T-Nehisi Coates is doing his stint as the liberal of the day at the Times, and after celebrating Obama’s political toughness, he turns to the killings of the al-Awalaki family and concludes with this:
During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama earned the G.O.P.’s mockery. Now he has earned their fear. It is an ambiguous feat, accomplished by going to the dark side, by walking the G.O.P.’s talk, by becoming the man Dick Cheney fashioned himself to be.
I believe he’s referring to one of the men behind the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, not to mention thousands of our troops, in Iraq. That’s the equivalency we draw from the deaths of the al-Awalakis?
Am I the only person who sees the drone missions as an extension of the kinds of “law enforcement operations” that were contemplated by John Kerry and ridiculed by the likes of Cheney? I could fill up pages of this blog with doubts, questions, disgust and other criticism of our use of drones, but I don’t think I could ever equate it to Iraq or even Afghanistan. But maybe I’m missing something here.
WereBear
More false equivalency. And kinda bigoted if you ask me: why is the “American citizen” status so special?
Especially when someone has repudiated it. In such a big way.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Dick Cheney believed he was protecting America by invading Iraq. Like all cowards with automatic weapons, he thought spraying a gun around indiscriminately was being macho.
What Obama has done, whether you accept killing al-Awalaki or not, is use US force in targeted ways to go after those who are actually threatening America. It’s why he was able to go after bin Laden in Pakistan.
That’s the difference.
El Tiburon
No. Unfortunately too many folks like yourself insist on rationalizing and excusing away tactics that are simply wrong on so many levels. According to your theory, law enforcement now has the implicit and explicit right and duty to kill suspects before ascertaining their identity or that they did in fact did anything illegal.
It is not that difficult: Obama Is continuing to bomb and kill innocent brown people.
Excuse that away. Please.
Or do you vote with uterus as well?
Doggie D
You are missing something here mistermix.
In order to help reveal things to you and potentially others, I heretofore make the bold predictions that, no matter who wins the Presidential election in November, (1) low-level but very expensive wars will continue in Arab lands; and (2) the American military will be drawn into an Israeli-Iranian conflict which will begin this October. We will fight on the side of Israel.
Happy to be of service.
WJS
If you think drones are the solution, you need to get a better hammer for all of those nails. Killing your way to victory is still killing, son.
Marc
I had another problem with that piece–the easy slippage between the toughness Republicans are whining about (Obama’s campaign tactics) and the campaign of drone bombings, which Coates somehow negotiates through the middle step of Harry Reid “smearing” Romney. One of these things is not like the others.
mistermix
@El Tiburon: Is there a legitimate US interest in stopping people like al-Awalaki?
If not, why not?
If so, what’s the alternative to using drone strikes?
someguy
Wow. An assault from Coates straight outta the neo-con handbook. He’s right though. They bring a knife, you bring a Hellfire. They hit one of yours, you put them, their family, their dog, their attache, and some innocent bystanders (or at least the pieces and splatter you can find) into the morgue.
It’s the Chicago way.
geg6
@mistermix:
I’m with you on this one, mm. But I quit reading anything by TNC other than Civil War stuff a long time ago. He has been fully assimilated into the Borg. Too much time spent at the Aspen “Ideas” Festival, I guess.
c u n d gulag
Look, I’m no fan of what Obama’s doing with the drones, and some (a lot) of the other things regarding “national security.”
But if anyone was expecting this countries first black President, and a Democrat at that, to be weak on national security, merely because he was against the Iraq War/Occupation, then you were delusional.
If he was perceived as weak on that, not only would he NOT be reelected, but he would insure we’d never have another black President.
And that’s if he weren’t IMPEACHED in an Issa nano-second.
Linda Featheringill
I’m a pacifist. But I also try to be a realist.
Drones are a fact and are here to stay. They will be around for quite a while, no matter what you say and how you vote. The next few [several?] presidents will use them.
In defense of the drones, I will say they are more “surgical” than bombs because they kill fewer onlookers than bombs.
Does the use of drones constitute an act of war? Maybe. Is it morally acceptable to use drones? Debatable.
However, nothing you say will make them go away.
General Stuck
TNC must have watched a different campaign than I did in 2008, cause I don’t see Obama doing anything other than what he clearly and repeatedly told us he planned to do, if elected in 2008. Especially concerning AQ and going after them hard.
Sometimes, when I think about it very long, it is almost creepy, or maybe unnatural for politicians, the fealty the guy has shown for his campaign rhetoric and efforting toward keeping his promises, or at least attempting to keep.
Baud
Let’s call this what is is: an outright lie.
arguingwithsignposts
Complete and utter bullshit.
Mino
Obama will not leave any opening for Republicans to attack him on national defense. Period. He’ll have to live with that. I can’t imagine he is happy about it.
And all the shreiking print in the world will not deter him. But, I believe he will be able to leave Afghanistan on the timetable he has proposed, when re-elected. That is probably the best we can exect.
Bobbo
Also, too, Cheney loves him some torture.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Hi All,
I’m a big fan of TNC at the Atlantic, but I did find that NYT column a bit jarring.
I’m a little troubled by the US attacking and killing US citizens with only the Administration’s say-so, but I think that context very much matters. Someone who has declared war on the US (the elder al-Alawaki) from Yemen is not the same as someone attending, say, an ANSWER rally on the Mall in DC. And innocents die in military operations all the time – we don’t let the possibility of that happening veto all operations. War is about killing people and breaking things, and always will be. It will never be clean.
The actions the US is taking against al Qaeda and similar organizations is different from normal law enforcement, and different from normal war. But it’s not really unprecedented. See the “letters of marque” discussion about article 1 section 8 of the Constitution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque Yes, it’s different from using drones. But the point is, even in the 18th century there was the recognition that there could be conflicts that could not be put in the boxes of law enforcement or war.
I do not think that the use of drones against notorious actors over seas who were US citizens is necessarily an affront to the rule of law. I much would be more comfortable, however, if there were a clear dividing line that indicates when the 2001 AUMF (and its later additions and modifications) will expire and these actions can be more clearly regularized (with (possibly secret) indictments and so forth). It’s the indefinite end of the conflict and the expansive definition of “the battlefield” that too many hope to use that I find more troubling.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
Editing nit, but this is what drives me nuts about Coates. He is a great writer, but he needs an editor following him around the way old Jaguar drivers needed a mechanic on hand constantly. Sometimes he’s like Hendrix playing an out-of-tune guitar.
Instead of Obama “becoming the man Dick Cheney fashioned himself to be,” what he really wanted is Obama “becoming the man Dick Cheney fancied himself to be,” which is more accurate and simply devastating.
That said, I would love to be Coates’s editor.
batgirl
@El Tiburon:
The only response this deserves: “Fuck you!”
rikyrah
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
I never saw this kind of concern for terrorists when a White man was President.
fuck Coates
Peter
Moral outrage has no sense of scale.
sfHeath
It’s hard to do math with people’s lives and still have a moral argument. Trying to compare the equivalency of war crimes is like trying to scoop some dry dirt out of a mud puddle. Your hands are still dirty.
lol
@El Tiburon:
We should obviously have simply called Al-Alwaki’s lawyer and asked him nicely to come in for questioning whenever he’s done blowing up troops and it’s convenient.
Al Quaeda’s really no sort of threat whatsoever. We can safely ignore them and their leaders.
WereBear
An excellent point. I know we aren’t used to it, but we also want to encourage such behavior, no?
Hawes
There’s a lot to worry about with the drone strikes and targeted killings of Al Qaeda operatives. But ultimately, it’s about meeting terrorism and terrorist organizations on their own terms. Striking out of the blue – as it were – and disappearing.
But if the alternatives are either an Iraq/Afghanistan style invasion and occupation or sending a sternly worded letter and promising a full investigation… I’m not sure there are any good options.
lol
@Hawes:
This is the problem. Greenwald, El Tiburon, etc offer no alternative except to let Al Quaeda operate with impunity.
It also doesn’t help that they always ignore that the Yemeni courts tried him in absentia and sentenced him to death. But since he’s got an American passport, I suppose Greenwald considers him immune to whatever punishment other countries devise.
peorgietirebiter
@Steeplejack: As a devoted reader of TNC, I had the same take. I couldn’t come up with the right word and I think you nailed it with fancied. I imagine someone will bring it up to the Horde and he’ll address it. No Douthat.
Mino
@batgirl: Amen.
