You aren't really interested in learning the strategy implemented to combat the terrorist who plan to kill you and other American citizens. You don't really care about the rules of war and the international laws that govern how a nation can defend itself. Your OP and reading through this thread it is obvious you and other posters are perfectly willing to dispagage and attack the people who are tasked with protecting you because you hate the guy who the American people elected twice to be President and have a warped kind of sick need to show it. You sit at a keyboard and insinuate that the people who wake up every day determined to find, capture or kill those who are trying to kill you and your loved ones are evil monsters that seek out innocent civilians to murder. You complain about the fact that on occasions they have to make gut wrenching difficult decisions that they have to live with their entire lives to occomplish the mission they are tasked with, which is to protect your sorry ass. If people like you and some of the posters on this thread were given the task we would all be hiding in our homes except for when we went to funerals of people killed in terrorist attacks. Boston like bombings would be weekly occurances. You would be scared to take a train or plane anywhere. Death and destruction in the homeland would become routine.
Campy,
You seem to misunderstand where I'm coming from, so let me make it very clear. I do not understand this Administration's policy regarding terrorists or terrorism. No one has been able to logically explain it, including you.
I am insinuating that Obama has political motives for who gets summarily executed via drone, versus identical terrorists that get full due process rights. If you can provide information that can clearly specify how those decisions are made, I would appreciate it. Otherwise, it looks completely arbitrary to me, and very political as well.
Well first of all, I disagree that political motives are involved. The President is handed a document to approve and sign that gives a military or intelligence agency legal authority to destroy a target that those authorities have determined pose a threat to the United States. There is a process by which it is determined that capture of the target is not possible without extreme risk to large numbers of military personal, if capture is even possible at all.
The only terrorist that get any kind of due process are the ones that get captured on the battlefied or during the planning or implementing of a terrorist attack. "Summarily executed" sounds like pulling a guy out of a cell and shot by a firing squad. That doesn't happen, or at least is not supposed to happen.
I will provide one example. The American al Awaki was an American that joined al Qaeda and made recruitment video's to encourage other American's to join al Qaeda. His quilt was never in question. He was making video's advertising that he had quit America and was now part of al Qaeda.
Intelligence agencies are in agreement that the greatest threat from terrorist in our homeland are those that are in America already or who leave America and come back with training and a specific mission. al Awaki was a high value target that could not be captured. He posed a huge threat to the American public. So his name was on the list and the President approved the recommendation of his military and intelligence agencies and al Awaki is no longer recruiting American traitors. The rule of law is that if you are in the enemy camp you are a valid target. You hang out with terrorist in the nether regions of Pakistan or Yemen or wherever and you are at great risk of getting killed by a missile shot from a robot in the sky.