More germane is the question of who exactly:
... we are killing. Having learned about this secret war being conducted on their behalf, Americans now have an obligation to find out more. That obligation is both moral and political. The moral obligation is to ascertain whether or not the people we are killing are in fact terrorists, that is, members of organizations engaged in actively plotting attacks against the United States. If we are killing people who are not terrorists, then these special operations attacks are profoundly wrong. Indeed, in that case, they amount to little more than state-sponsored terrorismBacevich/HuffPo 11.Nov.08
[...]
Americans should not rush to render an adverse judgment of this program of secret attacks. Yet neither should they accept at face value official U. S. explanations or what they get from leakers offering a partial and selective version of the story.
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Yes but sigh. Well yeah sigh. Because sigh the killing of bad people rests completely on the okay to do it part that says you yourself are not and will never be a bad person. But sigh. Oh no. What makes someone a bad person or bad people sometimes at least is that sigh they have killed innocent people sigh. So once you've done that you are a bad person and it's okay to kill you.
So far sigh so good sigh but Bacevich lays his fairly tiny testicles on the table when he says, "Americans should not rush to render an adverse judgment of this program of secret attacks" sigh because sigh that rests on the part of terrorists being okay to kill sigh because they are bad people and they want to hurt us and kill us no more sighing!
But wait!
The whole thing starts with we don't get to argue that "terrorists" are bad and deserve to killed, by us or anybody else that wants to or is employed to or just feels like it one day. Starts with "info". Starts with "info" from...? Ooooh be careful! Because, what if that "info" is not true?
Because what if who gave you that "info" was not were not is not are not good people to start with in the first place?
They say they want the terrorists Bacevich says it's okay to kill if you can find the right ones say they want to kill us because we are bad people.
They say they want the terrorists Bacevich says it's okay to kill if you can find the right ones say they want to kill us because we are bad people.
No really they do say that.
And they say we're bad people because we ourselves have killed innocent people, people that they the terrorists feel some kinship with and thus have an "us" part in the "they're killing us" part of the why part of what they the terrorists do that makes them terrorists in the first place and that's important because it's what makes it okay for us to kill them.
Killing bad people, it's what the good guys do, when they have to etc.
Bacevich covers things right back to:
Bacevich elides entirely the analytic process that would examine the presumption of automatic death warrants for people deemed "terrorists" and who or what official body would be doing that deeming.
Because if that's hinky everything that comes from it is hinky. Which means "we" go out there to places like Afghanistan and Iraqistan and kill people, kill actual live people and make them dead by killing them and all on the say-so of who exactly?
And that's important because if that "who" deeming terrorist kill warrants isn't straight up and brimming with integrity and accuracy "we're" going to end up killing innocent people.
And that makes you (us, we) someone who kills people innocent people, someone who kills people who shouldn't have been killed.
Which is the definition of bad people you were using to go kill people with in the first place, isn't it?
Isn't it?
Admit it.
Don't look away when I'm talking to you!
Okay just leave then, I don't care.
Fortunately for confused liberals like Mr. Bacevich I have come up with a foolproof guaranteed system for removing all the bad people from the earth in one fell swoop, for real for keeps for good forever.
Sadly it will mean the extinction of the human race but hey, these are harsh times and the problems we face require harsh measures equal to the severity of what they confront and also hard-hearted decision-making by hard-hearted decision-makers whose number one tough job it is to meet and overcome them, those problems, representing as they do so however harshly us and our interests, and our innocence, such as it is.
Bacevich covers things right back to:
"The moral obligation is to ascertain whether or not the people we are killing are in fact terrorists"But see you have to be very confident of your own innocence and really important you have to be very confident the information you're using to decide who to kill and punish and torture and otherwise ruin the lives of people that are "terrorists" that deserve it because they're "terrorists" you need to be confident up front they are indeed bad people for one thing because after you kick off the bloodshed they're gonna hate your ass no matter why you did it so that first kick information has to be obviously "deadly" accurate or - oh golly - you will end up killing the wrong people, wrong because innocent people.
Bacevich elides entirely the analytic process that would examine the presumption of automatic death warrants for people deemed "terrorists" and who or what official body would be doing that deeming.
Because if that's hinky everything that comes from it is hinky. Which means "we" go out there to places like Afghanistan and Iraqistan and kill people, kill actual live people and make them dead by killing them and all on the say-so of who exactly?
And that's important because if that "who" deeming terrorist kill warrants isn't straight up and brimming with integrity and accuracy "we're" going to end up killing innocent people.
And that makes you (us, we) someone who kills people innocent people, someone who kills people who shouldn't have been killed.
Which is the definition of bad people you were using to go kill people with in the first place, isn't it?
Isn't it?
Admit it.
Don't look away when I'm talking to you!
Okay just leave then, I don't care.
Fortunately for confused liberals like Mr. Bacevich I have come up with a foolproof guaranteed system for removing all the bad people from the earth in one fell swoop, for real for keeps for good forever.
Sadly it will mean the extinction of the human race but hey, these are harsh times and the problems we face require harsh measures equal to the severity of what they confront and also hard-hearted decision-making by hard-hearted decision-makers whose number one tough job it is to meet and overcome them, those problems, representing as they do so however harshly us and our interests, and our innocence, such as it is.
In this case that would be the problem, and the decision-making generated by the problem, of bad people in the world, or, people who kill innocent people who don't "deserve" or deserve to be killed, those bad people then being attacked and killed by us, who, us, by doing that killing to people who it then turns out were innocent themselves and did not deserve to be killed for being bad because they weren't, and we by that doing becoming the very thing we had set out to rid the world of by killing and killing and killing and killing until all the bad people were gone.
Yes, but sadly, well gee, but, ah, well yes, now you see, yes, there it is.
