So when the Cubans whack Luis Posado Carilles in Miami we will cheer that as well?

[Vinnie From Indy]

Carilles bombed a Cuban airliner killing almost two hundred and is now residing in Miami in Florida. Will Americans be understanding if the Cuban military sends over a drone and blows the shit out of him and whoever is unlucky enough to be around him at the time? Will those people be "collateral damage"?

Surely, the Cubans could use the EXACT same argument we used to kill this American in Yemen. It is unquestionably far too dangerous to their soldiers to effect a landing and take Carilles by force back to Cuba to face charges of terrorism. The US won't send him back, so what are their options? A well executed drone strike would seem to be the ticket.

Cheers!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles

[JanMichael]

1. Sadly I would. There's no justice for the hard right in this country. nt

[SidDithers]

2. Wouldn't the Cubans be the Americans in this scenario?...

Would the Cubans be happy if Carilles were killed?

Sid

[malaise]

3. He killed 73 people including a family friend who was on her way

to study medicine in Cuba. He and the other terrorist (and their backers) killed several Caribbean young people with loads of promise and yet we believe in the right to a trial. The other scumbag died earlier this year.

[joshcryer]

4. Is Luis Posado Carilles actively campaigning new terrorist acts?

[Vinnie From Indy]

5. Why would that matter?

He is a terrorist in the eyes of Cuba and he still goes to right-wing Cuban gatherings in Miami that include rhetoric about violence to Cuba and Cuban nationals.

I hope all of you that give a full throated cheer for the death al-alawki understand that it could be you or your loved one either directly killed by the President with no judicial review or it could be that you will be killed as collateral damage if China or Cuba or any country decides to kill their citizens that they deem as terrorists in the United States and you are a bit to close to that person when he goes boom.

Why now would any country not do as we have done? What makes us so special?

[joshcryer]

12. I don't hang out with people who advocate violence.

The last time I did that the Green Scare happened and people I had acquaintances with went to jail. (I only regret not being able to convince them these actions are illegal.)

[Major Hogwash]

17. This operation was a joint operation between Yemen and the United States.

So, it's not the same thing.

[Vinnie From Indy]

18. So you are offering that the US would have NEVER killed this guy

if the Yemenis were against it. Are you sure that is a position you want to defend knowing what we know about Pakistan, Somalia and a few other countries?

[Vinnie From Indy]

19. Also, why would the Yemenis allow us to kill Al-Alawki with a drone attack, but not

let us send in a team to apprehend him? Why would they not grab him for us?

Cheers!

[AngkorWot]

23. Because that would or wouldn't make him a clear and present danger.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

16. as a matter of fact, he is.

[Autumn]

6. Probably. Targeted death seems to be the norm

I would guess they have a right to. We have no moral standing to tell them otherwise.

[treestar]

24. True. If it were really the equivalent, it would be

Cuba dropping bombs on us for harboring him, as we did to Afghanistan. We just don't have an appreciation of such things, thinking there's no way some country like Cuba could do that to us.

We spend more on the military than any other nation and go abroad using it - we are the only remaining superpower. We don't really have to worry about that sort of thing.

[The Magistrate]

7. They Would Have Every Right To Do So, Sir

[Vinnie From Indy]

8. I agree completely.

They have an even stronger justification than we had in the al-Alawki killing in that Carilles has been charged and tried in absentia in Panama for the bombing of a Cuban airliner.

[LooseWilly]

9. I sure as shit would cheer if Carriles was whacked. By Cubans, or a bus, I don't really care.

In my opinion though... there is a lot more evidence against Carriles than there is against Al Awlaki... so that particular assassination I do not cheer.

[spirit of wine]

10. Perhaps Jeb Bush knows?

Being having been Gov. and all that

[Tesha]

11. Welcome to the new world.

Much like we abdicated the authority of the Geneva
Conventions in our latest several wars, we've now
opened ourselves up for exactly this sort of action
against our civilians.

Tesha

[Diclotican]

25. Tesha

Tesha

Tesha.. True, it is more than just WTC who was in ruins after Sept 11 2001 im afraid.. And it wil take a long time to repair the groundwork for Geneva Conventions, and the other international laws, who once was the ground for legal rangling..

When US say you are an enemy, you are an enemy and can be killed anywhere on the earth..

But US own who killed others.. Wel, thats another story, Not even one day in prison, and goes free in the streets.. With the asurement, that if anything was in danger, they know they would be wiskered away to secure places so no harm been doing to them..


By the way, on a little more personal note.. Why are you using the norwigian flag in your "name", I have woundered for it for a long time.. Not that I feel it is wrong, I'm just curious of why.. Are you norwigian, or are you decenans of a norwigian back there?..

Diclotican

[Tesha]

26. Quite a few DUers switched to using a Norwegian flag avatar...

...after the recent horrific gun violence in Norway; we did it as
a sign of solidarity with the Norwegians.

Tesha

[Diclotican]

28. Tesha

Tesha

Yeah, I have seen that.. What a kind action from pepole who might not even know where Norway was, before the horrible act happened.. :hug:

I just wonder, how you make it your avatar, I have figured about having a avatar myself, but Im not sure how to do it... So if you can help me in my quest, Im happy for all advice

Diclotican

[jberryhill]

13. Good thing we had Yemeni cooperation then

[FarCenter]

14. Carilles would be a legitimate target of Cuban intelligence operatives in FL

[krispos42]

15. Only if Cuban Special Forces blow him up with a precision munition...

...while attending a wedding.

