Letter: Use of drones says a lot about a country

To the community,

To drone or not to drone, that is the question. And should one man decide who will be droned and should we be assassins, and should we be torturers, and so on and on?

If we have to debate the above, we have already crossed the line on our way to creating a new dark age of barbarianism, worlds where anything goes. That’s especially so when deadly policy is shrouded in the secrecy of a national security state that commits acts of terrorism.

Bill Crawford

In post World War II Germany, all Germans were thought to be responsible for the Holocaust. No German had clean hands. The nation was guilty.

Reason of state is not a defense for acts of terror, so said the Nuremburg Court presided over by an American judge, Justice Jackson. In post Civil War America, the same standard was applied in the Andersonville trial when a Southern commander of a prisoner or war camp was found guilty of the horrible mistreatment of Union soldiers. He was executed.

If we travel down the road of barbarianism, then we kill the social contract between the people and the government. The Constitution will become a hollow hypocrisy. A dead letter, a scrap of paper.

Bill Crawford, South Lake Tahoe