Justice Department's legal case for drone strikes on Americans

Would have felt materially different if Awlaki was killed in Afghanistan rather than Yemen?

 

it is a slippery slope.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/n...ounterterrorism-agents-records-show.html?_r=0

 

I don't think "where" matters as much as "why". To that end, Afghanistan would have provided better cover for the powers-that-be, i.e., "we were aiming for a shed filled with 'enemy combatants' and killed Awlaki by accident!" Obviously this ignores much about our peculiar conflict in Afganistan, but you get the point.

 

It's a slippery slope. Should the government be able to take out anyone that doesn't agree with it's policies?

 

You also "knew" that Romney would beat Obama, that McCain would beat Obama, and that Iraq had WMD. Hence, no one really cares what you have "always known".

 

I agree with you that the process of being able to label whoever the govt. wants as an enemy combatant is dangerous, and I'm against that.
Awlaki was a terrorist and that was confirmed by Al Qaeda themselves who confirmed his death and that was in a leadership position. Using Awlaki as an example of why the policy is bad isn't a good idea.

 

I'm against the govt. being able to label anyone at their whim. But merely speaking out against the govt. is different than joining a group that has declared war on the united states and is engaged in combat with the U.S.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blo...-doj-white-paper-about-targeted-killings.html

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blo...er-about-targeted-killings.html#ixzz2K9L5spuO

for those keeping tab on the manufactured basso outrage meter, that's another left-wing cornerstone blasting the Obama admin on this. The documents were released by NBC.

The left has really been "silent" on this. zero cred.

The shifty nature of his politics vis a vis Obama is the only thing worth questioning at this point.

 

I would not be so quick to use Al-Qaeda as a source for Awlaki's alleged involvement. They certainly stand to benefit from any connection of this sort (furthers the America-the-aggressor and martyr angles).

Yemeni experts and US officials both would not categorically support the assertion that he was hugely relevant in Al-Queda or directly blame him for terrorist plots. The latter hesitation is particularly damaging as US officials hold all the "evidence" secret. They easily could have "fibbed" and linked Awlaki directly (how would anyone ever be able to prove them wrong?) but chose to weasel out of direct accusations of that sort.

Awlaki, I think, is an excellent example - but for different reasons. A thin line is being walked...and Awlaki is perhaps the signal that what constitutes a "terrorist threat" is evolving into what constitutes a "threat to policy". As further evidence of this, take a close look at US support for MeK in Iran. Or any of our history in latin america or indochina.

 

That's really and truly disturbing. We're using our war crimes of the past to justify drone warfare.

 

you ain't seen nothing yet.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blo...er-about-targeted-killings.html#ixzz2K9NpH9tl

The combination of all these reasons could be used, for example, to target members of Anonymous, and Wikileaks---as there "exists no appropriate judicial forum to evaluate constitutional considerations" and it may be "infeasible" to capture them without risk of them embarrassing certain people---and they may pose an imminent threat even if they are merely posited to be planning future catastrophes (with or without proof).

 

I think that's the big problem here, not the citizenship issue. If he was a conventional enemy army general, no one would think twice about his citizenship status when he was killed. Conversely, if some guy is tooling around in the Yemeni desert in his truck and he's not an enemy of the US, we shouldn't be shooting missiles at him even if he's not a citizen.

The thing that makes these drone strikes objectionable is not the citizenship, it's the nebulous definition of the war itself and the enemy. Bush and Obama have kept the War on Terror as vague as possible to maximize their lattitude to identify targets and run operations. It's logical given the nature of the threat, but that vagueness does create this slippery slope and potential for abuse of power and the comission of war crimes. The civil rights of US citizens is a red herring; the problem is the War on Terror itself.

 

Combine this news with all the live fire exercises over major cities like Houston and Miami recently.. It makes you wonder wth they are thinking.

 

The policies of Obama are almost no different than Clinton. Clinton used missile strikes against Al-Qaeda and Serbia, and an embargo against Iraq to justify the neo-conservative war against Iraq. Obama is doing the same thing, substitute drones for missiles and Iran for Iraq.

