Iran Situation

[Dill]

(01-15-2020, 12:03 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Real question, are there really legitimate legality issues?

Soleimani was listed by the US as a terrorist for almost a decade before Trump came into office. I have never heard anyone deny that he is responsible for hundreds of US military deaths and thousands of injured.

Sure we can debate on if it was wise/worth it to kill a foreign leader and that's a valid topic to debate. 

That said, at the end of the day he was a designated terrorist, leader of a designated terrorist organization (a labeling that spanned 3 different US Presidents) who was responsible for killing hundreds of US troops and injuring thousands. That seems pretty open and shut as far as legality goes. It doesn't matter if you're powerful in another country. If you're a non-US Citizen directly going to other countries to arm and train people to murder US troops, I can't possibly see how there's a legality issue.

I think Fred, Bels and Benton have already answered the legality question, but I'd like to add my 2 cents. 

Actually, it does matter if you're "powerful" in another country because you are an official member of that country's government.  To kill such an official is an attack on that government. To do it on the sovereign soil of another nation (without permission) violates international law.

Legal issues appear on two fronts here--US and international.  Did the US have the authority to take out the leader of another government in what looks like state-sanctioned assassination? Such assasination is illegal under both US and International Law, though both would grant the US and its president a right to act against an imminent threat to US lives and property.  But this doesn't look like that--hence all the media attention to the differing explanations for why Solemeini was killed AFTER the US had already killed 25 members of the organization deemed directly responsible for direct attacks on US bases in Iraq, and why he had already been placed on a hit list months earlier.

Domestically, if the FBI puts someone on a "most wanted list" then that person can certainly be apprehended anywhere in the United States by the FBI, regardless of an individual state's jurisdictional rights, and by local law enforcement.  But the international arena is not like that. So far as I know, there is no international law allowing the US to take out anyone it designates as a "terrorist" anytime it wants to on the sovereign soil of a foreign nation.  Especially in this case, where the definition/target is largely the US's own construction, not shared by the UN or the EU and numerous other states. (Fox presents Trump's action as legally no different from NY cop John McClane taking out terrorists threatening his wife at Nakatomi Plaza in CA, while bumbling cops and FBI outside are bogged down in rules and worry about consequences of acting.)

Unless you presume the US is above international law, then any legal logic which would make Solemeini a target because he was responsible for killing hundreds of US troops would equally make those troops a legitimate target for Solemeini. 

There is another aspect to this when one considers that killing a government official could be considered as an act of war. A president so acting could, in effect, declare war on another nation without Congress--a violation of the separation of powers.  Again, most would find this tolerable in the case of "imminent" threat--e.g. if the guy were bearing down on a US base aiming an RPG at the gate. But it doesn't look like that was the case here. It looks like the US took Solemeini out because it can; and Trump did it because Congress and International law can't stop him; let the chips fall where they may.