16 ms·

The context that these discussions often lack is that there are situations where it is considered acceptable for law enforcement to kill a suspect. An armed hos

• wehadfun 12y ago
  Excellent point.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• mseebach 12y ago
  There's an very important distinction between killing someone to prevent imminent bodily harm and putting someone on a kill list and sending the drone out to get them. It's the distinctly non-imminent premeditation that makes the difference.
  • clavalle 12y ago
    How does one get on a kill list? I could be wrong but I'd tend to believe it is because they are a clear threat and not because one has poor choice in friends or makes suspicious trips to unusual destinations.
    • Crito 12y ago
      If that was their justification, why would they be so ashamed of it? Why would they hide this justification from us?
      • clavalle 12y ago
        Because they are also hiding it from the enemy. If you know the rules, you can exploit the rules.
        • Crito 12y ago
          How would knowing that the rule is "We kill those who are a clear threat to others" help the enemy? I am pretty sure that they are already operating under the assumption that, because they want to kill others, America wants to kill them. If that is indeed our legal justification for killing them, publicizing it would not modify their behaviour in any way. This isn't about getting the list of people targeted for killing. This is about getting the legal justification for the killings at all. If the justification is as you suspect it is, then there is no value in hiding it. That they are fiercely protecting the justification itself strongly suggests that you are wrong.
          • clavalle 12y ago
            I am pretty sure everyone is aware of that particular rule. But the devil is in the details. How does the US define 'clear threat', exactly, I think would be useful for an enemy to know and possibly exploitable. And I don't think the US is hiding the overall justification which is "These are people who wish to use violence to act against the United States and its citizens to push their own political agenda. In short; terrorists." I mean, these are not people who are running for Mayor in their particular part of the world and we don't like their policy decisions. They are doing things like running training camps where they teach others how to make IEDs.
            • Crito 12y ago
              > "But the devil is in the details. How does the US define 'clear threat', exactly, I think would be useful for an enemy to know and possibly exploitable." Rest assured that anyone who could be considered a terrorist knows that, if they surface on the US's radar, they will be targeted. They take it for granted that they are targeted, because that is the safe assumption to make. > "And I don't think the US is hiding the overall justification which is..." I am not interested in the "PR justification", which is indeed "Turrusts!" I am interested in the legal justification. The only thing that they want us to know of that is that it is secret. If it were nothing out of the ordinary, it would not be so secret. (Also, normally I try to avoid doing this, but since you are being so persistent in using strong wording in your comments, I feel that I don't have any choice: These are not people running training camps or making IEDs; these are people accused of doing those things. The difference is important, because it is the reason we are having this discussion. It is particularly important because it is suspected that their legal justification extends beyond people who have actually allegedly done anything, and in fact also covers "people who have communicated with those who have allegedly done things" or "any 'military-aged' male in the family of anyone who has allegedly done things")
    • gldalmaso 12y ago
      "The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people." https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/the-ns...
    • fixermark 12y ago
      Well, we don't know, because the details are not public. Hence, the call for the disclosure of the memos.
    • mseebach 12y ago
      > I could be wrong but I'd tend to believe it is because they are a clear threat and not because one has poor choice in friends or makes suspicious trips to unusual destinations. I'd love to be able to trust the governments ability to decide who and what is a 'clear threat', it'd make a lot of things a lot easier. But unfortunately history - including fairly recent US history - is chuck full of evidence to the contrary.
      • sokoloff 12y ago
        Not to mention the difference between "clear threat to the country" and "clear threat to the government". To the extent that there is a difference, I'm much more concerned about the former, but worry that the government may (naturally) be more concerned about the latter.
    • shaneofalltrad 12y ago
      It is an algorithm that pinpoints those who will be bad in the present and/or future. I believe the code-name is hydra, but I could be wrong.
      • fixermark 12y ago
        At the risk to my karma, I must state: Please tell me the US government had the foresight to avoid choosing---as the name of a core algorithm employed by its covert services---a name shared by the fictional criminal organization for world domination in the Marvel Comics universe, which is itself opposed by that fiction's analog to America's covert services. Someone in the chain of command is either deeply ignorant of Marvel Comics (completely understandable) or deeply, deeply cynical about the state of the world (completely concerning).
        • Crito 12y ago
          If the name was chosen deliberately, and not randomly by a computer, then it was probably chosen with the mythical beast in mind, not the comics. Hydras were snakes with many heads, and the problem with decentralized terrorist organizations has often been compared to the problem of killing a hydra; every time you cut off a head there seems to be another.
        • TeMPOraL 12y ago
          I'm not sure if there is an algorithm named Hydra; I guess GP is misremembering "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" a little bit (the right names would be Project Insight and/or Zola's Algorithm).
          • smsm42 12y ago
            You are correct, in Marvel universe Hydra is the crypto-nazi org, not the algorithm. The algorithm was developed by a nazi scientist Zola, and Project Insight is the tool of its execution, namely flying carriers with tons of guns (it's pretty hard to imagine more vulnerable technology for world domination but whatever, they crash spectacularly and that's pretty much the point :)
    • ChrisBland 12y ago
      Its the same issue as the 'no-fly' list, you don't know if you are on it, so you can't provide a defense for yourself. There is no way to challenge you name on the list (short of years of trials). The recent case of the woman proved that they can mess these things up and get them wrong, so imagine them getting it wrong due to a similar name or misunderstanding and you end up on a kill list. So the worry is that a kill list becomes like a no fly list, you don't know you're on it until you hear a drone's missile coming at you.
    • njharman 12y ago
      > How does one get on a kill list? Meta-data. And no, that is not a snarky joke. Reference: recent ex-NSA's (chief?) quoted revelation.
      • clavalle 12y ago
        Meta data does not mean 'lesser data'. Meta data could paint a very clear picture.
        • Karunamon 12y ago
          Indeed - what's funny (or would be funny if it wasn't so depressing) is how the NSA spokespeople try to spin it as such. "Oh, we're not monitoring your calls, that would be bad! Just simple meta-data, nothing to worry about at all..."
          • Terr_ 12y ago
            "Metadata -- It's so vague that we're not actually invading your privacy, while being so revealing that we could murder you because of what we saw."
        • njharman 12y ago
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstantial_evidence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstantial_evidence
    • usefulcat 12y ago
      A recent Radiolab episode, "60 Words", investigates exactly this question, among other things. There is a kill list, and decisions about who is or is not on that list are made by non-elected officials. Worse still, the Congressional oversight committee whose job is ostensibly to oversee this sort of thing apparently did not even know about the existence of the list until 2013, at which point the list had probably existed for around a dozen years.
    • mfisher87 12y ago
      Does it matter how they got on a kill list or what the criteria is (in determining whether there's a difference between these two scenarios. Yes, it matters overall)? You're comparing killing an armed hostage taker and saving a person whose life is in imminent danger to bombing someone halfway across the world when we have no idea what they're doing or what they will be doing; all we know is what we think they have done and what we think they will do. If there's a hostage taker pointing a gun at someone's face, I can see what we're trying to do: step in at the last minute and prevent someone who is already visibly committing a crime (brandishing a weapon, threat of lethal force) from killing a person. Some unarmed guy outdoors, though? From a mile away? Because a committee put him on a list? What was he about to do that we stopped?
    • orbifold 12y ago
      I'm sure the 16 year old son of Anwar Awl Alaki, who was also killed in a drone strike, was not only guilty by association.
    • Fuxy 12y ago
      The same way you get on the no fly list either put there by well informed individuals with a lot of proof or by accident by a police officer. The point is there is no oversight the president can just kill whoever he want not to mention it shouldn't be legal to begin with. There's a reason for a trial and part of it is weeding out procedural mistakes or abuses of power.
    • TallGuyShort 12y ago
      If it's because of a clear threat, perhaps they should make that legal case.
    • Shivetya 12y ago
      The concern being that we don't know is what makes this matter such a grave concern. Something of this nature, if decided as legal, needs to be enshrined in law so there can be no question of its use, lest we find ourselves facing the death penalty for traffic tickets.
    • zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
      One question: why do we have a judicial system and public laws and all that at all? Could the same kind of people that can be relied upon to only put people on those kill lists that are a clear threat not also take care of determining all other punishments and stuff? I fail to see what all of that complexity is needed for in other cases when it's apparently unnecessary for putting people on kill lists!?
    • bcoates 12y ago
      Well, in the case we're discussing, saying mean things about America and Obama on YouTube was the guys major claim to fame. There may have been credible intelligence that he was going to start putting al-Qaeda associated .gifs on Tumblr but of course something that sensitive is still Top Secret.
