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Comment by harryh | Hacker News Reader

I think that most people are comfortable with the idea that if you join a foreign militia and take up arms against the United States you forfeit certain protections of citizenship.

Certainly not everyone agrees with this but that's the counter argument you asked for.

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If you join a foreign militia and take up arms against the United States ..."

The whole point of due process is that the pesky "if" part needs to be proven. Otherwise your argument is entirely circular.

How about Abdulrahman al-Awlaki or Samir Khan? I suppose they didn't even get the semblance of due process, just were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

EDIT: parent asked for a source for secret courts, the "disposition matrix" is just that, except it doesn't even involve the judicial branch only the executive and has resulted in the deaths of 3 Americans, one purposely and two 'accidentally' whether killing Americans on purpose or on accident is worse or better I'll leave as an exercise for the readers imagination.

Neither of those people were intentionally killed. Certainly we can argue about larger strategy and when the cost of collateral damage is worth military action but that discussion is orthogonal to one about a loss of due process.

No evidence exists that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was deliberately targeted, which makes him a bad example of the impact of a "disposition matrix". The target of the strike that killed him was Ibrahim al-Banna, an operational member of al Qaeda, who was among the confirmed dead in the strike.

That's an argument for why it's justified, but just because it's justified doesn't mean it's not a counterexample to the claim that US citizens always get normal civilian trials.

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