Defining things this way shows why granting rights to a non-citizens is preposterous. The non-citizen does not live under the coercive force of the state and therefore needs no protection from it’s potential abuse.

I’m sure many of you are now freaking out about this position because it leaves me open to the criticism that instances where the state controls foreign land the state may abuse its coercive force on those people. However, I think the state should be unconstrained by rights when attempting to win the peace in a recently conquered land. Certainly over time the state should give rights to the people but if the truth be told, I would prefer the state pull out completely while at the same time instilling a locally democratically elected government that explicitly states the rights by which the state’s coercion is governed.

It seems to me that this is a real fancy way to say that citizen rights are not a moral issue per se. They are more about keeping the coercive monopoly of the state in check. I don’t support citizen rights to prevent citizen death, I support it to prevent the intrusive force of coercion mindful of the fact that many of those intrusion will eventually lead to citizen death.

It’s an interesting contrast, how you don’t want anyone to mess with your rights in order to save lives, but you want the US to not grant any basic human rights to non-citizens in order to save lives. While I’m sure that on technical legal level your position is tenable, I still feel a great moral contradiction between your positions.

Your post in general has the lovely scent of libertarian to it.