      • pessimizer 12y ago
        This is important: I don't even think that the administration ever claimed that that Al-Awlaki has had any known direct connection to a terrorist attack. He was targeted because he publicly advocated and supported them. His speech was enough for a death sentence for him and his 16 year old son, two Americans. And the government doesn't feel like it's obligated to make a public case for what they've done.
    • Zigurd 12y ago
      "We kill people based on metadata" Great. A lot of new followers for my books are from Pakistan.
    • fleitz 12y ago
      Obama takes out a pen and writes your name on a piece of paper with kill list at the top.
  • moskie 12y ago
    Yes, that's a great point. But the nuances of that distinction are not covered well in the argument of this article. Which was kinda my point, that boiling this down to "the government shouldn't kill people without a trial" misses a lot of nuances that need to be taken into account.
    • streptomycin 12y ago
      I disagree. This is covered by the article: In battle, combatants engaged in war against America get no due process and may lawfully be killed. But citizens not in a battlefield, however despicable, are guaranteed a trial by our Constitution. It's frustrating that, after reading all the other comments here and at the NY Times website, it seems like at least half of the people disagreeing with this article are doing so because they didn't read that passage.
      • genericuser 12y ago
        Or rather they are talking about situations like the hostage example which they consider as taking place 'not in a battlefield'.
      • moskie 12y ago
        I read it, and read that passage. And I don't believe those two sentences adequately cover the issue. Perhaps this discussion is tainted by the submission title: "Show us the legal case for executing a United States citizen without a trial." The hostage taker hypothetical is an example that goes against that. That person would be a citizen, not in a battlefield, guaranteed the right to a trial, executed by the government, without a trial. The article does not do a good job of distinguishing that example from Awl Alaki. Meaning I think the central argument isn't all that good, and needs to be more specific / nuanced.
      • rayiner 12y ago
        The quoted passage is inaccurate. Citizens are guaranteed due process, on or off the battlefield. In situations involving the deprivation of life, that almost always means a trial. But a trial is not an inviolate requirement. What level of process "is due" is a context-sensitive question.
  • d23 12y ago
    This is a guy who was actively involved in plots that did cause bodily harm, and continued to say he had no interest in being captured and would actively fight with violence any attempts to do so. If we have a case for using lethal force at all, I'd say this would be an appropriate instance.
    • bradleyjg 12y ago
      Has proof of that he was involved in any plots been publicly presented anywhere? Based on the public record it looks like he was killed for exercising his First Amendment rights, albiet in a repugnant fashion.
      • wavefunction 12y ago
        This would all be a moot point if there had been a trial held (even in absentia). These guys are destroying the best parts of America because they're lazy, they're incompetent and/or they don't respect the Rule of Law. Any of these three reasons is sufficient not to allow anyone involved in these criminal acts to prosper, flourish, or succeed in any meaningful way in our country.
    • fleitz 12y ago
      Yes, and when we find out someone has murdered someone we send the police to apprehend them. Sometimes the interaction between the police and the suspect leads to the suspect being shot and an investigation takes place as to whether that was warranted. I see no way in which the drones sent could be reasonably explained as attempting to apprehend or arrest the subject.
      • Canada 12y ago
        > Yes, and when we find out someone has murdered someone we send the police to apprehend them. Is there any proof or evidence? It seems the lack of evidence made public is why people are upset.
        • fleitz 12y ago
  • anigbrowl 12y ago
    There's an equally important one between executing someone in your custody and assassinating someone high up the chain of command in a paramilitary force in hostile territory. His citizenship is neither here not there for me. If it's acceptable to target foreign al-Qaeda leaders in overseas theaters (which I believe it is, in many cases), then it's equally acceptable to do the same to an American who chooses to take up such a position.
• craigching 12y ago
  Could we not have captured Anwar Awl Alaki in some form? Could we not have had the Yemen government issue an arrest warrant and have him arrested? Could we not have tried him in absentia? Unfortunately I don't know the answer to all of these and I'm not sure it's possible to know the answer.
  • rayiner 12y ago
    He was on Yemen's "most wanted" list. However, the government of Yemen is weak, and he had the protection of powerful tribes.
