Should the flag protect those that are intent on destroying it?

aq=us. Willingly elastic, the flag claims to protect all of us. The outlays being beyond our means can't matter. "Everybody wants to rule the world", as we know. I despise the violence that seems to be necessary, not only because it's wasteful. Our flags should protect us even when they don't match, y'know: Trot up & say "Hello. No, I'm not going to kill you." ...that kind of shit. It's too bad that the Tower of Babel myth has stood the test of time.

 

Some info on the memo justifying the killing:

I still wonder why the Entebbi principle applied to Osama Bin Laden, but not to Awlaki.

Regardless, I still agree with the decision to strike, and strike decisively.

 

Am I the only one whose unimpressed by legal justifications for problems which seem to largely moral/ethical shortsighted? Any half-assed lawyer can come up with an opinion, written in the most formal of legalese, to justify anything. That lawyer's job is made even easier if his/her opinion is going to be protected by security clearance and likely never subjected to any sort of actionable scrutiny. I could not care less about John Yoo's legal reasoning for justifying torture. Nor could I care less about the jackass who wrote this opinion's reasoning.

<-------------This guy is unpersuaded by secret notes justifying presidential whims written by people whose job it is to write secret notes to justify presidential whims.

 

You must love John Yoo, filth.

 

I think that one of the dumbest things anyone can ever do is ask John Yoo his opinion. Who the fuck cares? I bet if I had a million dollars, I could pay John Yoo to write a legal opinion justifying the fucking holocaust. And assholes would be all like "Huh, very interesting, John Yoo. I now no longer have any qualms about the holocaust, because some lawyer said it was okay."

 

if the holocaust hadn't been justified legally by john yoo types it wouldn't have happened.

 

Just on a sidenote, it may be preferable for you guys to stop the ad hominem and start taking apart the arguments presented, especially with KirStang's quoted article describing the "imminent threat" Awlaki posed to US citizens and my arguments for why intelligence in many cases cannot be subjected to a court of law.

Or, you could continue patting each other on the back and advancing your collective mental masturbation skills.

 

Nvm

 

There's no evidence he posed an imminent threat to US citizens. Propaganda is, at best, a tertiary threat, something that might inspire or otherwise be indirectly involved with real threats. I don't blame Bill O'Reilly for the assassination of Dr. Tiller just because his propaganda played a role in inspiring the attack, as an example. Bill O'Reilly is a massive asshole and tests my belief in freedom of the press, but if he were taken out in a drone strike, I'd jump to his defense (or, more accurately, defense of the law and justice).

And, as we've covered elsewhere, supposed evidence of his involvement in actual attacks hasn't been shared with the public. No imminent threat to be seen here.

 

Yea, because we all know Bill O'Reilly went operational in terminating Dr. Tiller. You know. Providing training and *soliciting* murder.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ast/the-killing-of-anwar-al-awlaki.html#plots

But Hey, I guess big pictures and large graphics means the news source is "stupid" as you put it.

And:

Compare with Bill O'Reilly:

Do you not see a clear and present danger?

 

Willravel

Again, I have provided you with an argumentation as to why most field intelligence must remain secret and not be publicized. If the administration determines Awlaki is an imminent threat to the USA and its citizen (as KirStang's article purported) based on that very same classified field intel, you don't have the means to come up with a substantial and evidence-based argumentation against the actions of the administration.

All you can do here, with the very limited amount of information you have, is do a united circle jerk for the sake of theoretical transparency and ethical principles.

I don't have much time today, so I'll leave it here until tomorrow.

 

My position is that the arguments presented aren't worth refuting. Because the fact that someone can make an argument (a secret one, no less) for a certain action on legal grounds does in no way make that action the correct action to take. And, while I understand that the government keeps secrets because we can't be trusted with them, I don't think that it's prudent to accept as true everything the government says is true, especially when it is attempting to justify something which seems to go against the basic principles upon which this country was founded. Unfortunately, we don't have any way of really verifying claims made by the government because we can't actually be trusted with that information.

The bottom line is that I don't want my government killing citizens without due process when due process becomes inconvenient. The fact that the legal advisers to the president were able to craft a secret memo as to why this is somehow okay doesn't necessarily make it okay within any kind of nonlegal framework; a competent lawyer can craft a legal argument for anything. The fact that the government says Awlaki was an imminent threat doesn't mean shit. These folks said Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. Recent presidents up to and including the current one have a tradition of massaging national security data to support their foreign policy goals.

