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Comment by djohnston | Hacker News Reader

I think there is an interplay between the means of killing and the willingness to do so that you shouldn't ignore. The U.S. elevated extralegal killing of brown people to a full-time pursuit under the Obama administration with the proliferation of the drone program.

It's not as easy to blow up a wedding with an F18 as it is to do so from a trailer in Arizona, for some reason.

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Every president since we've had drones has killed more people with drones than the last guy. Bit early to call it a trend I guess, since we only armed the things toward the end of Bush's last term, but still seems worrying.

> Bit early to call it a trend

Disagree.

These programs, from the President's perspective, are as autonomous as the machines. Barely any interaction, if any, is required from the W.H. to keep the bombs dropping.

the extrajudicial execution of American's abroad by using drones was by far the most glaring change in US policy during that Administration

I'm not sure why this is downvoted. Obama established the precedent that it's totally kosher to use flying death robots to murder US citizens without any semblance of due process. You just have to claim (but not actually produce any evidence or convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt) that they posed an imminent threat to the US.

That’s been the case for a very long time. Even ignoring the civil war, US citizens for example fought on both sides of WWII both before and after it entered the war. As soon as you start talking millions of people you end up with some extreme outliers.

The only thing that’s changed is we have a slightly better idea who we are shooting over time.

PS: Somewhat more bizarrely, letters of marque and reprisal mean private citizens can get the rights to kill other Americans who happen to be working on non military foreign ships.

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