  • fleitz 12y ago
    Given what happened to Osama and the CIA rendition program I'd assume that it's possible apprehend a subject in a foreign land.
• waffle_ss 12y ago
  The "hostage taker" analogy is a terrible one. There is no situation in law enforcement where police are allowed to kill a suspect immediately on sight, regardless of circumstance. When Obama added Anwar al-Awlaki to his personal "kill list" (a decision he said was "an easy one"), it became open season on al-Awlaki.
  • bradleyjg 12y ago
    A better analogy are the fatwas issued by the Ayatollahs of Iran.
    • chimeracoder 12y ago
      I really like this analogy, and I'm going to steal it. It really drives the point home. I do have to be a pedant though and point out that "fatwa" just means "legal opinion" - in common parlance, we use it to mean "death sentence" because we think of people like Salman Rushdie (whom Khomeini sentenced to death under a fatwa in 1989). If anything, this makes it worse - at least Khomeini had to provide some legal justification for his decision[0], whereas Obama has refused to do even that. [0] A legal justification under Islamic law, which many would agree is itself arbitrary, but that's still marginally better than "trust me, it's legal, but I'm not going to tell you why".
      • bradleyjg 12y ago
        I was aware of that, Shia canon law is a pretty fascinating system. If you can figure out a way to keep the pithy nature of the comparison while improving the accuracy, I'm all ears.
    • notahacker 12y ago
      Or the Marques of Reprisal proposed by... Rand Paul's dad http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.R.+3076:_blank http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.R.+3076:_blank Eschewing the rather more obvious argument that the US military's policy of unannounced drone strikes in ostensibly neutral countries could prove counter-productive, we've got this rather absurd line of argument that someone who has to all intents and purposes publicly declared war on the US, is well beyond the reach of domestic law enforcement and actively encouraging militant attacks on the US military deserves due process and a civilian trial because he was born in America. But he's happy to endorse his fathers' proposal to reward rather less surgical strikes by dubious third party bounty hunters without any more semblance of due process, provided the alleged terrorists aren't American.
• rayiner 12y ago
  I don't like this line of thinking, because it blurs the very real distinction between military actions on foreign soil and police actions on American soil. Those two things are, in history and practice, utterly different.
  • fennecfoxen 12y ago
    This may be relevant to the legal opinion in question, too! But it would be nice to know what exactly it said either way, wouldn't it?
    • rayiner 12y ago
      Yes, of course. I think it's crucial to share these legal memoranda with the public.
  • angersock 12y ago
    Looking at the footage of cops in humvees patrolling the streets after the Boston marathon, life in DC eight years ago, and even as far back as actions in the nineties, I'm not sure that the distinction is as clearly delineated as any of us would prefer.
    • rayiner 12y ago
      I find those activities troubling and I don't think it serves the purpose of ameliorating them to pull international terrorists under the umbrella of police and criminal enforcement. The protections available to ordinary criminal defendants has already become quite eroded and distorted by the necessity of accommodating enforcement against organized crime and drug kingpins within the same framework.
      • tptacek 12y ago
        I think you have to be a little careful here, because while the distinction between military action and police action is a good one, the classification of valid responses to terrorism doesn't necessarily follow. Some effective responses to terrorism have been, essentially, police work. And, obviously, some very ineffective responsive responses to terrorism have been military.
• Xylakant 12y ago
  For a comparison: In Germany a sniper or a law enforcement officer killing a suspect is not necessarily specifically allowed in the law (3 out of 16 states don't have any special regulation concerning this). The legal theory to still allow shooting a hostage taker is called "(Aussergesetzlicher) Notstand", the situation where to protect one person from harm you need to inflict harm to another person. This does not make the action itself legal, but the person goes unpunished. It's actually a legal concept that I prefer over permitting killings by law enforcement.
• graylights 12y ago
  The key point is the trial. You can't hold a trial in a hostage situation. They could have held a trial for Anwar al-awlaki. Once decided by trial that he committed treason, military action could be justified. The problem is how that trial would be conducted in absentia would have been a farce. The government would also be concerned about its classified evidence. Worse, if the trial led to acquittal, it would have legitimized his cause. An acquittal is a scary prospect of bringing out other copycats. But more scary is executing someone without trial that would have been acquitted. But we'll never know. They should have held a trial.
