Hubris?

A new piece up by Bill Moyers on The Hubris of the Drones. An opinion piece, but with many good links as well.

And Slate has not one but two pieces about drones today. The first discusses how politispeak in the State of the Union address obscured rather than revealed the Administration's drone policy.  And Desmond Tutu's objection to the idea of a drone court being floated in some parts takes up a topic I've been wondering about myself. Why all the attention on American deaths by drone? Why does due process begin and end with American citizenship?

...I'm editing this to add yet another interesting story--the ACLU and the Tea Party are aligning to oppose the use of armed drones. Read all about it HERE.

 

Drone strikes legalese

Things have been moving pretty fast and furious on the drone strikes policy front--faster, in fact, than this particular blogger has had time to post. For the moment, though, let me just link you to Slate's piece on how the current administration has succumbed to the penchant for legalese to justify doing whatever the heck it wants to do in pursuing its targets. You can find it HERE .

Rachel Maddow clip on drone white paper

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Bill Moyers and the Drone Ranger

I've been a little lax on this blog lately, partly because I'm not entirely sure why I should bother, but probably equally because I tend to like Obama in general and was happy he was reelected. But if anything, that only makes it more disconcerting that he has let himself become more and more identified with drone warfare.

In fact, in this article Bill Moyers and Michael Winship from Nation of Change dub him "The Drone Ranger". The material on drones and an investigation of their legality is in the second half.

The first commenter there does raise an ethical question, though, and one that I think is part of the administration's thinking on this. Isn't it better not to risk American lives in pursuit of our enemies when possible?  How would a manned attack on an enemy be better?

My own initial reaction is that less risk for the pursuer means less caution in the outcome. For a start. But of course my real objection here is to hunting people down and killing them (and sometimes those who happen to be nearby) without due process. The blanket excuse of being at war on some kind of permanent footing seems a very slippery slope.