El Cid
The notion that any “dark side” has yet been broached by the Obama campaign (and its allied SuperPAC) is absurd. I haven’t seen any “dark side” incidents yet.
Democrats are supposed to lose, or at most allow the Republicans to do all the work of losing on their own.
Hawes
@sfHeath: Or alternately, we can live in the real world. The one where force ultimately exists and must be met with force. America did not try and blow up a Yemeni airliner. And when el Awlaki DID plan to do that to an American airliner, we responded by hitting him, not the entire country of Yemen.
To say that there is no difference between a drone strike, a high altitude carpet bombing or a full scale invasion is to remove yourself from the real and consequential decisions that a President is forced to make.
JMS
I don’t read “becoming the man Dick Cheney fashioned himself to be” as becoming the same as actual Dick Cheney. It’s more that Obama became what Dick Cheney or others like him would want others to see them as. That is, effective and efficient in hunting down terrorists. Cheney’s actual performance as a terrorist hunter was incredibly bad (couldn’t get actual terrorists, ended up fighting people who weren’t our enemies, turning them into enemies, destroyed a country and killed many thousands of people for no reason). Obama is better at that, as far as that goes.
Next issue, though, is whether there is any merit to Obama being a more effective version of what Dick Cheney claimed to be. There is an argument to be had, mostly among Democrats and “progressives”. Some believe no use of force can be justified at all or only in very limited situations; others believe such action is justified when it leads to a better outcome in preventing future attacks, even if people are killed in the process. If you believe the latter, you can try to minimize the effects on noncombatants, but you have to go in acknowledging that innocent and perhaps not innocent lives WILL be lost directly due to U.S. action. The justification is believing that MORE lives would be lost if you did nothing–of course it’s not always easy to prove that one way or another.
I believe that a good president of the U.S. has to be able to seriously and carefully contemplate that he or she will sometimes be responsible for death. The reach of the U.S. is such that its policies, directly or indirectly, will determine who lives and who dies, whether it be through aid or lack of it to other countries, support or lack of it to healthcare at home, policies on domestic crime, or declaring war. If someone can’t deal with the responsibility, they shouldn’t be president. Also, this level of responsibility isn’t for everyone. Would YOU want to preside over so much potential death? Most of us wouldn’t.
On the other hand, you certainly don’t want to elect a president who holds the deaths of other people cheaply (the Republican model). Obama is moderately hawkish. He’s willing to preside over a certain amount of possible death if it furthers his aims, but not because he holds a grudge or likes bombing people in the abstract. If you think his death count is too high, probably the best thing to do is to come up with alternate ideas where the country’s aims can be reached with fewer deaths (acknowledging that none is unrealistic) and push those to policy makers.
StarStorm
@El Tiburon:
I sincerely hope that last sentence is a joke, but I suspect it isn’t, so I’ll echo Batgirl’s response, which an addition of my own: “Fuck off and go kill yourself you worthless fuck.”
Wapiti
Am I the only person who sees the drone missions as an extension of the kinds of “law enforcement operations” that were contemplated by John Kerry and ridiculed by the likes of Cheney?
You’re probably not the only person that sees it as some kind of law enforcement. I view targeted killing = law enforcement as an obscene stretch.
As a mental exercise, if China used a drone against one of their political dissidents who had been granted asylum in the US, would that be a reasonable extension of law enforcement? Or would it be no different than an assassination? Or would it be something else?
Schlemizel
No, drone attacks are not law enforcement operations. law enforcement operations would include actual courts and laws not the targeted assassinations of groups of people to kill one target.
What if the Taliban sent a drone to shoot a hellfire missile at Obama? Would that be a law enforcement operation given that he is trying to kill them? No.
Please do not become like the Republicans I hate, do not support anything simply because the guy on our side proposed it.
James E. Powell
@General Stuck:
TNC must have watched a different campaign than I did in 2008, cause I don’t see Obama doing anything other than what he clearly and repeatedly told us he planned to do, if elected in 2008. Especially concerning AQ and going after them hard.
Totally agree. And on issues where Obama has not done what he said he would do, e.g., Guantanamo, we know it was congress, led by paranoia, who prevented him from doing so.
Irving
@Wapiti: False equivalence. Chinese dissidents aren’t remotely the same thing as Al-Quaeda terrorists.
Ben Franklin
I am more concerned about the desperation of Government to control the human behavior of all, including it’s citizens?
Why has Homeland purchased 750 million rounds of ammo? For practice? Hollow points?
Why has Wikileaks been made into Darth Vader?
It’s a pattern.
BillCinSD
@Hawes: and how does meeting terrorism on their own terms not turn one into a terrorist?
General Stuck
@WereBear:
I don’t have a problem with people on the left complaining about, or not supporting Obama on his aggressive actions against AQ, including use of drones. In that frame, it really doesn’t preclude dissent, even if Obama told us he would do, what he is doing. But statements like this
are out of bounds, implying Obama has become something, when he told us he was that way all along. That TNC is doing this with comparisons to Cheney, is very disappointing. To put it mildly.
Cacti
@Wapiti:
Is that what the firebaggers are calling Awalaki these days? A political dissident?
Both Sides Do It
Obama has developed a secret legal justification for killing anyone in the world with his flying killer robots. He has political immunity from this ever becoming an issue. Cheney could only dream of such a thing.
(Also it’s “Ta-Nehisi” and “Awlaki”. Not that big a deal but they’re used several times in the post).
BillCinSD
@mistermix: is killing the person and his family the only method of stopping?
BillCinSD
@Cacti: call him whatever you want, you’re still begging the question
Alex S.
I like to call myself a realist in foreign policy matters. So in my opinion, drone strikes are a cheaper, cleaner and more precise way of waging war. I also think that the targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists are probably the best of all bad options. Better that than a real war. But as always, it’s also a matter of degree. These drone strikes should be a matter of last resort, and the targets have to be worth it.
doofus
@Wapiti:
And equating al-Awlaki with dissident isn’t an obscene stretch?
ETD to correct block-quote fail and misspelling.
robertdsc-iPhone 4
I don’t see drones as law enforcement. I see them as tools of war against a different kind of enemy.
TNC is dead wrong about Obama becoming what Cheney wanted to be. Stupid & foolish from someone who usually is more thoughtful.
Marc McKenzie
@lol: “This is the problem. Greenwald, El Tiburon, etc offer no alternative except to let Al Quaeda operate with impunity.”
Exactly. Maybe if they did, I would listen to them. But since they do not offer any viablealternatives, I can only view their writings as adolescent behavior on the level of a baby showing his pee-pee.
lol
@BillCinSD:
Did American courts sentence this hypothetical Chinese dissent to death after he went into hiding?
AHH onna Droid
@Wapiti: When I was a whelp, adults around me spoke approvingly of Golda Meir, Mossad, and their successful assassinations/killings.
It seems like firebaggers, egged on by the ratfuckers, have bought into a notion that they can turn back the clock and repeal history. Entropy doesn’t work like that. Removing Obama is a fantasy that only ends happily for the Kochs and other moochers, polluters, and looters.
Killing Bin Laden has actually opened some space where we can rationally discuss de-escalating the security state, if only the purity trolls could see it.
Yall should be reading Defying Dixie. Author makes a convincing case that Stalinism and the Cold War did far more harm to the Left than the Right.
Is the Overton Window for real, or just a comforting story?
Cacti
@Both Sides Do It:
So the authorization for the use of military force passed on September 14, 2001 was actually a secret?
Soonergrunt
You are not the only one who recognizes that the world is an imperfect place. You should be proud of this fact, and not defensive about it. Those who live in fantasyland should only get ridicule.
@Schlemizel:
But it would be a legitimate use of force in their war against the US. It would be every bit as legitimate as their use of suicide bombers.
Scotty
@El Tiburon:
I think there is a wide difference between the foreign law enforcement mistermix is referring to and domestic law enforcement you are making reference to. Due process would reign with domestic enforcement, which is why we typically arrest/capture terrorists within our country, because the Constitution applies in the USA. But when you talk about individuals on foreign soil, who do not represent that countries government or the majority of the populace different rules will apply, not our Constitution.
Baud
@General Stuck:
I agree with you 100%, but it’s clear why they do it. Sensational claims about Democrats produce far more eyeballs than reality-based policy critiques. It’s a supply/demand dynamic that’s not easy to change.
mv
I hope for another republican as president because then liberals will return to protesting senseless killing and occupation, instead of allowing themselves to be brainwashed with nonsense excuses for a powermad murderer.
