"most people are okay with sending troops overseas to kill people for oil, but we shy away from executing serial-killers?!?"

Perhaps government perceives a much greater threat to our civilisation from terrorism than it does from people who commit other horrible crimes.

For me, to justify a death penalty I would have to justify the state ending my own life against my will. I cannot do that so I dont support capital punishment. That might seem selfish, but I also have concerns that poor policy choices, such as the death penalty, can kill people other than serious felons and the wrongly convicted, and devalue life.

As an example, the terrorist cells in Afghanistan that are subject to lethal military force from many foreign powers, are in part funded by the opium trade. The value of opium is a consequence of its illegality and the punitive measures, including capital punishment, used to suppress the trade. So it could be argued that capital punishment, as a component of drug prohibition, is causing the death of Australians in Afghanistan, as well as incurring the substantial cost of supporting a military campaign in a foreign country.

In short…the heroin trade finances the enemy, and America needs an enemy to fight to both justify the Industrial Military Complex, and at the same time, utilize that complex to attain resources for a consumer-driven economy of excess. That means, the heroin trade must be fostered, not eliminated. Otherwise, if there were no bad guys in the world, who would you fight, and how would you justify trillions of dollars spent in arms per year by one country alone, which just also happens to be the largest consumer of everything, except sushi and haggis, on the planet.

When America first invaded Afghanistan, I was watching an episode of Foreign Correspondent and the reporters encountered a poppy-field being GUARDED by US troops. When asked why they were guarding instead of destroying that poppy-field, the response was, “Oh, we’re not here to destroy the local economy, but to protect it.”

Since protecting Afghanistan’s local economy, 90% of the world’s heroin comes from that economy.

During the Vietnam War, 90% of the world’s heroin came from the Golden Triangle…Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, where the CIA were, but the Vietcong weren’t. But it financed the Nth Vietnamese, the Chinese AND the Americans.

Are we starting to see a trend here?

With heroin financing the enemy and buying arms, arms are sold to the enemy, sold to the government to fight the enemy, and all justify other political expediencies that we called “the Communist invasion” during Vietnam, or the “terrorist insurgents” in Iraq and Afghanistan. The heroin trade both directly and indirectly works hand-in-hand with the arms business and the politics of the region, and facilitates a lot of the propaganda for both sides.

TBC...

Without something like the heroin trade financing our “enemies”, who lately always just happen to be Third World countries with no chance of a “fair fight”, we would just basically walk in and take what we want. But then we look like bad guys to our own populace and that we are bullying little guys. With something like a heroin trade that finances a few fanatics and freedom fighters, with a bit of disinformation, we easily look like good guys coming to the aid of a fledgling country undergoing problems…well, that’s the picture they like to paint to us, anyway. Yet we never do this where there isn’t oil close by, or some political strategic value or resource. Hence we let Mugabe in Zimbabwe murder people for over 20 years and do nothing to help those “misfortunates”. Ergo, it’s all BS!

And finally, ponder this…how do you think all of that heroin gets to the West from some stone-age hick with no electricity or running water in the middle of nowhere? Do you think Habib loads a camel with heroin and treks to New York?!? Or during Vietnam, how did it get from Laos to LA? Who is it that makes that product a lucrative product, but a lucrative market? And who has the freedom of travel to and from those makers and markets? If you think it’s just a few drug dealers and their “mules”, then think again.

Welcome to American Foreign Policy 101…nothing is as it seems.

Fester,
Your view that our troops are merely sent overseas to kill is misinformation. They are there to protect the innocent and assist in establishing a peaceful society against the murderers. They will kill those that threaten the peace. Look at East Temor, Afganistan etc.

The problem with death penalties is where to draw the line over when to enforce and when not to enforce it. I'm sure many people could draw a line, it is drawable for most people. But that line is also different for most.

If we had a death penalty, who would get to say when it was enforced? Would this be likely to change depending on the political seasons?

We as a country are safer off without one.

@Bugsy, "The problem with death penalties is where to draw the line over when to enforce and when not to enforce it. I'm sure many people could draw a line, it is drawable for most people. But that line is also different for most."

So indecision is the answer? The problem you cite is the same for absolutely everything in life, and so is not an answer. A jury of 12 peers can decide that fate.

"If we had a death penalty, who would get to say when it was enforced? Would this be likely to change depending on the political seasons?"

It's not that big a problem. The legal system is well adept at determining these things as they have done in the past. We had the death penalty until 1967 when Ronald Ryan was hung. Plus there are models to follow and/or adapt from other countries that currently have the death penalty such as many States in America.

"We as a country are safer off without one."

I don't know whether we are safer or not as a country. But for the area that the offender formally resided in, it's not just safer that they are in jail, but psychologically, it's safer when they are executed when the crime is heinous enough. And as I said earlier in the case of predators, there's no such thing as rehabilitation, jail merely puts their activities on pause. The families of the victims of these people, I believe, deserve closure. Not be mocked from a cell or live in the fear of release.

And if they're never going to see the light of day again, why keep them for decades in a prison?

Or let me put it another way...should there be the death penalty for a war crime? And most war crimes pertain to the killing of innocents, so conceptually, what's the difference between killing a few innocents in a war, and killing a few during peace-time?

So IMO, if I can be hung for a war crime, then I can be hung for a peace-time crime of similar magnitude.