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Right, and we quickly get into the grey area. If the US military has strong evidence that someone overseas is planning terrorist attacks on the US, or US forces

• jkaplowitz 6y ago
  It certainly can get into grey areas. None of those grey areas pertain to roles like the US citizen journalist which this article is about. One helpful analogy is to imagine what would happen if we entirely removed the foreign flavor, since after all we're discussing the attempted killing of a US citizen by the US government. Suppose instead that the US military had strong evidence that entirely domestic groups, unlinked to any global extremist Islamist movements, were doing communications or logistics in support of a planned attack a domestic US military base. Maybe this hypothetical attack is due to dissatisfaction with, or skepticism of the legitimacy of, the government in power. My guess as to what would happen in that scenario: law enforcement would be directed to arrest the people involved and hold them without bail for criminal trial, and would be authorized to use whatever force is necessary if there is physical resistance, including lethal force if necessary. The goal would just be to arrest, however, with killing simply accepted as a possible accidental result. Something similar would likely have been appropriate here, albeit with the involvement of the military due to the location outside the US and the high likelihood of violent resistance.