“Obama’s assassination program”
Read and watch this first: Olbermann on Obama's assassination program - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com.
I had kind of hoped that this sort of thing would go away when the Republicans were no longer in power in the US. Along with warrant-less wire-tapping and so on.
Now, I am somewhat conflicted over this. I don't like the death penalty, and I am very glad we do not have it over here, state sponsored execution is far too final, far too prone to mistake and as far as I am aware there is no evidence it works as a deterrent. Also I imagine it is very expensive, how it compares to life imprisonment I do not know.
However I do not have too much of a problem with killing as a whole, as long as it is justified. Killing another man in self-defence, or in defence of another is perfectly acceptable. However that happens very much in the moment, it is never planned and there is absolutely no doubt in your mind what you are doing is necessary at he time. And that is what is worrying me in cases such as this, it is done in advance, there is the chance that it is not necessary and there is doubt in my mind.
It is really a question of morality, if killing this man saves the lives of a thousand people is it justified?
What if the man did not know his actions would have the consequence of killing a thousand people and he is just in the wrong place at the wrong time?
What if it were not one man but ten men? Would it still be justified?
What if it were ten 5 year old girls who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but if there were killed a thousand other people would live. Would that still be justified?
You may have noticed that I did not answer, and that is because I do not know. It is a difficult question, and one that would take more than 20 mins to think about.
We are living in a different kind of world now, and there are something that need to be decided upon by society. Wars are no longer black and white, there are no evil invaders storming the beaches, the enemy tends to be a small minority surrounded by innocent people that look very similar.
There may be times when assassination is necessary, there many be times when torture is necessary, there many be times when killing many innocent civilians to get to the people you want is justified, but who decides when it is? I don't like the idea of one man deciding these sort of thing on his own, wielding this power over peoples lives.
Perhaps the rules of war and the Geneva conventions need to be rewritten to more accurately reflect modern conflicts, so that at least it is written down somewhere, so that the rules are known to everyone.
Don't even get me started on the American helicopter killing kids in Iraq.
I will probably talk more about then when I write abut the Digital Economy Bill, in relation to Wikileaks.
I am beginning to start to sympathise with the 'terrorists' and the 'insurgents'. After almost a decade in Afghanistan and 7 years in Iraq, what has been achieved apart from disruption and destruction. If a member of my family, my sister for example, were killed by an invading force, or taken captive by the invading force for reasons I saw as unjustified, there would not be a force on this earth that could stop me taking my anger out on the invading force. If I lost my family and friends and I saw it to be the fault of the invading force, flying an plane into a building would only be the beginning.
Not to trivialise the loss of lives in terrorist attacks around the world, but I try to take a step back and imagine things as if you were on the other side of all this. Not sitting comfortably reading about it on-line, but living there with soldiers patrolling and bullets flying around night and day, constantly terrified of death.