  • timsally 12y ago
    Anwar al-Awlaki could have had a trial anytime he wanted. He simply had to go to the American Embassy and turn himself in. As things stood when he was killed, it was impossible to bring him back for a trial without an unacceptably high risks to the people in the armed forces who would have had to capture him. If you wanted some insight on the complexities of operating within Yemen, I suggest The Black Banners by Ali Soufan. The subject of the book is the events leading up to 9/11 and Soufan was one of the FBI's top agents and strong critic enhanced interrogation. He invested the USS Cole bombing in Yemen and he covers the difficulty of working in country quite well.
    • rhizome 12y ago
      Anwar al-Awlaki could have had a trial anytime he wanted. How so? He hadn't been charged with a crime.
  • sp332 12y ago
    They would somehow have to serve papers telling him about the trial, and offer him safe passage to the trial. Then give him a reasonable deadline to show up. If he doesn't show, hand down a default judgement and proceed to sentencing...
    • dublinben 12y ago
      You can't render a default judgment in criminal law. That's depriving the accused of their due process.
• bcoates 12y ago
  IANAL, but I don't think there is any particular law allowing the police to use deadly force -- they just have the same self-defense and defense-of-others exception to murder laws that everyone else has. Self defense doesn't apply to threats like Anwar al-Awlaki that aren't immediate, even if they're extreme and inevitable--I can't shoot a guy for preparing to blow up a bomb an hour from now. It's not the government killing people, it's an individual cop, and if they do so unlawfully the criminal exposure is personal. (In practice, prosecutors are reluctant to actually go after cops in anything but an extreme case, but this isn't unique to police killings)
  • moskie 12y ago
    The main difference that jumps to mind in your example of a guy building a bomb, is that arresting him is a feasible option.
    • Zigurd 12y ago
      You are confusing the show "24" with reality. In reality there are no ticking time bombs.
• guelo 12y ago
  It would be good to know if that is Obama's legal justification, wouldn't it?
• bambax 12y ago
  We're not discussing the actual rules yet; the ACLU is asking to see the memo where the argument was supposedly written. If and when the memo is produced, we can discuss its content; until it is, we should simply ask for it. The whole concept of "secret legal memos" is the most preposterous thing I can think of. Secret orders may be a necessary evil; but secret legal justifications? What could that even mean??
  • AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    > Secret orders may be a necessary evil; but secret legal justifications? What could that even mean?? The argument is that by disclosing the legal justification you give information to the targets. For example, if the argument for allowing a drone killing required an explicit threat to commit a violent crime by the target, targets could know what to keep their mouths shut about in order to avoid qualifying. It's a weak argument. But hey, maybe they can keep that argument secret too and then no one will be able to challenge it.
    • dublinben 12y ago
      For the same reason that we don't accept secret laws, we shouldn't accept secret "legal justifications."
    • MichaelApproved 12y ago
      That argument is beyond weak. It sounds to me like it's saying "don't tell someone what the law is so that they'll be more likely to break that law, allowing you to kill them." If there's a law that's punishable by death, it better be publicly known.
    • threatofrain 12y ago
      That argument sounds rather dark, as the same thing which illuminates the criminals -- guess what -- also illuminates the people. And journalists, lawyers, and associations that digest information for the people. So now the overwhelming majority of the world goes dark on the law because a minority of uniquely dangerous criminals are lawyer-like Westboro Baptists with bombs. If terrorists wish to confine their behaviors to the technicalities of western law because they would rather get arrested than shot, that is actually a highly desirable outcome. We should seek to capture all criminals alive and decently, and gather what data they have to attack other networked crime. Seriously, law-conscious Westboro Baptist terrorists would be a positive development. This is no different from a criminal learning about the circumstances in which a cop might shoot them, and thus opting to drop their gun in certain situations. The criminal is being more legally conscious as part of their strategy. While wrongdoers who play legal strategy can be a frustrating nuisance, but the alternative is secret legal memos, which I find more frightening.
• pravda 12y ago
  >What is the rule that says that could be OK, but killing Anwar Awl Alaki is not? The Magna Carta? Oh no, must be the Fifth Amendment. "No person shall be deprived of life ... without due process of law."
  • rayiner 12y ago
    "Due process" is not legal jargon. The word "due" means aporopriate or warranted by the circumstances. What "process is due" when the person hides out in Yemen for a decade evading attempts to give him more substantial process? Maybe a trial is still required, but its not a slam dunk argument.
