The thing is you start out with knowing what this person did and you reason from that if it is ok to kill him.
But if you whack him what the international public would see is an american missile in a smouldering crater in some civilian suburb. That is an act of war. And not the shadowy kind which is already happening. That forces the Russians to also react in kind (otherwise they look weak.)
The Russians would also work hard to spread misinformation about what you did. They would say you got the wrong person, or that you got innocent bystanders. Probably both. They would also say it was an extrajudicial killing where the executive played judge, jurry, and executioner in one. And you know what? They would be right.
And even if everyone agrees that you got the right person, and he was a bad one, and there was no collateral damage in your initial attack it can still lead to innocent deaths. Let me tell you about Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 [1]. What happened is that the US assasinated Major General Qasem Soleimani. Undeniably a military target. Arguably a bad one. Iran in retaliation lobbed some ballistic missiles to a US base. Due to luck nobody died there. All is well, isn’t it? No, not really. The iranian air defence following their retaliation was understandably on full alert. Somebody panicked and mistook a civilian airliner for an incoming american cruise missile and shot them down. 176 innocent civilians are now dead. It is a tragedy.
Did the US killed those 176 civilians? No they didn’t. The proximal fault lies with the panicking Iranian air defences. But these are the kind of forces you are playing when you are talking about drone assasinating randoms.
But if you whack him what the international public would see is an american missile in a smouldering crater in some civilian suburb. That is an act of war. And not the shadowy kind which is already happening. That forces the Russians to also react in kind (otherwise they look weak.)
The Russians would also work hard to spread misinformation about what you did. They would say you got the wrong person, or that you got innocent bystanders. Probably both. They would also say it was an extrajudicial killing where the executive played judge, jurry, and executioner in one. And you know what? They would be right.
And even if everyone agrees that you got the right person, and he was a bad one, and there was no collateral damage in your initial attack it can still lead to innocent deaths. Let me tell you about Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 [1]. What happened is that the US assasinated Major General Qasem Soleimani. Undeniably a military target. Arguably a bad one. Iran in retaliation lobbed some ballistic missiles to a US base. Due to luck nobody died there. All is well, isn’t it? No, not really. The iranian air defence following their retaliation was understandably on full alert. Somebody panicked and mistook a civilian airliner for an incoming american cruise missile and shot them down. 176 innocent civilians are now dead. It is a tragedy.
Did the US killed those 176 civilians? No they didn’t. The proximal fault lies with the panicking Iranian air defences. But these are the kind of forces you are playing when you are talking about drone assasinating randoms.
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlin...