Downvote the parent if you must, but it is not untrue. A defining characteristic of fascism is unchecked executive power, and this is the case here.
There are no checks and balances here. The US intelligence apparatus has justified killing its own citizens without judicial or legislative oversight, at the sole discretion of the executive.
As uncomfortable as it may be to point out, that is fascism.
No, actually, that's not what facism means. Facism is a specific type of authoritative power structure almost always involving mass indoctrination of citizens into forming a unified movement via heavy nationalistic propaganda themed around a "vitalization" or "rebirth" of the nation state.
In other words, authoritative governments indiscriminately killing people, while not good, is not a defining measure of fascism. In more broad terms, "things that I think are evil" are not either.
All fascisms involve the identification and elimination of undesireables. Power is the method by which that is accomplished, and nationalism is only a symptom of this force in operation.
you have it backwards. if governments that identify and eliminate undesirables are fascist then pretty much every government in history has been fascist.
ie, all men are mortal, but not all mortals are men.
I don't think of fascism as a state of being so much as a tendency, so yeah, choosing to recognize someone as undesirable is a fascistic tendency designed to disallow someone their freedom of being and/or thought. Throughout history different fascistic societies have sought to eliminate people of all schools of thought, free-thinkers and status-quo'ers alike, which while maybe too abstract an explanation in this context, helps illustrate how designating a terrorist or a "leader of Al Qaeda" is neither a self-evident logic nor an unquestionable act. History tells us that the more important a particular undesirable is to the acts of a government, it reveals actual weaknesses in the society that invests that government with its power.
Well, in a conventional, declared war (e.g. World War II), enemy soldiers can be killed without judicial oversight.
So how do you translate that to fighting Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups? Not so easy. But the obvious way is to treat them as enemy soldiers in a conventional war.
It's in my opinion not as obvious as you make it sound -
in a drone strike you kill a supposed enemy combatant who at the time of the strike may not be armed, or may not be involved in an armed conflict. For example, the alleged terrorist is driving in an SUV. In this case, the 1949 Geneva conventions might call this a crime (the US denies this AFAIK):
>Modern laws of war regarding conduct during war (jus in bello), such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions, provide that it is unlawful for belligerents to engage in combat without meeting certain requirements, among them the wearing of a distinctive uniform or other distinctive signs visible at a distance, and the carrying of weapons openly. [1]
Of course, terrorists don't listen to these rules either, by not wearing any uniform, they don't have any.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think the "obvious" way (my own word) is the right way to do it. That's not actually the way the U.S. does it, either, as you say. So I probably shouldn't have said that.
That's a completely indefensible statement. My simple statement that paramilitary adversaries should be combatted militarily in no way makes me a fascist.
