Posted on 07/11/2015 5:30:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
First there was Pablo Escobar, the once notorious head of the Medellin drug cartel in Colombia.
I have it on good authority from a high placed source that he was killed by a member of the US Special Forces. The US government doesn’t admit to this, but it does acknowledge the role of US forces in locating Escobar and in destroying the Medellin cartel.
Where did they get the authority to do that? The Constitution gives the Congress the authority to declare war, but Congress has never declared war on Colombia. Come to think of it, neither has any US president.
I don’t doubt that Escobar deserved to die. He was a psychopathic killer himself and his drug trade destroyed many lives. But the destruction of the Medellin cartel had no effect of the price of cocaine in the United States. And even if it did, where is there any official document giving US presidents the right to go around the world killing people – even people who deserve to die?
Then there was Osama bin Laden. From what I can tell, the movie Zero Dark Thirty got the facts pretty much right. Seal Team Six had no intention of bringing him back alive. They brought a body bag with them and they intended to fill it.
Bin Laden was not armed when they found him. Yet he was not asked to surrender. He was not read his Miranda rights. There was no attempt whatsoever to take him prisoner. Our guys just went in and shot him. And then they shot him a couple of more times, just to make sure he was dead.
From what I can tell, this is not unusual. I don’t doubt for one moment that bin Laden deserved to die. Nor do I doubt the patriotism of the Special Forces. They risk their lives for you and me. They serve their country admirably.
But it’s time that we acknowledge who they are and what they do. They are licensed to kill. And that’s what they do. When they shoot, they don’t wound people. They rarely take prisoners. As a general rule, they don’t leave any witnesses.
In “Seal Team Six: A Secret History of Quiet killing And Blurred Lines,” New York Times reporters summarized an exhaustive investigation of what the Special Forces do and how they do it:
Team 6 has successfully carried out thousands of dangerous raids that military leaders credit with weakening militant networks, but its activities have also spurred recurring concerns about excessive killing and civilian deaths.
Afghan villagers and a British commander accused SEALs of indiscriminately killing men in one hamlet; in 2009, team members joined C.I.A. and Afghan paramilitary forces in a raid that left a group of youths dead and inflamed tensions between Afghan and NATO officials. Even an American hostage freed in a dramatic rescue has questioned why the SEALs killed all his captors.
Then there are the drones. The US government admits that our drones have killed innocents and it doesn’t even pretend that who we target is always the victim we kill. Drones do from the air, what the Special Forces do on the ground. They do not aid in capturing suspects, or bringing anyone to justice. Their only purpose is to kill. And they are killing in such countries as Yemen and Pakistan – countries we don’t even pretend to be at war with.
The act of ordering someone killed from the White House – someone not wearing a uniform and not in formal combat -- has gone on for a long time. But it has really escalated under Barack Obama. People of all political persuasions should be concerned about that, but what is really puzzling is how all this is being viewed from the left.
In an editorial applauding the assassination of bin Laden, The New York Times quoted President Obama as saying “justice has been done.” But then the same editorial went on to say:
Much will be made of the fact that the original tip came from detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There is no evidence that good intelligence like this was the result of secret detentions or abuse and torture. Everything suggests the opposite.
Think about that. Both President Obama and the New York Times have criticized the Bush administration for “torture.” (They water boarded three prisoners.) Both think that the detentions at Guantanamo are violations of civil rights. Both think that if we capture one of the bad guys, they should have all the rights of ordinary criminals.
But if we kill someone, that is just fine and dandy.
And public policy has conformed to the left’s peculiar view of justice. These days we are not capturing bad guys. We are not detaining them. We are not questioning them.
We are just killing them. And, of course, we hope we killed the right guys.
As the saying goes, “Kill em all...Let God sort em out.”
Speaking of psychopathic killers, most any SWAT team that goes into the wrong house and kills people there, or puts flashbang grenades onto sleeping infants does so without any remorse, without any change in behavior and without any punishment, my point being that the whole War On Drugs is also a psychopathic killer - and one that is much more dangerous to innocent Americans than the drug trade is.
(Osama Bin Laden)—He was not read his Miranda rights.—
Regardless of whatever the merits of this article might be, this is a foolish statement.
We need for Congress to declare war on the jihadis. Openly and formally.
Once that is done, then there should be no more concern about “collateral damage”. During WW2, the last war that we unequivocally won, we destroyed entire cities worth of civilians in order to accomplish our objectives.
Our enemies surrendered because they had not the slightest doubt that we were willing to exterminate them completely if they didn’t surrender.
The US also did not declare war on the Barbary pirates. But we still killed a whole bunch of them.
The notion that attacks on Islamist groups are not constitutional is silly. Congress authorized the President, shortly after 9/11, to take the fight to the enemy.