Warren Terra
Mistermix, you’re wrong to try to shoehorn drone attacks into “law enforcement operations”. Hellfire missiles don’t arrest anyone, let them plea their case, etcetera. But they are a limited, carefully considered application of force under extreme circumstances, and so it is far more wrong of TNC to claim Obama’s targeted use of drones is comparable to Cheney’s policy of cavalierly blowing up whole countries with no real goal or plans.
WJS
@AHH onna Droid:
How can one be a purity troll when it was evident that this was wrong under President Bush and when President Obama is clearly far more responsible with foreign policy? Be that as it may, this is still not a smart policy.
If you want to kill terrorists, kill terrorists. But don’t pretend that the escalating use of drones is anything other than a misdirection play aimed at increasing the power of the Executive Branch. Cue the hearings in 10 or 15 years when someone wakes up and says that “the safeguards that should have prevented this abuse of power” were not properly put in place.
Soonergrunt
@Marc McKenzie: Don’t you see, the alternative they offer is for us to let AQ and the Taliban and whoever else kill American citizens where they wish to do so in whatever manner they wish to choose and the proper American response is to apologize for our citizen blocking the paths of their freedom bullets and freedom shrapnel.
TK421
“Am I the only person who sees the drone missions as an extension of the kinds of “law enforcement operations” that were contemplated by John Kerry and ridiculed by the likes of Cheney?”
“Law enforcement”? Obama fires missiles at people who might be terrorists, then fires missiles at their funerals in case terrorists show up to mourn. That isn’t law enforcement, that is murder and war crimes.
Law enforcement means acting against people whom you have reason to believe are guilty, not killing people who sort of look a little suspicious, then stamping “militant” on their picture and calling it a job well done.
Anwar al-Awlaki was assassinated without trial or oversight. He was never even charged. “Law enforcement”? My god, this country has become deranged if people don’t even understand that simple concept anymore.
Cacti
@Warren Terra:
Agree with this.
No need to candy-coat what actually happened. Awalaki was an American citizen who had allied himself with a belligerent group covered by an authorization for use of military force.
He met the same fate as 94,000 confederate soldiers.
lol
@TK421:
Do you acknowledge the 2001 AUMF allows the President to go after Al Qaeda? What makes Al-Awlaki different than any other Al Quaeda militant?
Anwar al-Awlaki was assassinated without trial or oversight. He was never even charged.
Well, except for the part where the Yemeni courts tried him in absentia and sentenced him to death. But what do they matter? They were only the courts of the country he was residing in.
Ben Franklin
@Soonergrunt:
Your snark is a bit defensive……..those ‘freedom bullets’ you chide, can be used for things other than freedom. They are the last desperate attempt at control, after rational discussions have ceased.
But the 750 million round buy is no clerical error and that’s a lot of bang on the taxpayers’ bucks. Examiner has obtained a copy of the 91-page order and it details ammunition ranging from .380 ACP to hundreds of thousands of rounds of 12-gauge shotgun shells and various rifle calibers including .223 Remington and .308 Winchester.
The name of this department has always been troubling. “Homeland” sounds so much like “Fatherland” without the German accent made so familiar in countless 1940s war films, verstehen sie? The amount of ammunition these guys use might suggest they ought to be called the “Department of Insecurity.”
http://www.examiner.com/article/does-the-dhs-know-something-we-don-t
lol
@Ben Franklin:
Firebaggers are now linking to the right-wing paranoids at the Examiner?
General Stuck
@Baud:
Sad, but true. Meanwhile, GOP pundits and their footsoldiers are weaving a tight web of utter bullshit to support their candidate with lockstep proficiency.
Democrats, on the other hand, see an excellent opportunity to lose, by comparing their candidate to Marqui de sade, and go for it with gusto.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
If you dream of a future where 20th-century ‘BootsOnnaGround’ warfare (with its massive civilian casualties and treasury-draining expense) is considered as antiquated as men with spears or mounted calvary with swords, then you should be a fan (or at least accepting of) drones.
Am I happy that one man is making all the kill/no-kill decisions? Nope. Long term, some kind of control/oversight process needs to be put in place, as for all other government uses of force. But with the current political environment (thanks mostly to the GOP), we’re not going to be allowed a rational conversation on the matter this year. And probably not the next.
By all means, keep making the PTB explain themselves whenever they want to use force. We could have used more of you back in 2002-3. But reflexive pacifism can be just as stupid as reflexive war: Drones aren’t going away, nor should they.
If you’re concerned with the rule of law and process issues, argue those.
jp7505a
As a dyed in the wool liberal, certified disliker (hate is such an ugly word) of Cheney and card carrying member of the ACLU, I do not like the drone campaign or the unilateral decision to kill the al-Awalaki family . There are all kinds of constitutional, moral, legal questions involved with this act. The potential for abuse would fill the Grand Canyon.
BUT as a real world matter, al-Awalaki was beyond the reach of US law enforcement or ground troops to capture and return him for an Article III trial.It was also unlikely that he would turn himself in at the nearest embassy if we said ‘pretty please’. He was not just running his mouth or writing sermons full of hate speech. He was (and here the administration must be more open about its evidence) plotting attacks on the US. Exactly what should the President do? Sit back wait for another 911 and then send flowers to the victims.
The GOP/Bush/Chaney took way to many liberties with the Constitution (read water boarding and the torture memos) when there were legal alternatives. If all other alternatives to stopping an al-Awalaki have been tried and the only one left is a Hellfire missile, then the President would be failing in his duty to protect the country and its citizens.
I don’t like that moral arithmetic but I really do not want to live thru another 911. Once was more than enough. If the critics of the drone strikes have a better approach I would be more than happy to sign a petition to the White House and say let’s try this approach. I just haven’t seen such a suggestion.
Glen Greenwald writes with great passion about the evils of the drones but doesn’t present any solution other than what just sit and take it. I don’t think that is a viable alternative. At some point, even if you are a US citizen, if you go over to the enemy in a war then you run the risk of getting shot no quarter given. As a matter of comparison, a drone strike on a grunt like John Walker Lind would not have been justified because he was not a threat to the United States. Yes it is a vague standard that depends totally on the context of the situation and the moral intregity of our leaders, but life is not black and white but maddeningly shades of grey.
patrick II
Should Obama have, with the help of congress, created a process that included judicial review and not leave the decisions totally in the executive branch? Yes. Is this equivalent to war with Iraq under false premises? Not even close.
1badbaba3
@lol: No, it’s worse than that. They are calling Obama a war criminal, on a par with Dick Vader, Pol Pot, and Hitler. Their implication is that he is willfully targeting innocents, not unlike AQ. Not in reaction to what AQ has done, but for no other reason than he is evil. To them it is not a proportional response done with a relatively new technology which, when used in concert with intel, can go places our troops cannot. Cowardly? How about strong-arming civilian communities, using them as human shields while planning and carrying out new attacks. When Dick Vader was running things they knew they were relatively safe ‘cos he was in no hurry to end things (see Tora Bora, and $400 a gallon gas to get through Afghanistan). Cheney had this technology back then,an extensive intel apparatus, as well as the most advanced military in history, and the best he could do was an uneasy stalemate? Against these clowns? Sheesh. What do firebaggers, Republicans, and AQ all have in common? Here’s a hint; starts with an ‘O’…
Phil Perspective
@Alex S.: And you know that Iranian scientists are working on a nuclear weapon, how? Are they breaking international law? In that case, what about the Israelis?
TK421
I’ll make this as clear as I can: Dick Cheney supports President Obama’s anti-terrorism policies. He does not ridicule them, he agrees with them, wholeheartedly.
Dick Cheney interviewed by NBC
“I think he’s learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate” Cheney says of Obama policies like drone strikes and indefinite detention.
Ben Franklin
@lol:
http://rt.com/usa/news/dhs-ammo-rounds-security-560/
What documentation do you need?
Phil Perspective
@lol: Do you want to take that rationale to its ultimate conclusion?
taylormattd
@Linda Featheringill: The problem isn’t drones. How are they any different then bombing people with planes flown by a human pilot? They aren’t.
The actual problems with use of drones include: (1) use of drones is sold to the public as being exceedingly accurate, when in fact, they are not; (2) it might make the decision to bomb easier for the executive, given there are no Americans piloting the plane.
