> Either the US government has a right to decide that somebody somewhere is so dangerous that he needs killin', and then go whack him, or it doesn't.
Every nation has the sovereign right to kill people in other nations. It's a fundamental precept of sovereignty. However, nations also bind themselves to their own laws. In the U.S., the Constitution gives U.S. citizens certain rights even when they are not on U.S. soil. That is the only thing that would make it illegal for the U.S. to kill someone on foreign soil.
Thomas Hobbes wrote that, in the absence of organised societies/government to pass and enforce laws, people are in a "state of nature" where every person has a natural liberty to do anything they think necessary to preserve their own life (what he termed war of all against all).
Civil governments remove this "state of nature", curtailing liberties and creating rights - for example, giving you the right not to be murdered by while taking away your liberty to murder other people.
As there is no government of governments to pass or enforce international laws, nations are in a permanent state of nature. One nation bombing another over some land is like one wolf fighting another over some dead prey - they're just doing what they naturally do. It's not like the wolf-police are going to stop them.
Hobbes's Leviathan is essentially a work of fantasy fiction. It has little to no grounding in historical fact. His idea of a "state of nature" is an unsupported assertion.
("And here we have the plain difference between the state of nature and the state of war, which however some men have confounded, are as far distant, as a state of peace, good will, mutual assistance and preservation, and a state of enmity, malice, violence and mutual destruction, are one from another. Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature. But force, or a declared design of force, upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war: and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, tho' he be in society and a fellow subject. Thus a thief, whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill, when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat; because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which, if lost, is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defence, and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man's person, makes a state of war, both where there is, and is not, a common judge.")
Read the whole chapter. While he disagrees with Hobbes, who felt that men without government were always in a state of war, he still allows that when there is a "declared design of force" and no "common superior on earth to appeal to for relief" that in such a situation a state of war exists and one is entitled to kill even a thief for taking one's coat.
See also United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 304, 318 (1936) ("It results that the investment of the federal government with the powers of external sovereignty did not depend upon the affirmative grants of the Constitution. The powers to declare and wage war, to conclude peace, to make treaties, to maintain diplomatic relations with other sovereignties, if they had never been mentioned in the Constitution, would have vested in the federal government as necessary concomitants of nationality. Neither the Constitution nor the laws passed in pursuance of it have any force in foreign territory unless in respect of our own citizens . . . .")
Enlightenment philosophy was quite thoroughly criticized by postmodernist thinkers like Foucault who showed that enlightenment was used as a tool and enabler of oppression. Your statements support that criticism.
Moreover, I am not convinced that quoting Locke, Hobbes and US judicial precedent provides enough proof that "every nation" has a "right" to "kill people in other countries". Enlightenment philosophy is not an ultimate argument, you know.
Personally, I think this viewpoint is morally bankrupt and no government employing this "right" should be supported by its citizens.
I find arguing about "right" and "wrong" in the abstract to be a boring exercise, because that just comes down to feelings and emotion. It's no fun to argue when there's no agreed-upon set of rules to argue within!
Here, I'm not arguing that my viewpoint is "right" or "wrong" or that Locke is "good" or "bad." I'm arguing that it's consistent with the philosophical underpinnings of the Anglo-American legal and political system. Like it or not, Enlightenment thinking and Lockean philosophy in particular are an important reference point when evaluating questions about America's political system.
I certainly would. And I would support bombing Iran in retaliation, and I would assert that those actions would not be reviewable by an American federal court.
Except that this way lies violent madness. Support bombing Iran? You're now on the Iranian kill list - and you're arguing that this is a reasonable way to run international relations?
Someone has to de-escalate. I know that's not a popular view in a country where the answer to gun violence is more guns, but it's the only way to peace in the long run.
Every nation has the sovereign right to kill people in other nations. It's a fundamental precept of sovereignty. However, nations also bind themselves to their own laws. In the U.S., the Constitution gives U.S. citizens certain rights even when they are not on U.S. soil. That is the only thing that would make it illegal for the U.S. to kill someone on foreign soil.