Due Process With a Bullet

Due Process With a Bullet:

A GI in the hills of France takes aim through a rifle scope at a German soldier. Snow cakes the ground and a few bare trees cling to the ground like bony fingers. At the last moment, the German soldier sees his attacker. “Wait,” he cries out in a passable accent, “Ich bin an American citizen.”

The scenario isn’t a particularly implausible one. Any number of Germans did leave to fight on behalf of their country in the first and second world wars. And there was no question of due process on the battlefield. Members of enemy forces who fought against the United States were killed and any precedent set in that regard was set long ago.

Critics of drone attacks call them “assassinations”, but there is no difference whatsoever between a soldier sighting an enemy officer through a computer monitor or a rifle scope. There is also no legal distinction between firing a bullet or dropping a bomb or launching a missile. The nature of the projectile or delivery mechanism matters in the tactical and strategic sense, it doesn’t matter in any other way. War is war and dead is dead.

If knowing the identity of your target ahead of time is assassination, that is a subjective difference on the battlefield. And Al-Awlaki was not the first enemy officer targeted for death. Excessive nitpckers may raise legal questions about the legality..........................
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