U.S. presidents cannot be prosecuted for selling pardons or assassinating political rivals through SEAL Team Six, personal Trump lawyer John Sauer argued Tuesday.

  • problematicPanther@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    6 months ago

    which one? drone strikes were a big thing under the obama administration. It was targeting combatants in Afghanistan, ordinarily though. I don’t recall a Reaper taking out a political rival of his.

    • FizzlePopBerryTwist@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      6 months ago

      There was at least one that targeted an American born citizen who had defected to some terror organization. US law MIGHT argue he should have been arrested and tried unless he was engaging in active combat at the time. I’m not a lawyer. I just know there were some gray areas with drone use.

      • problematicPanther@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        6 months ago

        as much as i detest mechanized warfare, if dude actually defected to the enemy side and was acting in a combat role (not a medic or other non-com role), then he would have been a legal target.

        that being said, drones are a slippery slope to completely removing the human decision making in pulling the trigger to kill someone. eventually, they will have automated targeting on those things, then they’ll implement automatic decision making, then they’ll implement automatic killing of the target that the drone itself decided was a legitimate target. the problem here is, what are we going to train those drones with? How can we be sure that everyone it kills is actually a combatant?