I don't understand this comparison. Yamamoto was at the time of his death an instrumental component of one of the largest military threats the US ever faced. Cukurs was decades out of the military when he was assassinated. Yamamoto was killed to degrade the combat effectiveness of a combatant army. Cukurs was killed purely for revenge.

Absolutely. I think these extrajudicial killings we are talking about now lay somewhere rather in the middle.

I agree, in that I think the available evidence suggests that some of the killings have been reasonable in the context of military operations, and others have been haphazard, negligent, or poorly justified.

Of course, that's the way of all wars. Drone killings are alien to us and thus easy to fret about, but far worse things happen when you put troops on the ground. Scared teenagers have done far worse in good faith efforts to take down well-conceived targets than drones are likely ever to do.

You'd hope that people would take away the right lesson from this; not "US citizenship is a sacred talisman of safety in war zones", but that we shouldn't be declaring idiotic wars against enemies that almost by definition can't be "defeated".

I don't think we really disagree on anything in this case then. I have no particular issue if Americans happen to be killed by Americans in normal circumstances.

Killings outside of what could reasonably be considered a warzone continues to concerns me, American or otherwise (though American particularly, if I am honest).

I don't share those, and think he is ducking the issue by saying the memo improperly seeks justification for its geographical reach in Hamdan. Rather, it acknowledges the lack of clear guidance and develops a a legal theory based upon the history of hostilities launched by one party to a conflict from inside a neutral third country (Vietnam and Cambodia) and the executive intent of the signatories to the Geneva Conventions (as suggested by Corn & Jensen).

I'd like you to consider the possibility that some questions are not easily justiciable (that is, decidable by the judiciary), and this is why the Supreme Court sometimes declines to take up an issue on the grounds that it is a 'political question'; one for which there are no clear legal rules and the matter must ultimately be left to the approval of the citizenry via the electoral process.

I am well aware of Yamamoto's killing. Allow me to refer you to the killing of Herberts Cukurs.

But this exemplifies what's wrong with your argument. Cukurs was killed because of something he was judged to have don ein the past. There was no question of his attempting to continue his Holocaust-era activities. Al-Awlaki, by contrast, was actively fomenting war against the US by his own public statements.