 

You throw about legal terms like "due process" and then dismiss other relevant legal terms like "imminent threat." Can you even define the procedural due process that you keep bandying about? I'll give you a clue, Mathews vs. Eldridge.

Then broadly claim that, violating sovereign borders by deploying armed forces, potentially causing an international incident, and risking more lives, is merely "an inconvenience." Also, that "lawyers can craft a legal argument for "anything" without addressing the "anything."

There's a balancing test here. Let's discuss that instead of dismissing it outright. I don't like secret memos, but that skirts the issue of whether we should have placed more resources on capturing an Awlaki.

 

I know better than to get in a semantics argument with a lawyer. Don't over think my choice of words. Pretend you don't know all the stuff you know. Does Mathews vs. Eldridge address blowing up buildings with missiles? I'll read it if it does.

I don't want to discuss the balance because I don't think that there's anything to discuss. It's secret memos based on secret evidence vs "Hey, we should really not set a precedent where the president gets one of his lawyers to secretly sign off on killing Americans based on secret information with little or no meaningful oversight."

I don't expect to budge on this.

 

Yes. yes it does. Due Process. The two words you keep bandying about.

If you don't want to take the time to give appropriate weight to counter-arguments, then fine.

 

So a social security case explains the assassination of someone who was, apparently, in the email writing stage of planning an attack on America?

If we can't know specifically what awlaki was doing, we have every right to be suspicious of the balance between the necessity and the expediency of his assassination.

I'm not sure why you are so determined to change anyone's mind when you don't even know the truth yourself.

 

i do not know what a "war on terror" is. but i suppose no-one does, really. if the framework is accepted, then the consequences of it follow--awlaki could be designated a "real and present danger"--so made into a military target--more or less arbitrarily (witness how it happened). the problem it creates for those of us who are not arbitrarily made into military targets is basically the arbitrariness of the decision. it's an ethical debate on the one hand...what side one would come down on is a function of one's assessment of the realness and presentness of the danger awlaki posed---which i don't get, but hey what do i know?----which would, in turn, lean on your understanding of this war on terror fiction. another position could just as easily turn on the mountain of information about extra-legal renditions and uses of---um----harsh interrogation techniques directly and by proxies which make this "war on terror" thing a fast track along which the united states turns into what it's supposed to be opposing---with all the "pragmatic" arguments for doing so understood,----and then you see this decision which involves a us citizen and you think there has to be a line somewhere that this "war on terror" fiction does not cross. and the one that separates citizens from military action seems a pretty good one to make a stand about.

what bothers me about the "war on terror" is that just as it has a largely imaginary enemy, so there's no reason for it to ever end. when is enough? god knows there's lots of dough being made by supplying this "war" against largely imaginary enemies that has no logic to it that would lead it to an end...so what's a little collateral damage? all the circular justifications can be trotted out. but really, it comes to either a procedural matter--which i am pretty sure can be bypassed under the logic kirstang pointed out legally---and the memo is prefunctory, like once someone gets sucked into this machinery it's given that they're a target----so then the argument becomes ethical, utilitarian. i don't see the costs---the erasure of the line that protects citizens from being targets of the military---being outweighed by the benefits---liquidation of awlaki----primarily because i dont see this as advancing us, collectively, toward the end of this farce called "the war on terror".

 

Yea, you might want to stay in your lane there. Let me lay it out really clear for you: MATHEW V. ELDRIDGE DEFINES WHAT PROCEDURAL DUE PROCESS IS REQUIRED.

If you actually knew what you were talking about, you'd know that Mathews v. Eldridge is not limited in applicability to "social security" but what due process is due in almost every procedural due process claim.

But hey, nevermind the legalities right? I mean, that's only what we're talking about here.

 

http://opiniojuris.org/2010/04/08/lets-call-killing-al-awlaki-what-it-is-murder/

here's an argument from a different lawyer. this may be more fun for you to play with, kirstang.

 

I read the wikipedia page. No missiles at all. I'm disappointed. Is your position here that killing American citizens (and the people unlucky enough to be around them at the time) without actually bothering with arrest and/or trial is okay as long as some administrative committee says its okay because that would constitute due process? That we should trust said committee to make just decisions based solely on secret, unverifiable evidence provided by organizations whose job it is to employ deception to achieve policy goals?

This is my point. Legal arguments provide legal justifications. That's it. They're exercises in pursuasiveness. At best, they tell you what is permissible under the law. At their worst, say when drafted in secret by people with conflicts of interest, they're completely worthless.

My position is that your counter arguments are non sequiturs- they're just appeals to authority dressed up like Jack Bauer.