[JoeyT]

20. No, that would be different.

We're special and American soil is sacred ground. That collateral damage is sacred American lives you're talking about. They might even be white people or Christian, for god's sake.

[flamingdem]

21. They can't do it but this proves due process is not always the answer

because if so he'd be in prison.

[treestar]

22. Don't know why not

In fact are you one of those people condemning the US for letting him stay?

We would not like that insult to our sovereignty, but that's because we are the strongest nation militarily. Which is why the Cubans will never try that.

Yemen may be more used to it. Sure they don't like it. We have a certain advantage and we aren't used to considering the idea that we could be invaded. That's the reason we were so shocked by 911.

[Puregonzo1188]

27. Well, they've asked for extradition. The US refused. When the US asked the Taliban for extradition

and they asked for evidence we invaded, bombed, and occupied the whole country and continue to do so despite our extra-judicial execution of bin Laden in a country other than the one we invaded, bombed, and occupied.

A more appropriate analogy than al-Awaki would be if Cuban invaded the United States and carpet bombed Boston because Carilles was believed to be in Miami would we all cheer.

I, for one, would not as I generally don't applaud war crimes, even when they're committed by victims of aggression and terrorism--like Cuba.

[Major Nikon]

29. Strawman

For further reading, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_analogy

[Jim Lane]

30. Would you mind elaborating?

For further readdng, see the subsection on .

As is explained in the article you linked to, the issue is whether there are relevant differences that undermine the analogy. To most DUers, "One victim is Christian and the other one isn't" doesn't count as a relevant difference, yet we suspect that that's the key difference in the minds of policymakers.

[Major Nikon]

31. Not at all

Koh identified three elements related to situational considerations that the United States uses when determining whether a specific targeted drone killing at a particular location will occur:

* Imminence of the threat
* Sovereignty of other States involved
* Willingness and ability of those States to suppress the threat the target poses

http://insidejustice.com/law/index.php/intl/2010/03/26/asil_koh_drone_war_law

Luis Posada Carriles is in no way an imminent threat to Cuba, which makes the other two elements irrelevant. Really the only similarities you have is that both are terrorists.

[Jim Lane]

32. Obvious problems with the subjectivity of the Koh Doctrine

You assert that Cariles "is in no way an imminent threat to Cuba...." There are two major problems here.

First, who decided that that was the standard? When Timothy McVeigh was executed, he was clearly not an imminent threat, what with being in captivity. That case isn't directly analogous, because it was a purely internal criminal matter. I cite it to show that some people wouldn't accept the view that a terrorist who retires can thereby gain lifetime immunity from being killed in retribution for his past actions. Koh's statement constitutes the unilateral pronunciamento of the world's most militarized country. His purported standard wasn't adopted by the world community. It was trotted forth by one government that found it politically expedient to do so.

Second, even assuming that the "imminent threat" standard were the governing one, it wouldn't be self-executing. You think that Cariles wouldn't meet that standard. At least one poster in this thread apparently disagreed. More to the point, what if Cuba were to disagree? If a Cariles-type terrorist who had attacked the United States were living abroad in comparative retirement, there would be plenty of American politicians howling for his head, brushing off any claims about his current level of (in)activity and pointing out that he could be engaged this very minute in preparing to murder our citizens. Here again, the decision was made solely by the United States, acting behind closed doors as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner.

[Major Nikon]

33. Your first point is one of the reasons I'm vehemently against the death penalty

But I understand where you're going here. The federal government does indeed execute its citizens who are not an imminent threat, and even though the situation is considerably different it does show that such a thing is legal under the right circumstances. I'm not going to argue against your point here because I don't feel it's morally acceptable to execute someone who is not an imminent threat to society, regardless of the circumstances.

As far as your second point goes, I don't really see how anyone can argue Carriles is an imminent threat to anyone. When he was engaging in terrorist activities, he was doing so with the support of the CIA and other entities who are clearly not supporting him now. So I can't really speak to what anyone else thinks. Along those lines, I'm not going to dispute that we certainly would have politicians calling for the heads of inactive terrorists, but I don't know if there are any recent incidents where the US has killed inactive terrorists, even under the Bush administration, and it's not as if there aren't any who are still at large. I'm sure the CIA has information on those involved in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing, but were never brought to justice, just as one example. Furthermore, I'm not arguing whether the standards listed by Koh are right or wrong morally. I'm simply pointing out that the US does have standards for such actions and if those same standards were applied by another sovereign nation, Carriles wouldn't even come close to meeting those standards. If another nation were to develop their own standards, they would certainly be subject to international backlash for implementing those standards, just as the US is.

Personally I feel that the US and every other nation does have a right to self defense, which may include the targeted killings of those who are an imminent threat and aren't accessible from a practical sense to be brought to justice by other means. I also feel that this right should be used with an abundance of caution and only in the most limited of circumstances to keep such actions from becoming self defeating. IMO, those circumstanced should be codified within federal law to prevent present and future administrations from abusing their authority. Right now all the US really has outside of international rules and law is EO 11905, which has been modified many times by past administrations and can be done so again at the whim of the president. Essentially, each president has the legal authority to modify those rules as they see fit without public debate. I don't see this as a good thing.