In my view, the big points are the following:
1. Torture is simply not acceptable because if you do it, you're clearly worse than the terrorists who kill, but don't torture.
2. Impunity. The U.S. government decides when to go out and kill large numbers of people. It benefits from Impunity because nobody is strong enough to do anything about it. However, that's worldly justice. What if a superior justice exists, and the U.S. is punished for this?
3. The drone attacks kill hundreds of innocent people. You can't win wars like that. Because you sow hatred and fear. You can't win hearts and minds. Offering empty apologies and a bit of money is simply insulting.
4. The last really big American victory was WWII when the Americans were clearly the good guys.
5. Unfortunately, as long as the U.S. continues to be an oligarchy in substance, but democratic in form only, this situation will continue.
6. Only the American people can put an end to this, and bring Democracy, Justice, Equality and Ethics back...

G. W. Bush, whose history is neither filled with intellectual pursuits or moral character, commenting on the THE PATRIOT ACT and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, (both of which have been re-upped and recommissioned by Obama soon after he took office, belying his promise to be rid of both) When asked about the anti-constitutionality of both Bush's replay was, "What is the Constitution, it is just a piece of paper...".

So is the Bible Mr. Bush.

MERHOFF
MNHISTORYFAN

Here's another perspective on Hiroshima/Nagasaki:

http://www.eustacemullins.us/wp-content/works/Articles/Eustace%20Mullins...

Dear RJG—You haven't heard anyone on the "far" left (whatever that is) condemning the atrocities of 9/11? Take the wax out of your ears, please. Communist parties all over the world, including the Communist Party USA, condemned the 9/11 crimes in no uncertain terms, as did other left (including, I suppose, "far" left) forces.
And thanks to Flak for raising the pertinent questions: what if other countries started using drones for assassinations as the US is doing?

MNhistoryfan

I refer you to the following site for a fairly up to date discussion of this topic. It presents analysis by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa - a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara :

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/07/why_did_japa...

And a few extracts from the five page article:

Hasegawa - who was born in Japan and has taught in the United States since 1990, and who reads English, Japanese, and Russian - rejects both the traditional and revisionist positions. According to his close examination of the evidence, Japan was not poised to surrender before Hiroshima, as the revisionists argued, nor was it ready to give in immediately after the atomic bomb, as traditionalists have always seen it. Instead, it took the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, several days after Hiroshima, to bring the capitulation.

But Hasegawa and other historians have shown that Japan’s leaders were in fact quite savvy, well aware of their difficult position, and holding out for strategic reasons.

One answer is that the Japanese leaders were not greatly troubled by civilian causalities. As the Allies loomed, the Japanese people were instructed to sharpen bamboo sticks and prepare to meet the Marines at the beach.

Hasegawa’s own relationship to the events of August of 1945 testifies to the degree to which, all these years later, they resist clear appraisal. As a child, Hasegawa watched the Tokyo firebombing from his roof, and he can still recall the eerie orange glow on the horizon. Growing up, he felt anger at the Japanese government for bringing the conflict onto its people. Later, working as a scholar in America, he accepted the position that the atomic bombing was necessary to end the war. Today he views America’s bombings of Japan’s cities - Hiroshima and Tokyo included - as war crimes. Yet, he adds, they are crimes America should not apologize for until Japan comes to terms with war crimes of its own. These are the evolving views of a man who has mustered the courage to look at an ugly period of history without flinching - something that most people, Americans and Japanese alike, have found themselves unable to do.

Note the comment that Hasegawa concludes that “the atomic bombing was necessary to end the war.”

If a war movie was ever realistic, no one would ever go to it. No one. Not a single person. Not even people who were experienced veterans. War is not entertaining.

Any movie that claims to portray a war-adventure is making a myth-story from war, like making a tall tale, a legend around a campfire. You are perhaps misinterpreting documentary and fiction here?

I grew up during the cold war, playing Spy vs Spy, Cowboys and Indians, and Cops and Robbers with the kids around the neighborhood. None of the roleplaying, the little passion plays we acted out, would pass as politically correct today. Some was heinous and horrible in retrospect, and I'm appalled as a modern woman I participated in these dramas around the tropes of race, gender, violence, nationality, ethnicity and prejudice of the time.

But we picked those tropes up mostly from the movies. And the movies are not always on the vanguard of the left. We don't have to accept that scree from the conservatives. It ain't always so. The more uncomfortable and taboo the topic, the more conservative sometimes the tropes in domestic films will hang -- on family, on ethnic stereotypes, on war, on mourning, on death, on jealousy.

As Americans, we often don't want to see these ideas challenged on film -- that's why "foreign" films are the domain of transgression in these areas.

So if you find this film portraying torture in a watered down nearly glorified manner -- perhaps you're framing it incorrectly. Rather than thinking of the director as being out of sync with your left politics and modern UN Declaration of Human Rights -- think of her as being solidly in sync with a hundred years of symbolic vocabulary of American film.

You are criticizing her for not creating a film that would not communicate "war movie" to an American audience, by creating a new vocabulary of war. And I wonder, is that her job?

Perhaps it is a job for *an* artist. But faulting her for it being a job specifically for this artist... I don't know. You are pillorying her for achieving the norm, rather than the extraordinary. She made a commercial piece of art that fits American tropes.

If you want Americans to appreciate non-commercial film, we need to change Americans or Hollywood first -- so films with less commercial potential can get more secure funding, perhaps.

Murder is murder. There is no justification for it, it doesn't matter what you call it, man made law doesn't change what it is, no matter how it's twisted, inflicted, or administered. Obama is a cold blooded murderer, a child killer, a sociopath. "Defending" the fatherland is no excuse to kill a child. The murder of someone who poses no threat is what people with a sick mind do for fun. A serial killer doesn't stop after one, neither does a "mass murderer". The "president" is nobody special, he's an ordinary citizen subject to the same laws as everybody else, except when he's not.

Bravo Bill! Excellent, morally thoughtful piece. We have lost our way, and drone assassinations, which is exactly what they are, is just one more sign. Thanks for remaining a force of thoughtfulness and balance in journalism when so much of what passes for it has simply become partisan apology or diatribe.

Bill - It is not clear why you find the use of unmanned drones to be objectionable. Would you feel better about it if they were manned? As you know, 3,000 American civilians were deliberately targeted and murdered on 9/11, but I have yet to hear from anyone on the far left condemning those atrocities. Is that because those aircraft were manned and you prefer that for some reason?

Your contention that there has been no declaration of war is misleading. As you know, on 9/18/01, Congress passed the "authorization to use military force". The resolution empowers the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and the Navy of the United States, "to employ force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organization or persons". And that is precisely what the President is doing.

What if every country begins to use drones like we do? What if China were to target a 'terrorist' hiding in, say, New York City or San Francisco someday?

Contemplating how various actions would play out among global players is the basis for all of our treaties and conventions and is important to consider. We can't just consider drone strikes from our own, narrow, self-interest.

Arguing that the killing of Bin Laden is good so its irrelevant how we learned his location etc. is irrelevant is pure, "the end justifies the means".

If you believe this you better take a good look and who decides the "ends", because you just made him/her emperor with the power of lie or death over you and yours.

Honor, trust, integrity. Words no longer in the American dictionary.
What do the Lone Ranger and the Drone Ranger have in common? They're both white guys hiding behind a black mask.
But at least one of them could be trusted with the integrity to take the honorable course.