Soonergrunt
@Soonergrunt: Further to my last, the problem is with seeing drone attacks as an extension of law enforcement operations. But it’s not the problem that TNC, Greenwald, and El Tiburon think is the problem.
The problem lies in seeing law enforcement as the correct paradigm. This paradigm came about because AQ is a stateless entity, and John Kerry was trying to change the debate.
These aren’t criminals in any real meaningful sense. Their goal is not to make money or to do any of the other things that criminals do. Their goal is to kill people. Period.
That the vast majority of their victims are other Arab Muslims is unfortunate and also irrelevant to this discussion, except to wonder why Arab States themselves aren’t hunting and capturing or killing these people with as much vigor as possible. The main answer is because this is not an organized crime ring.
AQ sees itself, and we should see it, as a military organization of a stateless nation, the Islamic nation (and particularly the Wahabbist-Sunni/Salafist nation, because the Shia, Sufis, and everyone else is getting beheaded when they’re done with us.)
Law enforcement must be a part of it. I believe that it must be the primary part of it, in fact. But when a senior enemy commander locates his headquarters in a place where he not accessible to US law enforcement, or even the law enforcement capabilities of his host country, then the appropriate response is to bomb the ever living shit out of him and EVERYONE who is supporting and protecting him.
That we use drones and limit the number of casualties to only those persons within the relatively small confines of the building or vehicle only really serves to ensure that we are killing the target and those people who knowingly choose to co-locate with him and serve him in his capacity as an enemy command and control node.
Phil Perspective
@jp7505a: You do realize what the President’s duty really is, right? Do you know what the oath of office actually says? Apparently 95% of this country has forgotten. It says: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” It doesn’t say protect this country and its citizens.
Ben Franklin
@jp7505a:
Yes it is a vague standard that depends totally on the context of the situation and the moral intregity of our leaders, but life is not black and white but maddeningly shades of grey.
That’s the problem. It is imprecise and it’s like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice; knock one down on purpose, three or four, by accident.
Is it the business of Citizens to come up with alternatives? But, we can express our concern enough so that alternatives will be assessed.
Soonergrunt
@TK421: So what?
If I were Dick Cheney and I knew that an indictment meant that whatever little time I have left on this planet with my bad ticker could conceivably be spent in prison, I’d be doing everything I could to muddy the waters too.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Ben Franklin: They’re for the civil war and the internment camps, donchaknow. After all, if SSA needs hollowpoints, DHS must need them too, amirite?
Or maybe not – http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/ssabullets.asp
A maximum award of $10M for 750M rounds of ammunition sounds like a bargain. Maybe they got a quantity discount.
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c5713f4bd89f8c3f038399af3b7f6a03&tab=core&tabmode=list&=
/snark
Or maybe the Examiner piece is transparent fear-mongering. Nah, that couldn’t be…
Cheers,
Scott.
taylormattd
@TK421: Lol. Yeah. That interview does not say what you represent it to say. Those quotes are half a page of bullshit being spewed by Cheney in an attempt to (1) falsely portray himself as having kept America “safe”; and (2) pretend Obama is doing everything Cheney said he should be doing.
Phil Perspective
@1badbaba3: Do you know anything about the drone program? Do you read anything about it? How they label basically any male been 18 & 55 as a target?
jp7505a
@Soonergrunt: I think the point Kerry was trying to make was ‘the global war on terror’ is not the correct framing for what we have to do in dealing with terrorism. This is not the fight to the death against German/Japanese aggression that was world war two.
Rather it is a mix of low level activities both military and civilian, domestic and foreign, which is on-going in the background as the rest of us get on with our lives. We are not going the full WW II mobilization route. In fact most of the time we won’t even notice it happening, just like we don’t notice the ongoing ‘war’ on organized crime. Sure if we see a suspicious package post-911 we report it, but we don’t have to build fall out shelters in the basement
Cacti
@taylormattd:
Drone strikes are a hobby horse of the firebagger left. Like the public option.
Soonergrunt
@Phil Perspective:
You do realize, do you not, that protecting the country and its citizens is the first duty of the state? The state has no legitimate reason to exist if it cannot or will not do this. The duty isn’t implied for the state. It’s the prime reason the state exists.
pseudonymous in nc
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
Yep. If the US is going to project its capacity for state violence beyond its borders — something that it has done by various means for a long, long time — then the default position should be to demand explicit consent and authority. By extension, if technology makes it cheap and easy to do so, then there should be political/institutional structures that mitigate that ease.
The Pentagon has not been backward in spending money to put cheap(ish) robots where people or expensive military equipment would once have been. In a way, they’ve started adopting the investment/payoff model of terrorist groups.
The comparison to Cheney is silly, and beneath T-NC, because Cheney’s 1% doctrine was all about selling big expensive wars (that are billed later) on spurious rationales.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@TK421:
Protip: Don’t stand next to a known terrorist, or attend his funeral.
El Tiburon
@mistermix:
You just don’t get it, do you? This slippery slope you insist on residing upon, where does it end?
According to your logic – can we then simply kill ANYONE who acts or says anything that might be perceived as a threat?
Have you heard of the Constitution? Does it mean anything to you?
But to answer your question – yes, there is a legitimate interest in stopping threats to our country. Do we do it by dropping bombs from the sky? Or do we put some effort into it by working within legal and moral frameworks?
So, Mistermix, we have killed al-Awalaki by drone strike – most assuredly killing innocents. Has the threat gone away? Have we created more “terrorists” who hate America because we just blew their infant daughter into a million pieces? Would our resources be better spent by trying to actually, you know, win the hearts and minds? Instead of dropping bombs can we drop Levi jeans and Justin Bieber CDs?
Again, Mistermix, you are okay with the continued killing of innocent brown people? If there was some “terrorist” in Ireland or Great Britain making threats against the US, is it like totally cool to drop a drone bomb on them?
You can try your best to rationalize it away – but you are no better then THEM.
Soonergrunt
@jp7505a: I would accept that. Well put. Thanks.
Cacti
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Well, when ya lie down with pigs, don’t be surprised when you get up covered in shit.
Cacti
@El Tiburon:
False dilemma alert.
Ben Franklin
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
You equate RT with Alex Jones?
Cheers to you, as well.
El Tiburon
@Linda Featheringill:
And thus my case is rested neatly for me.
They are here, let’s just accept them, huh?
As liberals and progressives, because of Obama, this is what we now accept without reservation: IT IS TOTALLY OKAY TO KILL INNOCENT ON-LOOKERS WITH ROBOT BOMBS AS LONG AS IT DOESN’T KILL AS SHIT-LOAD. IT IS TOTALLY COOL TO KILL AMERICANS AS LONG AS OBAMA SAYS IT IS OKAY.
It is scary what so many of you have become.
Phil Perspective
@Soonergrunt: But when a senior enemy commander locates his headquarters in a place where he not accessible to US law enforcement, or even the law enforcement capabilities of his host country, then the appropriate response is to bomb the ever living shit out of him and EVERYONE who is supporting and protecting him.
And you know that’s exactly what they are doing? Do you know they target funerals, also, too? In case any more AQ guys show up. Do you ever read stuff by people like Jeremy Scahill? Try it some time. The drone program isn’t what you think it is. Far from it. And for as many AQ guys it kills, it’s creating a lot of potential blowback. Do you people even know why a lot of people over in that part of the world are pissed at us? Apparently not.
pseudonymous in nc
@Soonergrunt:
First stipulated power of the president in Article II:
“The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States;”
I think Soonergrunt wins that one.
tomvox1
I think it’s strange that when TNC writes for the Times, he kind of sucks. That one he did about the last X-Men movie was just awful. This latest attempt is not much better and the Cheney thing at the end is really off the mark and designed solely to establish some sort of instant lefty cred so that he is not seen as too much of an Obama fanboy. Maybe TNC is simply trying too hard to be taken “seriously” when he gets his turn at bat in the big leagues?
Soonergrunt
@El Tiburon: The fact that you see it as a slippery slope (besides the inherent fallacy of slippery slope arguments in the first place) indicates to me that you’re the one who just doesn’t get it.
Please show me where the Constitution grants any rights to people who place themselves outside the reach of law enforcement to continue to attack and kill Americans with impunity. Please show me where it differentiates between US citizens and non-US citizens in that respect.
I’ll save you the trouble. It does neither of these things.
