For all we know this kid didn’t want to go to the bbq with his family.  Most 16 year olds don’t.  He probably complained and moped through the whole thing.  Then he died for being related to assholes (thank got that is not a capital offense for the rest of us – yet).

In a free society people are innocent until proven guilty.  In a war, it is a legal requirement to avoid civilian/noncombatant casualties.  Targeting a bbq does not exactly seem like ‘avoiding’ so much as ‘the rules don’t apply to us’.

To be honest, there are a great many people who are likely related, within a couple of degrees of separation, to a terrorist (past or present).  Certainly most of us with even a drop of Irish heritage, and a great many with other European heritages.  How many people in the US South are not related within a couple of generations to a Klansman? Especially if we follow the ‘a terrorist is someone called a terrorist by a government’ line. 

If being related to a terrorist is a capital crime then we have lost whatever rights we had.  If being in the vicinity of someone who is related to a terrorist is a crime then we may be beyond repair. 

How long until a Predator takes out a Ruby Ridge house somewhere in Montana? 

As I said in a previous thread – to all you US citizens who thought you were exempt from your government’s war on people who are not you, welcome to our club.  Now you too can be killed without a trial, if you happen to be in the wrong place or look wrong or perhaps support something somebody doesn’t like.  Or, in the case of one of my (Canadian) countryment, happen to have coffee with someone once that is from your cultural group (leading to rendition and 2 years of torture despite innocence).

As for those saying this kid was guilty by association: Give me a fucking break. He was 16 years old.. What power over your life did you have at 16? 

We have rules that arent being followed.  Bad people need to be punished, Rules are Rules, they make them, they dont follow them.

MORE IMPORTANTLY
It has become disgustingly apparent that many people in America (the masses of scared and uninformed) are completely fine with giving up their own RIGHTS/MORALS/FREEDOMS/TRUTH/JUSTICE/etc. for a pretend semblance of “SECURITY”.  Its a scam folks, its the old “look over here, while we do this” trick!  You could give up every single freedom, allow every intrusion into your privacy, and guess what, THERE WILL STILL BE TROUBLEMAKERS.

For instance would I want to melt all my jewelry and store it in the ground in a field outside of town?  Its sort of safe, a lot more safe than the world is today, but all its beauty is destroyed.  Just like our Freedom.

Im all for extraditing him back to America for trial then killing him by packing explosives in his rectum or by letting a group of terrorist survivors alone in a room with him.   
BUTTTTT Simply blasting a child (American citizen or not) and a few other children out of a backyard half way across the country, is clearly COWARDLY.
 I for one could never stand behind those obviously immoral actions, nor should any reasonable thinking intelligent person.

I was slightly confused by his father being “droned down” but I was a bit shaken at his kid and 6-7 random people being assassinated as well. 

Maybe they will still teach freedom in the history books of the future.  I dont morn for him, I morn my rights and yours.  I see the future and its grim, what exactly should I tell my children is “great” about America today?  (besides its citizens and true patriots)

I teach them to be kind to others instead.

Since you’ve shown no empathy for a dead 16 year-old, please forgive me if I don’t believe that for one second.

You were 7 when your grandfather died? And how long had he been hiding from the IRA? 

There is a lot difference between 16 and 7.  A 7 year-old who only remembers the good stuff about his grandfather is a long way from the 16 year-old who has been brainwashed his entire life.

“potentially innocent people”?  The key word there is Potentially.  There were also people there who were, in fact, terrorists.
Ask the Yemen Defense Ministry if we were unjust in killing the people there who were plotting to do us  harm. (And by ‘us’ I mean normal people who think we should be able  go to work each day and the building we work  in won’t explode.)

I’d like to think that the United States erred on the side of caution.

If you’re an impressionable 16 year-old whose father was a terrorist, and you’re in Yemen,  (too young- but too old to possibly change such a point of view), cooking up some grub with terrorists, well, don’t be surprised if a drone finds it’s way there. I was less than 16 years old when I figured out that guilty by association is not just a figure of speech. If the boy wasn’t a terrorist- why was he associating? Terrorist or confirmed future terrorist is indistinguishable to me at this point.

 This “War on Terror” started because 2,977 people died in America 10 years ago because they went to work or got on an airplane -or tried to help those that did. NOT because they were at a BBQ with terrorists. And something like 18,000 more people here are still sick from the dust.

It is not the same thing!

Do you not remember the early days of the War on Terror, when there were something like 10 different spellings of “al Quaeda” used in the media?

As far as ‘no due process’, the father was tried and convicted.  In Yemen. Which then seems to have requested US assistance in his capture or execution (implicit, but I haven’t seen anything confirming the request).  Even if he had not renounced his US citizenship through his actions, if we recognize  Yemen as a sovereign nation, then there was ‘due process’.  This is further supported by a US district judge’s decision earlier this year not to support the suit brought by the family requesting a stay of any Exec. Branch orders supporting his capture or death.

As far as the kid is concerned, not enough data yet.

  I have lost faith in the President’s commitment to progressive ideals.   He’s acting as a Republican because it’s politically expedient.  I’m unhappy with the governments commitment to human rights and respectful treatment of people swept up in immigration, the “war” on terror,  or just traveling.  I’d rather see a Republican who tells me he’ll act in a way I disagree with than a Democrat who tells me he agrees with me and acts as the Republican would.

BTW, blowing up people because they don’t like us only causes more people to not like us. Even if, say, it was totally awesome to kill a US citizen because he told people to attack us for attacking them, it’s still kind of counter-productive.

This can be murder or assassination (and the US ends up as being run by murderers or assassins), but to me it is not terrorism.

I don’t defend this at all, I just want it understood in the context of all of these targeted remote control operations. Either they are all equally legal and valid or none of them are, with citizenship given no weight at all. 

And then if you wanted to try bin Laden or any of these, where would you do it? Who would prosecute and defend? Who would serve as jury? Or judge? How will that decision be taken around the world? McVeigh wanted to be a spectacle, refused appeals. I don’t see bin Laden going quietly as a political act. 

Isn’t putting a bunch of potentially innocent people (they had no evidence of implicit will to harm for all of the people they killed) to death remotely pretty much an act of terrorism? How is this any different than leaving a nailbomb in a café? I’m failing to see the difference, here. Isn’t this an act of terrorism by the US? The only difference I can perceive is that a different level of technology was used, but the intents and results were exactly the same as what the US deigns to be terrorism.

So, forgive me for being a British idiot, but I’m just failing to see the difference, here. My brain has now relegated the US to the same levels of horridness as the IRA, and not particularly different in any way. When I used to read what the UK media had to say about terrorism, it was pretty much this. You hide yourself behind someone/something, you use explosive materials to remotely deal death to a bunch of potentially innocent people, and you do this to make people afraid of you. Terrorism. Isn’t that what the US did with this? How is this not terrorism?

The problem here is that I can’t take the US seriously any more. Whenever those politicians talk about terrorism now, I’ll be half wondering if they’re talking about someone else… or themselves. The US, a nation run by terrorists. Good job.

The idea of citizenship contains pragmatic, but no moral obligations, and to the extent we pretend it does it cheapens the standing of citizens of other countries.  If you don’t believe the targeted killing of suspected terrorists in other countries is just to begin with then I don’t see how the killing of a US citizen makes it any less so.