We can’t capture and interrogate them because that is being held and “tortured” without a trial. Further the vast majority of evidence is not admissible in court (as we recently saw) so the “must win” is going to be lost. That leaves us letting a known terrorist go into the US or now holding a person accepted as having citizenship rights found “not guilty” in perpetual military custody – not good.

So that leaves kill them straight out – OK, lets ignore the fact that we miss intelligence for now. You applied lethal force against a guy whom you have stated is innocent until proven guilty and fully under the same rights as a US citizen that was simply driving down the road? Where was the immediate threat to life? you killed an innocent peaceful person. He wasn’t remotely in uniform or part of a countries official army that we are at declared war with so they had no rights whatsoever to kill him in that manner. Indeed, they simply blew some guy up driving around with some of his friends.

*That* is what “They are not enemy combatants but citizens” gets us. If they truly believed that then they are setting a truly dangerous precedent here – they are saying they have the right to blow innocents up or try them in court but if they do not like the verdict hold you anyway. If they do not believe it then they just spent almost eight years bringing down a war they now fully support for political reasons. The last possibility is that they have no ability to think even this minor thing through –

Personally I think it was a mixture of the latter two ideas. I think Obama was truly confused as to what to do, especially with the first “must win” trial being found not guilty. I do not think the possibility *ever* crossed his mind that it would occur. He is *the one* and mountains will move on simply his will – im betting the path the future would take was *so clear* it was astounding and then things got in the way (nasty Republicans). His attacks worked and put him up to impose his vision and then … collapse.

I’m FOR the General Pershing approach.

I’m also in favor of using Mafia-style car bombs for radical imams. Booby-trapped, activated by the ignition switch. If it takes out a few of their “parishoners”, so much the better.

If you preach “Death to America”, you get death from America. Both here and abroad.

We not be too proud to learn from experts in such matters.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/253644/how-should-terrorists-be-tried-andrew-c-mccarthy

I read an article on this several years ago, I believe at NYT. The authors explained how the French use such a system. It makes sense to me, but I can imagine the outcry from HRW, AI, and their friends. It’s rather odd that we don’t hear many protests against the French system. On second thought, it isn’t odd at all. It is our fate to be the lamb sacrificed to clean the souls of our intellectual, international moral betters.

Are we missing valuable intelligence by killing rather than capturing?

Undoubtedly we are missing valuable intelligence by killing instead of capturing, but there is another way of looking at it. Our killing such people indicates that we have pretty good intelligence on them.

I would go for capturing them, using whatever means possible to extract intelligence from them, and then put them in a “killed while escaping” scenario.

I would not assume that we actually got the guy, however. Time and again there has been notice given about Islamic terrorist XE$ killed in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, only to have XE$ pop up a week or two later.

IMHO, we should start knocking off some ISI people (Pakistan’s intelligence agency) ,as the ISI has been feeding the Taliban for years. Enough of this double -gaming from the Pakistanis.

Another point about the value of our intelligence is that there appears to be relatively little collateral damage in our hits. We tend to get only the bad guys.