The policies of the United States, as I see it, do not differ much from the policies of Rome as Joseph Schumpeter saw:

 

let me be clear, "Preening" is his (other) middle name:

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/02/06/drone-strikes-waterboarding-and-moral-preening/

Drone Strikes, Waterboarding, and Moral Preening
Peter Wehner | @Peter_Wehner
02.06.2013 - 10:50 AM



On May 29, 2009, President Obama gave a speech at the National Archives in which he said the following:

Now let me be clear: We are indeed at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates. We do need to update our institutions to deal with this threat. But we must do so with an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process; in checks and balances and accountability. For reasons that I will explain, the decisions that were made over the last eight years established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable — a framework that failed to rely on our legal traditions and time-tested institutions, and that failed to use our values as a compass.

The president went on to trumpet the fact that he banned the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, saying, “I know some have argued that brutal methods like waterboarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more.” Mr. Obama argued that (among other things) they undermine the rule of law. And during the 2008 campaign and shortly thereafter, Obama insisted that his policies would “regain America’s moral stature in the world.” This was a common Obama theme: He would act in ways that respect international law and human rights and remove the stain from America’s reputation.

I thought of all of this in light of this report by NBC’s Michael Isikoff. Thanks to Isikoff, we’ve learned that “a confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be ‘senior operational leaders’ of al-Qaida or ‘an associated force’ even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.”

According to the memo, “The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.”

In addition, it states an “informed, high-level” official of the U.S. government may determine that the targeted American has been “recently” involved in “activities” posing a threat of a violent attack and “there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities.” But as Isikoff point out, the memo does not define “recently” or “activities.”

You can be excused if you’ve (a) missed Mr. Obama’s much-heralded due process element in all of this and (b) have a hard time reconciling Mr. Obama’s presidents-should-not-have-blanket-authority-to-do-whatever-they-wish-lectures (see the National Archives speech for more) with his Justice Department’s expansive executive powers memo.

So what do you think Senator Barack Obama would have said if President George W. Bush had pursued these policies? And how do you think the press and the political class would have reacted?

Let me suggest as well that a man who feels wholly at ease with drone strikes that have killed American citizens suspected of engaging in terrorist activities without the benefit of a trial and which have, in the process, killed hundreds of innocent people should be a tad bit more careful when it comes to lecturing about the immorality of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs). Joe Scarborough, for example, argued that what Bush did with EITs is “child’s play” compared to what Obama has done.

To put things in a slightly different way: During the 2008 campaign and much of the early part of his presidency, Barack Obama obsessively argued that waterboarding all of three individuals–September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and senior al-Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri–was a violation of human rights and a grave moral offense. Here’s the thing, though: unlike Mr. Obama’s drone strikes, no American citizens, no terrorists and no innocent children have died due to waterboarding. Yet the president’s press spokesman is defending Mr. Obama’s policies as “legal,” “ethical,” and “wise.”

Which leads me to two conclusions. The first is that it’s not always easy to navigate the murky waters of law, morality, and war and terrorism, at least when you’re in the White House and have an obligation to protect the country from massive harm. (After they were revealed, I had several long conversations with White House colleagues trying to sort through the morality of waterboarding and indefinite detention.)

The second is that it is true that there is a serious argument to be made that during wartime targeting terrorists, including Americans, with drones is justified. But that justification probably best not come from someone who has spent much of the last half-dozen years or so sermonizing against waterboarding, accusing those who approved such policies of trashing American ideals and shredding our civil liberties, and portraying himself as pure as the new-driven snow. Because any person who did so would be vulnerable to the charge of moral preening and moral hypocrisy.

 

Basso, you have zero credibility. You spent your moral tirade on finding people who attacked GWB for the person not the policies which was sickening for the soldiers who had died.

And now you're copy and pasting with gusto despite the fact that your position on this issue is clearly defined.

Can you admit that the drone policy under the Obama administration is wrong---

and therefore concurrently, the drone policy started by the Bush administration was wrong?

Thanks.

 

politics, not principles.

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The definition of your policy positions.

 

It is sad that a tea party Republican is better on this subject on President Obama....is there any way to bring 2008 Obama back?....

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To be fair, 2008 Obama is basically part fairy dust, part mirage---more so than part broken promise. People who were really watching got what they pretty much bargained for, at least on national security.

i mean, it's not like you're going to crush al-Qaida with sugar bunnies.