I believe the question should be: is the action right under natural law, not is it justified or honorable.  Liberty and her blessings can only be sustained by doing the right things, taking the right actions.  To the degree our leaders seek justice and honor, we enable tyranny. 

This is a complex subject and by no means or intent do I disparage the men and women who serve this country, especially today.  I give thanks to all who have served and now serve this country.

Allow me to try to explain. If an action is right, then it will also always be justified and honorable.  But, the reverse is not necessarily true; a justified and honorable action is not always right.  Knights and warriors serving and killing at the command of divine right kings and popes were justified and honored, legally and in every other way, though they usually served tyrants.  Whether or not they were also right requires knowledge of history, analysis and a great deal of thought.

A tiger in a zoo kills a child who came too near, some may feel justified in killing the animal, but is that the right action to take?  The distraught and angry parents most likely will demand zoo administrators kill the animal.  But how can it be just, honorable or right to kill a wild animal which is behaving normally?

If we want to stop these seemingly endless wars, then we must take the right actions.  Sending U.S. forces into Afghanistan and Iraq in pursuit of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and sponsors of terror was unquestionably justified and honorable based on the information available to the every nation, political leader and almost every humanitarian organization between 9-11-2001 and mid 2003.  Here in the U.S. all of the leadership of both parties strongly endorsed both wars.  Prior to 9-11 Congress passed in 1998 and President Clinton signed a law compelling the U.S. President to remove Saddam Hussein, and then Clinton began what became 20,000 deadly air sorties over Iraq by the end of his second term.  Any President elected in 2000 was compelled to remove Saddam Hussein, a tyrant  was harboring one of the masterminds of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the hijackers of a cruise ship, a training center for international airline hijacking, was accused of over 1 million deaths of Iraqi people and uncounted thousands of deaths of Iranians in a long war with Iran.

The world was already living in fear PRIOR TO 9-11-2001.  Terrorists including the Taliban and various other Islamic groups were hijacking airliners and killing people, especially American military.  The Taliban had held control of Afghanistan after a long war with Russia and they were trying to violently take over Pakistan.  Military and civilian planes had been shot down or blown up, including an Iranian civilian airliner (with the death of all on board) shot down by a missile fired by A U.S. Navy ship in the Persian Gulf, and Pan Am flight 103 blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in a counterattack by Iran, although initially blamed on Libya for several years.  Were these actions justified, honorable or right?

The U.S. and the NATO nations had supplied Saddam Hussein with WMD following the theocratic revolution in Iran.  The political leadership of the NATO nations and the UN knew that at the time of both wars on Iraq.  With the benefit of hindsight and transparency in government, it turns out that the second war in Iraq was not right, it was a bad decision, though perhaps well intentioned, and certainly the men and women who fought and died there were under legal orders, therefore they were unquestionably justified and honorable.  9-11-2001 was the emotional impetus that finally drove an already fearful but war-wary American public once again into a war.  This was a war that radical Islamic leadership had been planning and are still fighting since at least the Israeli defeat of the Muslim nations surrounding Israel in 1967.

Most free people and world leaders today still do not acknowledge the extent of the Islamists global war for world domination, though their strategy has been published and translated for years and their organizations are well known.  The intent and plan of Islamists is to cause proxy or full scale wars between super powers which will drain the strength and will of the super powers, allowing Islam to step in and dominate the world.  Savagery and terror are explicit tactics.  The long war in which Russian occupied Afghanistan bled Russia of military strength and will, and is an explicit Islamist strategy.  The wars fought and being fought in more than 6 countries today by America are explicit strategies of their plan.  The treasury and will of America is being exhausted to kill people who have been training to die for more than 30 years.  Notice that Russia is funding and arming the Syrian tyrant regime while the U.S., Turkey, Hezbollah/Iran and Saudi Arabia are arming the international Islamic mercenary rebels in Syria.

The leadership of the free world and most of the people of the free world are in denial.  The global banking and government elite don’t believe it, they go on fighting endless wars.  Almost no one believes that a maniacal plan for world domination is being implemented by Islamists, and some of the agents for that were appointed to Homeland Security, the State Department and CIA.

President Obama and some in his administration justify their drone killing of civilians by claiming that all able-bodied males of a certain age are militants.  His drones have now killed thousands of innocent civilians and children, not including young men who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The number of civilian deaths is understated.  Is this right action?  Will this stop the wars in those countries or result in unconditional surrender?  The evidentiary answer is clear: no.  The numbers of Islamic fighters is growing and the number of wars is growing.  Clearly, this is not the right course of action.  Drone pilots and Apache pilots are being honored.  President Obama is recently attempting to distance himself from his personal drone hit list.

International laws of war define the targeted killing of specific groups of people as a war crime.  The Taliban fit the definition of a specific group of people.  So, even though some of us, at least, know that the Taliban are part of an Islamist strategy to dominate the world, international law defines killing members of the Taliban as a war crime.  In other words, under international law, indiscriminate killing of Taliban is unjustified.  Killing of unarmed or downed and wounded Taliban is unjustified, as well as dishonorable under most codes of military justice.

Muhammad and Islamic strategy have specifically and intentionally targeted the weaknesses of the western and eastern worlds’ intellectual heritages, all of them.  “The Management of Savagery,” (2)  a jihadi guide written by al-Qaida operative Abu Bakr Naji, specifically targets western weaknesses, intends proxy war between the superpowers, defines the importance of the mass media and PR as well as jihadist ideology and goals, and specifically requires Muslims to endure a period of savagery by their brothers.  There is no intent to assimilate Sharia or be compatible with western or eastern legal and moral law.  Religious and ethnic tolerance and our legal system are being strategically used against us.

We celebrate life.  They celebrate death.  Death by martyrdom is an honorable and justified means to achieve their version of heaven, or so they believe.  The father of the Chechen terrorist who bombed the Boston marathon called his dead son “an angel” after the bombing.

Americans and the free world must find the right solution to this multi-faceted dilemma.  The enemy has already slaughtered more than 200 million people in the name of Allah over the 1300 years since Muhammad created Islam, more than the combination of all the other holocausts, pogroms, genocides, long marches, and killing fields.  They kill eight of the fellow Muslims for one non-Muslim.  They have their arguments against us and feel just as justified and honorable in their jihadist acts as we do.

The path we are on leads to defeat.  We are already in their trap.  So far, the jihadists are winning, regardless the propaganda from your favorite politicians and media outlets.  So far, western and eastern intelligentsia have no answer to the attack of Islamic fundamentalism, because jihad is successfully turning into weaknesses to be exploited the very characteristics that the civilized world considers its strengths.  Citizen, soldier, sailor, politician, teacher, preacher, we all need to discuss the solution openly, decide and act.  I am not calling for all out war.  I am calling for the civilized western and eastern world to converge its resources to think and develop together a plan and take the right action.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

(2) http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/olin/images/Management%20of%20Savagery%20-%2005-23-2006.pdf