We may not have formally declared war on these countries or groups, but they most certainly have declared war on us. They’ve been at war with us for well over 20 years now.
I do agree that it’s silly to claim that it is always and forever and self-evidently wrong to hurt our enemies, but it’s perfectly okay to kill them without warning.
Congress hasn't declared war since 1941. There's a reason for this. World War II was the last time the United States of America treated foreign countries as sovereign states. Now, we are a global empire and treat foreign countries as territories and possessions. The U.S. government doesn't declare war anymore because it isn't interested in actually winning a war that might destroy something that we see as ours.
This is why a modern military campaign is treated as a police action aimed at quelling unrest. There probably wasn't a huge difference between the U.S. military presence in Baghdad in 2005 and a National Guard presence in Ferguson or Baltimore in 2015.
Pantywaist.
Where do we find these non-men? Are they just the products of breeding 4Fs and draft-dodgers?
If you kill one who kills many it’s fine and dandy it’s not the first time it’s happened.
It also gives Congress the authority to issue letters of marque and reprisal. In that day, those were means of covert operations against others and they were short term strikes against others. Both were less than 'declared war', but they were a nasty experience for those on the receiving end.
> The US also did not declare war on the Barbary pirates. But we still killed a whole bunch of them.
Lt. Presley O’Bannon’s attack force at Tripoli on the Barbary Coast consisted of seven Marines, two Navy midshipmen and a whole bunch of local mercenaries paid for by the US Government. No declaration of war was needed for this small a group. They’re a lot like our Special Ops people today.
Stopped reading when I realized zed this was NY Times piece. Not to be believed under any circumstance.
How did you conclude that? Googling the opening phrase finds this article on Townhall, FR, and a few aggregators - but not the Slimes.
Author John C. Goodman needs to get over himself.
So do forum members who share his misgivings.
The conceit that the United States is superior to all other countries (or was in the past) by virtue of its moral underpinnings alone, is insupportable. Bad enough that Left/Progressives believe it; it’s much more distressing to see conservatives accepting it. One used to think conservatives owned a more realistic, less sentimental vision of the world.
No nation has ever believed that the US is so steeped in righteousness. People in other countries think Americans are lying when they hear the protestations. Or they suspect subterfuge. The notion that others will look on our behavior, perceive that we are leading by example, and become so dazzled that they give up their old ways and spontaneously covert to ours, never squares with a real outcome.
Those who believe it is more important to be moral than effective, have gotten the interpretation upside down.
The only permissible approach: first, defeat your assailant. Then, worry about morality. If you invert the sequence, you may not survive the encounter, and all talk of morality stops.
Those who wring their hands about the moral probity of this or that action are not worthy leaders, nor are they a light dispelling the darkness of ignorance and evil.
They are are, rather, a drag on the efforts of those of us who have the understanding, ability, and willpower to do the job.
By what self-arrogated right do they presume to put the rest of us at risk?
“Bin Laden was not armed when they found him.”
So what, neither were many of the people murdered on 9/11/2001
“Yet he was not asked to surrender.”
Bang bang bang, stop or I’ll shoot!!! Uh ohhh, did I get that sequence wrong??? Oh well...
“He was not read his Miranda rights.”
First off, he’s dead, and second he is not a US citizen, and third, he was found on foreign soil...
“There was no attempt whatsoever to take him prisoner.”
Again, so what’s yer point???
“Our guys just went in and shot him.”
Yep, yea!!! I like happy endings...
“And then they shot him a couple of more times, just to make sure he was dead.”
Ok, so what’s the point here kimo-squeemy???
James Bond was picking up a little extra cash.
“Speaking of psychopathic killers, most any SWAT team that goes into the wrong house and kills people there, or puts flashbang grenades onto sleeping infants does so without any remorse, without any change in behavior and without any punishment, my point being that the whole War On Drugs is also a psychopathic killer - and one that is much more dangerous to innocent Americans than the drug trade is.”
Thank you, I have said essentially the same thing to some people face to face and had them look at me as if they think I am nuts. The “War on Drugs” is NOT stopping the drug traffic, in fact I would not be surprised to learn that it is increasing it but it is causing a lot of deaths of innocent people. We kill innocents with raids on the wrong house etc and imprison people for selling drugs that are, in some cases, less harmful than a lot of prescription drugs are but we won’t even try to shut down the border traffic. Meanwhile we have people trying to stop the sale of Sudafed without prescription even though ninety percent of the meth is brought across the border.
The whole approach to law and enforcement is getting crazier and crazier. Now the state wants to collect sales tax on flea market sales and they will wind up collecting nearly nothing in taxes but will rely on fines to pay the cost of the effort. All the while the federal government chooses which laws to obey according to what is convenient.
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