• belorn 12y ago
  > What would have been the consequences of doing nothing? I did not expect to see such arguments on HN. Its more commonly seen in bad B plots of TV shows where the malicious doctor explain that he is saving people by releasing a deadly plague, and the deadly consequences of doing nothing would kill many many more. An sniper may take out an armed hostage taker because the hostage is in imminent danger, and the sniper reasonably believes that deadly force is the only possible way to protect someones life. Can you honestly say that about Anwar Awl Alaki?
• 7952 12y ago
  That is a defence of justifiable homicide. It should be up to the court to determine if it is a valid defence. But it is still homicide.
• nedwin 12y ago
  It's impossible to have a rational argument about this because the legal justification for executing a US citizen outside of a battle zone has not been published. This is the whole basis of the article.
• Spooky23 12y ago
  The cops are fundamentally the same asyou as a citizen. Deadly force is justified in response to a threat to human life either yours or another. The difference is that police have specific training and rules of engagement, and they insert themselves into situations. I think the fundamental problem is the definition of imminent threat to human life and the fog of war. Unlike a situation where a person point a gun at a policeman, imminent threat in a geopolitical stance is hard to assess. Issac Asimov explored many of these issues in the Robot novels. How do you judge whether an individual is an imminent threat to your country? Or humanity? The answers aren't necessarily black and white.
• grey-area 12y ago
  What is in question here is not whether the state can in some circumstances kill, and if this was one of those circumstances (that question comes later). The preliminary question is whether the state is allowed to assassinate citizens without trial outside wartime, and refuse to reveal why. That's the position of the Obama administration - you have no right to question their assassinations, you must simply accept that the government knows who, when, and how to kill. That's the question Rand Paul is asking in this essay (and a few others have asked before him), that's why he says 'show us the legal case', and talks about the rights of all American citizens to a trial by jury rather than 'this action was wrong'. If you accept that the state has the power to kill without justification or investigation (before or after the fact), a lot of the other rights you are supposed to have as a citizen become meaningless. The rule of law (especially restricting the state) is vital to protect citizens without the resources to fight the state. That's why this first question is so important, whatever you think of Anwar Awl Alaki. The rule of law restricts the activities of the state and makes it less powerful and effective, that is as it should be, so you shouldn't argue that this makes our government less able to kill people quickly - that's the point. Moving on to the question you address of whether it was actually legal or justified - typically killings outside the judicial process and outside of wartime are viewed as assassinations and very difficult to justify; I'm not aware of evidence that Anwar Awl Alaki was planning a particular attack or involved in one, and the killing of his son a few weeks later along with some other teenage friends is based on even more tenuous evidence and justification (if any). We didn't mean to kill him is not a reasonable excuse for a government agency outside of war, and to kill someone like a hostage taker a government agency would have to submit to an investigation afterward. Killing without trial or investigation means your government can assassinate citizens at will.
• smsm42 12y ago
  Just as an illustration: http://miami.cbslocal.com/2014/05/06/police-shooting-frenzy-raises-concerns/ http://miami.cbslocal.com/2014/05/06/police-shooting-frenzy-... 23 policemen shot two unarmed people stuck in a vehicle 377 times. One of them wasn't even accused of any crime. None of them got any chance to surrender. And that's not even the worst case - at least here one of them was a dangerous criminal. But there are many cases of police fatally shooting mentally ill, disturbed people or just somebody that looked dangerous to the police officer at the wrong place in the wrong time. So there's no question there is an ample precedent of killing US citizens without trial by US law enforcement, and even in situations where they reasonable could be subdued. The question can be only - can US do to the terrorists the same it does to a robber or a mentally disturbed person?
• duncan_bayne 12y ago
  Well, from a philosophical perspective: a sniper acting to save a life is acting in an emergency, whereas (presumably) an assassination ordered by the President (welcome to 2014, kid, please check your optimism and youthful enthusiasm at the desk) isn't. "In an emergency situation, men’s primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions (to reach dry land, to put out the fire, etc.)." http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emergencies.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emergencies.html My take on that: under metaphysically normal circumstances, a court process is entirely appropriate. If you're in the position of the sniper, though (armed, and in a position to take a shot to save an innocent life) it's entirely rational to take the shot, and hope like hell that you were right.