For those brave (and conservative enough) to read this post, my rant now commences.
Holy cow. My international law class is made up of a bunch of people who are incredibly gun shy and believe they can solve the problems of the world by holding hands and singing kumbaya. Today in class we discussed the definition of terrorists and the national and international grounds upon which targeted assassinations would be deemed acceptable.
The book we are reading is written by flaming liberals. When reading the chapters assigned they basically said that Dick Cheney was the anti-christ and President Bush had no brain. It made me furious. My prof said the book was written by someone who worked in President Clinton's administration and some middle-eastern person. Go figure. I hit the nail on the head.
Anywhoo.... the book gives a definition of a "terrorist" according to Israel. Allow me to enlighten you. "First, in terms of the classification of terrorists, Barak (head of the High Court of Israel) rejected the government's claim that these were unlawful combatants, and found, instead, that terrorists were 'civilians taking direct part in hostilities.'" I ask you, is there a difference??
We then proceeded to discuss how bad targeted assassinations are, how do we know the person is guilty? And we must think about collateral damage. Plus, we should exhaust all other resources to try to capture said "terrorist" before we break out the big guns. Enter my argument. I raised my hand and interjected about cost-benefit analysis. At what point is it better to break out the sniper rifle or drone missile instead of wasting man power. And how many lives will be lost by their "terrorist plots" while we try to hunt them down in some cave? Honestly.
Furthermore, my class argued, we have no right to take a human life. At this point, my blood was way beyond boiling. I reigned in my inner Shaver, and instead of voicing this, I thought to myself: we can't kill a known terrorist, beg my pardon, "civilian taking part in hostilities" yet that can decapitate our journalists for no apparent reason. Seems logical. Not.
My prof also noted that we can't kill people in civilian clothing. I then asked about wars (like Korea and Vietnam) where insurgents dress up like civilians to purposely deceive the other side. She said it would be up to the soldier and they would have to analyze the situation. Yes. Because I really am going to way the pros and cons of firing my weapon when someone in a war torn area known for housing terrorist cells approaches me. Think too long and you won't have the ability to regret it.
Finally we addressed that we can only kill people in battlefields. That brings up the question how do you define battlefield? It certainly would not be in a Pakistani compound with known terrorists and plans of/for past/future attacks. Bad Americans.
As you can see, this class got me really riled up. I apologize if I came off super sassy or opinionated. We are all entitled to our opinions, and these are all mine. Plus, none of you give me a final grade, so I don't really need to filter.
(Aunt Kreise, pick Uncle Mike off the floor and make sure he has not had an aneurism. I promise him that France would be worse. And he should not worry, I am sticking to my proverbial guns. He will still have his beloved conservative niece upon my return to the states.)
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