Admiral Yamamoto and the Justification of Targeted Killing

The Volokh Conspiracy » Admiral Yamamoto and the Justification of Targeted Killing

Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University’s School of Law, echoed Greenberg’s argument that “targeting individual enemy combatants in war is perfectly legal and moral”.

Somin points at US targeting of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese fleet during World War II, and the British and the Czechs’ killing of German SS General Reinhard Heydrick [sic] in 1942, as precedents.

“Surely international law does not give terrorist leaders greater protection than that enjoyed by uniformed soldiers such as Admiral Yamamoto.”

“And if it is legal to individually target the commander of a uniformed military force, it is surely equally legal to target the leader of a terrorist organisation, including Osama bin Laden,” he told Al Jazeera.

I made the same point commenting on another Volokh post by Kenneth Anderson on May 6.

By any standard, OBL was commanding officer of al Qaeda. Why was it okay for the president to order the assassination of Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto in 1943, but not of Osama bin laden in 2011? Is it just that Yamamoto wore a uniform and OBL did not?

Related to the claims, such as the UN's, that the bin Laden raid was of dubious legality if not outright illegality, just consider that the SEALs' could not be less legal than a domestic no-knock raid. These are frequently lethal.

Dressed in black and carrying assault rifles, members of a local multi-jurisdiction police unit burst into a dark home in Ogden, Utah, one night in September shouting, "Police! Search warrant!" ...

A video of the incident made by the Weber-Morgan counties Narcotics Strike Force and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency shows a man suddenly appearing in a hallway holding a shiny object that an officer thought was a sword, but was really a golf club, according to Weber County Attorney Dee Smith.
In the instant he appeared, the video shows, three shots rang out and the man, Todd Blair, 45, fell to the floor, dead. ...

[Police] Sgt. Troy Burnett was found to have handled the situation appropriately, Smith says. "This was a split-second decision. He acted according to his training."

And now the Indiana Supreme Court has ruled thus:

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

So how can it possibly be legal for a police officer to break down the door to your home and shoot you dead for practicing your putting on your carpet, but not be legal to attack and kill an enenmy combatant (and an unlawful enemy combatant at that)?