El Tiburon
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Yeah, I bet. Realizing the truth can be a bit jarring. While Obama may not sneer and chuckle and get a hard-on by killing and torturing – he does continue to expand those practices.
Well, maybe not the torture so much. Except that he certainly has no desire to prosecute those who did torture. He just likes to sit by while American heroes like Bradley Manning are tortured.
So, you know, Go Obama!
Jay C
@ mistermix:
Maybe not the only one, but I will respectfully posit that you’re still wrong here: the Bush/Cheney disdain for “law enforcement” solutions to the problem of terrorism (in preference to military ones) was probably more rooted in their commitment to fundamentally neo-imperialist doctrines (a la PNAC) to leverage American “influence” in the MidEast. Which of course, would need the prestige of the whole military apparatus behind it.
Myself, I’ve always thought that “law-enforcement”, i.e. as domestic investigative/enforcement agencies are (and always have been) in a better position to ferret out and deal with the sort of 9/11-style terror plots which can actually DO the bloody damage which most people fear; but that on the Federal-Government level – especially when warmongering neocons are in power – it was seen as inferior PR material when weighed against the presumably awe-inspiring “support the troops” jingoism the reliance on the military was concocted to engender.
pseudonymous in nc
@El Tiburon:
Somewhere in America, a herd of cows goes hungry because someone took their straw.
jp7505a
@Ben Franklin: I agree but until we get to that point I don’t want to give some nut with a bomb hiding in a cave in Yemen a free pass until we come up with that better solution.
El Tiburon
@lol:
Yep, that’s what we are advocating.
So, in your black and white world, the ONLY two options are:
1. Bomb the fuck out of everybody.
2. Ignore the fuck out of everybody.
I bet you’re the pride of whatever shithole you are from.
Daulnay
@El Tiburon:
That uterus comment would earn you a smack with the banstick, if I were wielding it. Attack ideas, not the person.
Ben Franklin
@Cacti:
Well, when ya lie down with pigs, don’t be surprised when you get up covered in shit.
I think pigs love rolling in shit, and are oblivious to the stench.
arguingwithsignposts
@El Tiburon:
Did I miss something here?
Phil Perspective
@Soonergrunt: Protecting us from what? Invasion from the Russians or North Koreans? Do you know what today is the Anniversary of(hint: Operation Ajax)? It’s something that rightly gives every other country on earth reasons to be suspicious of our intentions.
Cacti
@El Tiburon:
Looks like someone forgot their meds this morning.
Phil Perspective
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Did he say the SSA was buying them, or Homeland Security? I think the second.
Matthew
I don’t think he’s drawing an equivalence between the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the “deaths” of the al-Awalakis. The al-Awalakis didn’t simply happen to die in a drone strike. They were American citizens who were targeted by an American president and then assassinated with no legal justification whatsoever. The equivalence being drawn is between Obama’s and Cheney’s appalling disregard for the rule of law when waging their brutal war on a largely imaginary enemy.
eemom
Thanks goodness. Been gone for a week, and thought from yesterday’s posts that y’all had been mass lobotomized into 24/7 garden thread vacuity.
El Tiburon
@StarStorm:
I
No you don’t. You want nothing more than to have an excuse to be Tough-Guy on the Internet.
You and Batgirl deserve each other. Of course it was a fucking joke you fucking moron. And Batgirl, too.
Yes, it was an ode to old “Go Fuck yourself in the Face” herself.
I will explain it to you, not that it will do any good: ABL used that phrase to rationalize away all of the terrible things Obama is doing abroad. In other words, she was totally okay with the killing of brown people because her uterus was a bit more protected under Obama.
But otherwise, thanks, maybe I will go commit suicide for making a comment that offends you so. Have a nice Sunday.
Joel
I like Coates and all, but he is kind of wimpy for politics.
arguingwithsignposts
@Matthew:
I think this is the crux of the debate.
Matthew
@WereBear:
I’m still not sure what people like you mean when you say that al-Awalaki repudiated his citizenship. Does that mean that he exercised his first amendment right to free speech in a way that makes you uncomfortable? What al-Awalaki did was legally protected, at least until zealots like Cheney and Obama decided that the Constitution made waging their wars too difficult.
Cacti
@Matthew:
Indeed.
If you pretend that Awalaki wasn’t allied with a belligerent group, covered by an AUMF, then there was no legal justification whatsoever.
Please buy yourself one of those “I’m with Stupid” shirts, with an arrow pointing straight up.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Phil Perspective:
Untrue.
El Tiburon
@Scotty:
Really?
Where is this written?
Once a US citizen leaves the country, they are no longer protected by the Constitution?
Phil Perspective
@El Tiburon: Don’t forget, PBO has already declared Bradley Manning guilty, before any trial. Don’t believe me? Go back to April of last year(2011).
Phil Perspective
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: Where is your proof that this isn’t true? I have EW’s archives for the past year to back me up. Yeah, I know that doesn’t count in your eyes. Nothing ever will.
Soonergrunt
@Phil Perspective: If they target the funerals of enemy personnel because that’s another collection of enemy personnel, I’d call that simple economy of ordinance.
Here’s an idea–if you don’t want to be killed by a drone strike, maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t hang out with people who plan, command, and conduct terrorist attacks against a country that has drones.
yes, I have read Scahill. More than once. Here’s where you, and he, are missing a point. Just like the people of North Korea, whom we do not attack with drones, they hate us. They’d hate us even when we deliver food, and dig wells for them. I know that because I’ve done both in both Iraq and Afghanistan and then got shot at in places where I made those deliveries. And I know that the primary reason that they hate us and would hate us no matter what we do is because they are told that we are evil. They are told this in the Mosque that we payed to rebuild after a suicide bomber blew it up. They are told this by the government official who we escorted to the area the previous week to preside over the ribbon cutting on the well that we dug them. They are told this by the officials of governments that wouldn’t exist without our support.
Nothing that westerners do (and to them we are ALL Christian Crusaders) that is good for people is done by us of our own free will. Anything good that we do is only because Allah made us do it, against out will.
Just like the North Korean citizens who curse us when the power goes out multiple times a day in Pyongyang because they are told that it is our fault, it does not matter as much what we do or don’t do, as it matters what they are told in the final analysis.
Both Sides Do It
@mistermix:
We shouldn’t kill Awlaki if it’s illegal and immoral, regardless of how convenient it would be if he were dead.
We shouldn’t kill Awlaki if the only way we can do so is to make him a martyr with more reach and influence than he had when he was alive.
And really if we’re at the point where we’re justifying killing civilians and shredding the Constitution because some dude is making youtube videos in the desert that we don’t like, and we’re doing so because we can’t think of any alternative ways of dealing with negative propaganda, the national security state has gone insane and needs to be scaled back.
Soonergrunt
@Matthew: They were assassinated with a legal justification. As a matter of fact, it was a legal justification that is recognized by US law and international law. The fact that you don’t recognize that justification is irrelevant.
Phil Perspective
@Soonergrunt: It was? How do we know since they won’t release it?
laughingatkoolaiddrinkingobamabots
Nice to see the snarling fascism of Obamabots on full display from telling people who disagree with their opinions to “fuck off and kill themselves.” Guess what you dumb shits? Timothy McVeigh killed dozens of people and even he was afforded due process. You shitbags are no different than Nazis.
Matthew
@Soonergrunt:
This might actually be the stupidest thing ever written on this site, soonergrunt. The Constitution does not offer different rights or protections to American citizens based on their geographical location, regardless of whether or not they’re accessible to law enforcement. Nowhere does it say or imply that one’s right to free speech can be abridged if one is hiding in a cave. Al-Awalaki never attacked or killed an American citizen. Nobody has ever claimed that he did, so what are you talking about? This is the kind of statement that would cause a high school poli-sci teacher to slap the student who uttered it. This is precisely the kind of faux-liberal bullshit that has made so many authentic lefties disillusioned with the cult of Obama and the way that you mealy-mouthed centrists have fully embraced the logic of imperial war.
Soonergrunt
@El Tiburon: No, they are not. You need only look at the things that the Founders said to one another on this very subject in the Federalist papers. US Citizens who are outside of US jurisdiction are not protected by the US Constitution.
Now, if you think that we should be the world’s policeman and go barging in to other countries whenever and wherever it suits your (counterfactual) interpretation of the Constitution, please, by all means, General El Tiburon, tell us how you would have gotten Anwar Al Alawki to surrender.
