust Wars”; Jeff McMahan, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers, who has also written about just-war theory; and The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, who is a master of the subject. The discussion took some interesting turns, touching on the idea of a secret committee that the President would be asked to check with before killing an American and the question of whether China would ever assert the right to call in a drone strike on a dissident living in San Francisco.
After Walzer and McMahan suggested some criteria for strikes—criminality, risk of American lives—I asked them this:
Doesn’t a journalist working abroad who is about to release classified information about a war crime—thus committing a crime—that will provoke retribution or a break with allies—endangering Americans—fit this definition of a target?
Walzer didn’t initially think that it did. The danger to Americans, he said, had “to come directly not indirectly from the target before he can be a target.”
McMahan had a different view:
If the release of classified information really would seriously endanger the lives of innocent people and the only way to prevent the release of the information was to kill the journalist, then the journalist would be liable to attack. But the evidential standards in such a case would be very high and would be unlikely to be satisfiable in practice.
“So Michael wouldn’t kill the journalist but Jeff just might…” I posted, and the chat moved on. But the question of the journalist is worth dwelling on, because it gets at some of the fundamental problems with the targeted-killing program. Who is “dangerous”? And who decides? A Justice Department white paper laying out the circumstances in which the President can kill Americans talks not only about Al Qaeda but also about “associated forces,” not clearly defined.
***
This is good:
PHOTO OF THE DAY - Don't Drone Me Bro!
Read more here:
Obama's Rules For Assassinating U.S. Citizens
Photos by William Banzai7
Mar 8, 2013 at 11:05 PM
Reader Comments (11)
New Yorker LIVE Chat: THE ETHICS OF DRONE WARFARE
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/02/live-chat-the-ethics-of-drone-warfare.html
It's a simple question that was put to John Brennan repeatedly during his confirmation hearings. The answer "no" should have been immediate. It wasn't. Brennan equivocated without ever answering the question. Glenn Greenwald has been all over this issue lately...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/22/obama-brennan-paul-assassinations-filibuster
There is no power that any dictator possesses that Obama has not claimed for himself. That includes murder. This has been apparent for well over a year. Amicus George Washington has written about it extensively.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/constitutional-expert-president-obama-says-that-he-can-kill-you-on-his-own-discretion-he-can-jail-you-indefinitely-on-his-own-discretion.html
The so-called drone court is wholly unconstitutional and is designed to dupe the dull side of the knife drawer with a false sheen of legality. It is lipstick on a murderous pig.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/9886637/Revealed-al-Qaedas-22-tips-for-dodging-drones.html
What a travesty.
http://warisacrime.org/content/black-churches-condemn-obama-administrations-drone-policy-murder-and-evil
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/02/montana-votes-20-0-in-favor-of-anti.html
so now exposing a crime IS the crime? indeed WORSE than the crime?? So yes, Lets DO shoot the messenger...
most of the postulates in this piece wreak of the same sophistry Dershowitz used in 2002 when he dripped the first few drops of "its right to torture 'if it can prevent a bigger crime'..." No end to this slippery slope and no govt crime so brazen or egregious that it will inconvenience the American people to turn off their TVs and take action to stop it. The rank & file who enable all of this by their govt are unfathomably corrupt. Even under M.E. dictatorships they move their moral behinds and protest abuse.
Here? We prefer HBO.
This is a society that deserves every bit of Karma that is coming to it.
This would all be terribly comical if the consequences of being a comic were not soon to be death.
Yes. Next question.