The legal dilemma over drone strikes: justified killings or war crimes?

[patrice]

28. I don't know. That doesn't excuse me, but it IS a fact. I. don't. know. & I do know:

- This is the situation we are in; we are NOT in some other more ideal situation & pretending that we are, and acting upon that error, damages not only whatever good can rise out of our current situation, and hence the future too, but, also, therefore, damages the prospects of those future situations becoming something closer to that ideal that we all desire so much.

- These drone decisions are based upon probabilities, probabilities that I cannot calculate, because I do not possess the necessary information;

- People make decisions similar to drones, also based upon probabilities, which I, and perhaps they, cannot calculate, all of the time, decisions like whether and when to have an abortion, supporting capital punishment, and the right to bear and to use arms . . . we could even extend those types of decisions to how certain government or corporate economic policies contribute to the suffering and deaths of certain other persons, our own nationals or foreigners . . .

- The reason that it is necessary for people to make these and all similar such decisions is because, even if it were possible to write them, perfect laws, laws and regulations that fit ALL situations perfectly, ALL of the time, for ALL people, are not possible, so we MUST rely upon individual FREE rational decisions about individual behaviors, ALL behaviors, even just "flipping a switch." And even if we could write such perfect laws, they would not be good for humans in their effects upon the intrinsic value of freedom to who and what each person is, especially as that is manifested in more or less perfect decision/choice making by ALL persons;

- Since most/none of us are free enough to be making fully rational decisions, for or against all forms of more or less direct murder, it will do little or nothing, or even damage the processes of liberation, to ignore that fact and continue to pretend that we live in a FALSE ideal world where just pretending something, through some form of mumbo-jumbo, makes it true, instead of doing the rational, actual, concrete, down-and-dirty, low, boring, daily grind work of actually getting out there and helping people free themselves, so that drone (and all other such similar) decisions become less and less likely a "necessary" probability.