How many FBI Agents or US Marshals are you willing to trade for him? If not them, how many Soldiers or Marines?
Phil Perspective
@Soonergrunt: Sounds like you really don’t understand why anyone might really hate us. Why do you think anyone in Iran might hate us? As I’ve said upthread, today is the anniversary of when such hate might have begun. And even then, most of the regular citizens don’t hate us. They were too young to know what happened 59 years ago. But it is certainly an example of why someone, somewhere else in the world, could. How many leftist governments in the world have we tried to overthrow?
Ben Franklin
@Soonergrunt:
Holy Shit. That was the most bigoted answer I’ve heard from you. You may be a little too close to the issue, to speak of it.
The MOOOOOOOOOSLIMS MUST DIE.
Cacti
@Soonergrunt:
And there is the point that the firebaggers never address when rattling off their inane talking points.
Al Qaeda is a belligerent group, subject to a September 14, 2001 authorization for use of military force, that is still in effect. By allying and affiliating himself with said group, Awalaki knowingly subjected himself to an AUMF. Awalaki then died when the AUMF’s powers were exercised against him. All 100% legal, even if you’re not pleased by the outcome.
For historical reference on American citizens being legally killed by military force, without arrest, charge, or trial see “The Army of Northern Virginia”.
Corner Stone
@Soonergrunt:
Man, you are one sick twist.
Rex Everything
“Right! AACK! HAS TNC TAKEN LEAVE OF HIS SENSES?!??”
Christ, shut the fuck up, you retards. Yeah, TNC’s talking about Cheney’s killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis … which was somehow accomplished over the heroic and principled opposition of the virtuous Donk … right?
Right?
[cough]
No, TNC is plainly referring to Cheney et al’s trampling of habeas corpus and due process in pursuit of the executive’s “right” to indefinitely detain suspects (or, you know, whoever). This is the Cheney legacy, the walk BHO has been so proudly walking, the ante of which he has so abominably upped.
Mistermix, the contortions you’ll go to not to see it are a sight to behold.
And yeah, I didn’t read the comments, but I’m sure TNC has been diagnosed with all manner of Greenwald’s disease, firebaggerism, maybe even Naderism. I tell you, you gotta be brainwashed or something to be a leftie who has a problem with murderous superpowers …
Phil Perspective
@Cacti: Sounds like you were so proud. Can you link to a copy of the September 14, 2001 AUMF? So we can see exactly what it says. Just because W. said it was legal doesn’t make it so.
ruemara
Ta-Nehisi is indulging in hyperbole of the worst sort. He should be ashamed. And to all the citizenship humpers, fuck you. You’re not targeted for protests or being a political dissident. Asking for GMO labeling or supporting Ron Paul is not doing what al-Awalaki did. It’s joining with a terror organization, providing them with an American voice, supporting them in a war theatre and helping them in anyway to plan terror attacks against your former birth country. Whether or not you like it, that’s what he did. If I, unwittingly, wound up driving the getaway car for a bank robbery that my mom did, I’d still be charged as an accessory. If I knew she was doing it and people got hurt or even killed, those charges would stick and I’d probably go to jail for them and maybe a couple of homicide charges. AQ knows what it is doing by hiding with their families and in tribal communities. Collateral damage is a-ok, it will help in the long run.
Corner Stone
And again, it’s not about the tool it’s about the policy. The Drone Program Policy is bad policy, period. There are no safeguards in place and clear incentives to increase and expand. We’re incentivizing a third party civilian entity to conduct drone strikes. They get paid to kill people and then stamp the “bad guy” label on whoever turns up dead.
It’s a bad policy and to simply say we should accept it, or maybe next year we can review it properly, those statements are monstrous in their intent and apathy.
Ben Franklin
I think if the US Government starts rounding up Americans for their own protection, and a few get killed in the process, we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Let God sort ’em out.
Ben Franklin
This thread is an example of why we should only have posts on RR and Cohort.
We can agree on something, for the Hell of it.
jp7505a
@Phil Perspective: then i guess we impeach, retroactively FDR for defending the country after Dec 7th and ‘W’ for defending the country after 911. seems like the preamble talks about, amoung other thing, ‘the common defense’ = We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Cacti
@Phil Perspective:
Now you’re completely flying off the rails here, sparky. An Act of Congress signed by the executive is the very definition of legal under our constitutional form of government.
Beyond that, the Judiciary can decide if an Act is unconstitutional, but an Act of the legislature signed by the executive is never illegal.
arguingwithsignposts
@Ben Franklin: This thread is an example of a frontpager trolling with drooooonnnnneeeeesssss.
I give it about an 8.3.
Corner Stone
For those making the “well, they hate us anyway” argument. How the hell would you feel if you were scared to even go to the local bakery. If the first thing you did when exiting a building or a car was to look to the sky in a futile attempt to ID a drone? Where in a family oriented social structure you’re scared to death to meet with more than one other person at a time?
And I’m talking about everyone, not just the “terrorists”. Because if they go into the wrong bakery, or stop to greet a cousin of a friend, or just about any godsdamned activity it could be their last.
To outright dismiss a nation, or region, of people who live in this situation. And to use our domestic political “realities” to excuse it.
JM
It’s funny how this statement suggests that drone strikes magically appeared when Obama became president. It’s a convenient way of praising drones without having to admit that Obama has merely continued — and expanded — what the Bush administration was already doing. Ta-Nehisi Coates was right.
And Obama’s drone strikes as law enforcement? That’s an interesting definition of “law enforcement”:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/75863.html
Both Sides Do It
@Cacti: The criteria by which Awlaki is designated as someone who could legally be targeted and killed under the AUMF is a secret, yes. Are these criteria reasonable? Are they insane grabs of power? We don’t know.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/24/killing-our-citizens-without-trial/?pagination=false
Lots of other info available through the google.
And using the AUMF as cover for this stuff is really begging the question. The AUMF authorizes “the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States”. Where does that stop? Al Qaeda was pretty much decimated as an organization in Bush’s term. Does any group that calls itself “Al Qaeda” fall under the AUMF? Isn’t that insane?
And in the absence of a reciprocal institutional structure that can authorize surrender, the only person who can declare war is over is the person that stands the most from continuing the war. Not from an institutional standpoint but from an epistemic standpoint. No one else has any way of knowing whether the war is concluded or not. I humbly submit that this is an abuse of a framework that gives Congress the power to declare war.
Now this doesn’t mean Congress can’t or shouldn’t nut up and restrict spending for this stuff. But that’s a different issue. That’s a practical, empirical, political issue. All of the above is about the legal framework that lets the executive branch unilaterally and without any oversight designate anyone on Earth as a terrorist and grants authority for their execution for an unlimited amount of time. That’s fucked up.
Bruce S
War isn’t “law enforcement.” The drone strikes are the most effective strategy against al Qaeda to date. But they’re not “legal” or acts of perfect justice. If one is engaged in acts of war, it’s best not to kid oneself about the reality of that choice. That said, there’s no comparison of these limited acts of war – either in human cost, brutality or, frankly, sheer stupidity and/or malice – to the Cheney war agenda. I believe these attacks are defensible in context of this particular threat – Iraq wasn’t even close. Aside from the fact that Cheney installed an ally of Iran in place of their enemy, which if you want to wring irony from the Iraq debacle is #1.
War inherently involves what would be considered criminal in any other circumstance. And, frankly, I welcome the criticisms and concerns of the Glenn Greenwalds whenever we choose to make war, because it’s a terrible choice that should be seen as beyond the bounds of the way we attempt to construct some civilized society. Although I support the drone strikes as a strategy against al Qaeda, I’d hate to live in a country where all we heard were cheers when we engaged in acts of war. I think Coates analogy is way over-the-top, but I’m at least aware enough of the evil – for lack of a better word – inherent in stuff like these drone strikes that I believe we need to hear these folks out. I’m not particularly self-satisfied or smug about the fact that I’ve chosen to endorse CIA teams choosing targets based on what must inevitably be flawed intelligence in some cases and pushing a button raining down hell on some encampment on the other side of the world.
Ben Franklin
@arguingwithsignposts:
Happens every time sitemeter sirens trumpet traffic is down
Corner Stone
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Is there a sentence missing between these two statements?
MBunge
“The Drone Program Policy is bad policy, period.”
No, you don’t like it. That doesn’t make it necessarily a bad policy. You refuse to accept that, which is why discussions with folks like you and Greenwald never go anywhere useful.
