badgenome said:
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As far as the part regarding American citizens, I think it's useful to point out to people who have blind faith that the government is just killing "those people" and they will always get the right ones that they are also fair game if they come under suspicion. As in the polls I linked to earlier in this thread, support for drone assassinations flips if you remind people that the government's policy is that their citizenship doesn't give them any special protections if they are considered to be "connected to terrorism" and to "pose an imminent threat". If a guy poses an imminent threat for simply being an anti-American preacher and not a known terrorist mastermind, then that is a pretty low bar.
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But then, it is pandering, isn't it? The 5th might talk about any person and US libertarians - I understand - take pride in being stalwart constitutionalists.
And yet because polls indicate that the general public's opinion on constitutional rights can be swayed by underlining the - constitutionally irrelevant- citizenship angle, then that's what is brought up front and center.
Same thing, it seems to me, with the specific technology. I'm pretty sure that the US government always had in place mechanisms for repression of internal terrorist cells, and that the bar for putting someone under observation or stopped with deadly force was already set years ago. The last time a new model of gun was issued to intelligence agents I did not see a republican filibuster repeatedly asking if those new guns could be used to kill an american citizen on american soil without a due trial. But since government robots and weird technology and spying devices seem to resonate with a certain low-key paranoia, drones are a whole new affair entirely.
Again, maybe I'm missing a lot because I'm a distant observer, but I can't understand why this is a matter of principles now, but it was not when the Patriot act or the 2006 Military commissions act were being passed with the placet of the Rep. party.
