(01-16-2020, 12:31 AM)mikesez Wrote:

(01-15-2020, 09:17 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: I think it's a good question to ask, where do we draw the line on unrestricted Presidential authority to kill people.  There are plenty of hypotheticals where we can say yes, and there are other hypotheticals where we should say no.  As it stands now, it appears that any President can declare that the target posed a threat to our national security and have that person killed.  Is that what we want?  Can he kill a terrorist?  Probably.  Can he kill a person he deems to have supported terrorism?  Maybe?   Does that include leaders of other countries that he says have supported terrorists?  Is this too much power to give a single person? 

I don't have a lot of faith that in this wildly partisan era, this thread will yield any decent discussion of these issues.  But at least we need to recognize that there are legitimate questions about how much power we give to one person, whether it be Trump, Obama, or any other President who has authorized such killings.

Agreed.
Let's not get lost in the weeds of what is permissible and what is not.  Even if someone explains a hypothetical situation, two different people may understand the hypothetical differently.
I think we can agree that the President should not just kill anyone at anytime on a whim.
So what do we have in place to prevent and punish a President who wants to?
Congress has written laws about the use of force, but these may be hard to apply to a specific situation.  And anyhow the President can't be prosecuted. Only impeached.
Soldiers are supposed to disobey unlawful orders, but they may not understand the law.
If we really believe that no man should have that kind of power, we should hold Congress's power to impeach and the soldier's duty to disobey unlawful orders in high regard.  If you sneer at the impeachers, or the scrupulous soldiers, you are making the paths smooth for a future American dictator.