Mike
Cacti
@Both Sides Do It:
You make some fair points, but then you have to go and get all weaselly again.
The AUMF authorizes the following:
That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons
If you want “necessary and appropriate” defined, that is the role of Congress.
Soonergrunt
@Matthew: You know, you’re not normally droolingly stupid, but you are here.
The first amendment protected Alawki’s right to say that the US government are a bunch of murderers who should be opposed. It did not protect his right to tell Nidal Hassan to buy guns and go to Fort Hood and kill individual people. In fact, he had no right to do that under the Constitution that you venerate but apparently haven’t studied any deeper than fifth grade civics. The Constitution didn’t give him the right to tell other people to pack printer toner cartridges with semtex, attach them to pressure-sensitive switches and timers and ship them to the US. The difference between advocating general political themes and ordering specific actions is very well settled in US law.
It doesn’t matter where he was when he did these things. What matters is THAT he did these things. And he never had to hold a gun to kill US Citizens. Bin Laden didn’t kill any US Citizens with a gun, either. That idea is too stupid to even address further, and frankly it’s beneath you. The difference between him having done these things on US soil and having done them in a place where US law enforcement capabilities couldn’t get to him is the difference between him being under US jurisdiction (and therefore protected by the Constitution) and not being under US jurisdiction (and therefore subject to international law, under which the US government had every right to kill him.) The fact that he was warned many times over a period of several years that he was risking getting himself killed and that his best course of action was to surrender himself to the US or a third power and he chose not to do this is him choosing not to avail himself of the various legal protections he could have used.
Now, I know that you’d rather we had asked him “pretty please with sugar on top would you please stop running these operations trying to kill US Citizens and come in and talk to us over a nice cup of tea” and for us to send a sternly worded letter after the next time he refused, but he wasn’t going to do that. So, after the sternly worded letter failed (and after the Judge threw his father’s case out of court saying essentially that he needed to surrender before he could go to court) please tell us all how your fantasy world works and how this would have been concluded. Because in the real world, it was only ever going to end with him either voluntarily leaving his tribal area and the protections from law enforcement they were giving him and surrendering to somebody, or with a missile killing him and everybody else in his car.
jp7505a
@Both Sides Do It: If all he was doing was making videos in the desert, even if it influenced some terrorist-wanna be, then leave him alone. As soon as he started to recruit said terrorist wanna be and provided them with underwear bombs and plane tickets, he becomes a belligerent and a target. Yes, to save the response, I know I’m making an assumption that the information on the public record about the underwwear bomber is correct. I beleieve he has also been implicated in the Fort Hood shooting.
I’m fully aware that the US government lies. I am old enough to remember President Eisenhower apoligizing for the wayward U2 weather plane and we all know how that turned out. Throw in the bay of pigs, the gulf of tonkin and tricky dicks secret plan to end the war in Vietname, and I’m fully versed in what the government will and will not say. But we have to make decisions in the here and know not some time in the future when the Pentagon Papers show how we were lied to about Vietnam, and so on and so on
Corner Stone
@jp7505a:
The soldier at Fort Hood tried repeatedly to engage Awlaki and he was unsuccessful.
Ben Franklin
@jp7505a:
Given your valid concern about collateral damage, and the resulting recruitment issues, do you see any alternative to scorched earth policy, currently in vogue?
Corner Stone
@MBunge: You’re right I don’t like it. Over half the stories I read about drone strikes outright state the military didn’t know who all was identified in the strike but they were sure they got a bad guy.
Tell me where the supervision is. Tell me there isn’t a civilian company launching strikes and the more they launch the more they get paid. Go on Bunge, tell me all you know about the policy. I’ve got 3 or 4 seconds.
Daulnay
@Irving:
Chinese dissidents != al Quaeda terrorists I will grant you. Let’s consider how we’d react if Britian bombed a gathering in Massachusetts to kill an IRA terrorist.
Yes, a Britian that would do that would be a very different Britian than actual Britian, and I am actually having a hard time making such a Britian seem real. There are too many things that say to me ‘inconceivable!’. Like the fact that Britian is a civilized country, and would never, ever do something like that to an allied civilized country.
And that, I think, is the ultimate point. When Obama killed with drones, he took our country somewhere it should never go, into barbarism. Even in full-scale war between nations, it’s wrong to kill innocents and we try to avoid it. In cases like this, as in the case of an IRA terrorist, civilized nations capture and extradite the villian, or at worst allow the injured national party to kidnap the villian. The villain goes to trial, and only after does the injured nation execute him.
We have done something uncivilized and unlawful. While it may be a moral outrage, the real damage it does is to our rule of law. It pushes us further towards dictatorship, as does Obama’s embrace of unwarranted surveillance and secrecy.
When Obama won the election, I felt a weight of worry fall off my spirit, because I knew that he would reverse the Cheney/Bush policies that sneered in the face of rule of law, and that he would shun the Cheney/Bush theories that put government surveillance and government secrecy above the reach of the law. After he won the election, I proudly and happily put out the flag that I’d refused to waver during the Cheney years.
I no longer put out the flag. I support Obama on every issue except this one, and I think he has otherwise done a superb job (excepting global warming). I will vote for him, not that it makes any difference in California. But I worry that my children may live under dictatorship rather than freedom.
Over the last 20 years, I became a one-issue voter. I fear we’re sliding uncontrollably towards the end of our Republic. Many of our citizens embraced torture, unfettered and unsupervised police power, widespread surveillance, and now sanction governmental execution without a trial. Add this to a polity bitterly divided into two factions that increasingly turn to violence, and we’re fast approaching that brink.
Women’s rights, civil rights, environmental protection, health care, and all the rest do not matter if we lose our democracy. If we lose government by rule of law and controlled by democratic votes, we will lose all those others afterwards. That’s what’s at stake here, as much as the lives of a few innocents in Yemen. (Those matter too, of course.)
Klaus
BJ has really turned into a place for neocon assholes. Bomb em all. What else is there to do. Targeted killings by joystick. Living proof of how Obama has made an impact on Americans.
Both Sides Do It
@Cacti: You’re right, I quoted the summary text in the introduction of the resolution and not the meat of the text in the body. Sorry if that seemed squirrely.
But there’s a reason I didn’t think it mattered: as far as my points go, the intro and the meat function in the exact same way. The issue isn’t “necessary and appropriate”. It’s “against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons”.
That is as clear a bright-line as you can wish that the only people the executive branch can go after are the ones that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attacks.
Which one of those categories does Awlaki fall under?
Cacti
@Daulnay:
I wonder if Mohandas Gandhi or Eamon de Valera would have shared your feelings about British civility.
jp7505a
@Bruce S: two points 1. I want the the Greenwalds and the other critics on this blog to continue to yell at the top of their electronic lungs. We should never ever settle for being ‘good Germans’. However recognize that some of us have wrestled with the same questions and just come down with a different answer in an imperfect world. Sometimes I think we are gettin hung up on the tactics of reaching a common goal.
2. Re Iraq – noticed on the new today our ‘young democracy’ and ally in Irag is helping Iran get around the sanctions. With friends like these…………..
Soonergrunt
@Phil Perspective: You know what? That shit goes on all over the world, and for centuries, and you’re talking like you think it’s something new and unique.
I’ve been places where the locals will tell you in great detail about how the people from the next valley over wronged them. The number of people killed, the specific amount of land taken or water diverted, the money taken in taxes and tribute, the specific churches that were burned and so on.
You go to the other people and they’re like “we don’t know what they’re talking about with that, but they did these very specific things (in the same florid detail) to us and they’re evil and we will have our revenge” and so on and so on.
And then you go and research their claims and you find that they’re talking about shit that might have happened 750 years ago and 670 years ago respectively, or it might not have happened at all.
I’m sorry that the occasional innocent gets killed. I really am. But far more innocents are being killed by them, in those very areas, and the locals just accept it because it’s Allah’s will.
Here’s Google news for “Taliban car bomb” limited to the last week. There ain’t a hell of a lot of complaining going on about that, either there or here.
Here’s a Google news search for “Al Qaeda bombing” in the same time frame.
clayton
THIS.
If the U.S. Constitution protected U.S. citizens in other countries, there would be a lot of people NOT in prison in other countries. Seriously, do the people saying otherwise think that people from other countries get the protection of their government’s constitution while they are here in the U.S. and NOT the U.S. Constitution?
