On Wednesday, May 2nd, my morning newspaper contained a column by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius that bore this title: "Politicizing the drone debate."
Ignatius seemed to think that this would be a bad thing!
If we want to be a democracy, we need to start "politicizing" lots of debatable issues. "Politics" is how we decide what we are going to do, and what sort of a world we are going to create.
Currently, the President of the United States claims that he and Executive Branch operatives have the right to deploy a plane like the MQ-1 Predator (pictured above) to kill me, if the Executive Branch folks believe that I am somehow a real and present danger to the American people.
All in all, I'd prefer a trial first.
I think we need to debate such questions of life and death, and particularly whether we think it's alright for the President to carry out assassinations in our name. It's about time we start "politicizing" some of the things that our "representatives" are doing, just to be sure that they are actually representing us correctly as they act on our behalf.
Couldn't agree with you more, Gary. The right to kill by drone seems to have crept into the list of Presidential prerogatives with hardly a whisper of dissent.
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