I’ll never understand why people can’t get this.
Marc
I understand the civil liberties concerns, but it’s goddamn infuriating that the opponents of drone attacks appear unwilling to even recognize why their position is so marginal and unpopular, even on the left.
People perceive drone attacks as a legitimate tool to be used in a war, and don’t believe that normal legal concerns apply in wars. Period.
The anti-drone faction appears to be a mixture of pacifists and people who reject the idea that we are in wars, or that we should be in these particular wars. In my mind that’s a completely different question from whether we should use ground soldiers, planes, or drones in executing a war.
It also doesn’t help that there has been a successful propaganda campaign on the left by people like Greenwald on the subject. This is why drones have become a fashionable thing to object to in the online left.
People who read Greenwald regularly become like people who watch Fox News: they believe a lot of things that aren’t actually true, and they are less likely to believe other things that are true. And this is a primary news source for a lot of leftists.
For my part, I see someone who misrepresents the views of opponents, leaves out inconvenient facts, consistently deceives with half-truths, and smears anyone who disagrees. I can’t see why anyone would treat someone like him as a reliable news source; and yet the drone opponents on threads like this tend to absolutely worship the guy and treat his assertions as ground truth. This doesn’t help matters.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Both Sides Do It: Wait wait wait, you’re seriously saying we can’t go after anyone who joined Al Qaeda after September 11th?
Ha ha ha, oh wow.
jp7505a
@Daulnay: 1. Britain used poison gas in Iraq in the 1920’s
2. The American Irish community did aid the IRA during the recent troubles and the Brits were not in the leqast happy about it. The money was supposedto go to humanitarian relief but as we have seen recently with Muslim charaties it is not always easy to separate the violent from the non-violent recipients of aid
Cacti
@Both Sides Do It:
Again, you’re leaving out part…
And who decides this is also contained in the language of the AUMF.
If you want to criticize the AUMF for being too broadly written, your outrage will have found its appropriate target.
Roy G.
Congratulations on the ‘realism’ displayed here – it would make Stanley Milgrim proud.
Marc
@Daulnay:
Yemen condemned the person in question to death and had no control over the territory where he was living.
So yes – if the US had sentenced a fugitive to death, they were hiding out in a place where we couldn’t get them, and we gave Britain the OK to kill him, it would be exactly the same thing as the Yemen case.
Other than those minor features, your analogy is flawless.
Todd
@Matthew:
Al Alawiki is obviously Mumia and Nelson Mandela and Mohandas Ghandi, rolled into one.
jp7505a
@Soonergrunt: In the mid-90’s there were two opinion pieces, side by side, in the local paper. One was by a Croation and the other a Bosnian. The wording was almost identical. You could have switched out Bosian and Croation and never altered the meaning of one sentence. The outragous events they were describing ocurred in 1370 but they talked as if they had occurred the week before.
Americans, because of the way the country developed, do not seem to have that long memory of ancient grievence (except the minority of folks in the south who havn’t gotton over Appomatix)
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Marc:
The problem is that we’re not dealing with people who want to convince others that drones aren’t as effective as we think they are. We’re dealing with self-righteous fundamentalists who are a Bible away from being indistinguishable from the FRC’s amen corner.
FlipYrWhig
@Daulnay:
What if Chile blew up a car bomb in the US to kill a political dissident? Not a hypothetical: Letelier case, 1976.
Both Sides Do It
@jp7505a: That point was more in response to the “well what else can we do” line of thinking. The only thing we know Awlaki was doing was propaganda. Making propaganda the distinction between a legal and illegal exercise of military power is . . . unwise.
But lets say he is recruiting people and whatever. Is that covered under the AUMF? He didn’t aid or assist the 9/11 attacks. Hell he was invited by Bush in 2002 to a conference in NY as part of a Muslim outreach program. How does the AUMF give authority to kill that person?
There’s another problem, too. We’ve got someone who definitely is making propaganda, and who may or may not be providing material aid to terrorists. Making statements against US interests is a poor basis for the execution of war powers, so it has to hinge on his material aid to terrorists. Who gets to decide whether he’s doing these things or not? Why is it legal for the executive branch to make these decisions? And why does it matter if he’s doing them on foreign or American soil? There aren’t any territorial restrictions on the fifth amendment.
I guess I can’t see the difference in the legal justification to kill Awlaki and the legal justification to kill someone who’s a US citizen in Phoenix and saying stuff like “the terrorists are right to want to bring down the US, they have the right to do it, they’ve been shat on by US empire for decades and deprived of material resources by the capitalist machine yada yada yada”. It’d be illegal for the administration to just summarily execute that person without giving him a trial and charging him with providing some sort of material aid to actual terrorist activities, right? Why is it illegal to do it in Phoenix and legal to do it in Yemen? That’s part of the “secret legal justification” I alluded to in comment 138. The legal distinction between Phoenix and Yemen is secret.
Soonergrunt
@clayton: They can’t get it because if they got it, their argument collapses to it’s essence, which is nothing more than “Obama is worse than Bush! We should’ve had Hilary”.
Soonergrunt
@Both Sides Do It: “The legal distinction between Phoenix and Yemen is secret.”
You can find the legal distinction between Phoenix and Yemen here.
FlipYrWhig
I know I’ve said this kind of thing dozens of times before, but “there aren’t enough checks and balances on the president’s authority to use whatever tactics he chooses to kill suspected terrorists” is a much smarter, much less breathless way to broach the subject of “drones,” which has precisely nothing to do with, you know, drones, and raises exactly the same issues as bombs, Zeppelins, snipers, or ninja squads.
Haydnseek
@BillCinSD: Simple. “Meeting terrorists on their own terms,” (I assume you’re referring to the use of violence against those who wish your destruction in ways that are not obviously warranted) is obviously not the same as committing a terrorist act. If I take out some Al-Qaeda leader with a Hellfire missile, it’s very different from carpet bombing half of Helmand Province. Meeting terrorists “on their own terms” doesn’t make you a terrorist any more than eating a BLT makes you a pig.
Sly
@Ben Franklin:
I do see an alternative to clueless hyperbole, if that helps.
@Todd:
And Obama is apparently Scipio Aemilianus.
FlipYrWhig
@Both Sides Do It:
What’s the difference, in turn, between Awlaki and David Koresh? In both cases, heavily armed and well-defended person ends up dead. Is it beyond executive power to do that? Or is it troubling for some other reason?
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Ben Franklin: Well, I worked for 25 years with the Customs “Service,” (don’t let the name fool ya), and there is no fukkin way that am’t of ammo coulda been used at the firing range in 50 years, even with the reorganization which included the INS Border Control guys! Does the name “coup” ring a bell? From what I remember of the mgt. wusses, I really don’t think they have the nerve. But the Iran-Contra thing tells me that there is some other deviltry afoot.
Ora Pro Nobis.
jp7505a
@Both Sides Do ItI think the AUMF issue was addressed by a number of earlier posts. As to Phenoix, I assume that the police, FBI, ATF, etc have the ability to apprehend a terrorist suspect in Phenoix or London or Berlin. If they could have made the arrest in Yeman then they should have and the drone strike would have been wrong. We did arrest KSM in Pakistan, after all. Being fully aware of slippery slopes, if the drone strike was the last resort, then it was justified. As I’ve said before for the sake of the argument on this thread I’m assuming that the government has evidence that he was an active plotter not just a loud mouth talker. @<a
Soonergrunt
@FlipYrWhig: “there aren’t enough checks and balances on the president’s authority to use whatever tactics he chooses to kill suspected terrorists”
I would actually agree with that sentiment.
jp7505a
@Ben Franklin: well if all else fails we could follow Ann Coulters advice to kill them all and let ALLAH figure it out (yes that is snark)
MBunge
@Corner Stone: “Go on Bunge, tell me all you know about the policy.”
There’s nothing I need to say because people have gone over and over and over and over this thing. Do you and others have some legitimate concerns over the use of drones specifically and the “war on terror” in general? Hell yes. But…
1. Whenever people try to engage you in intelligent discussion on those concerns, the general response is that anyone who doesn’t 100% agree with those concerns is no better than Dick Cheney.
2. Whenever someone tries to bring up other concerns and issues that logically, ethically and legally support drone strikes and Obama’s handling of the “war on terror”, there’s an almost total refusal to engage those subjects and there’s simply a more heated restating of your original concerns.
Mike
Mnemosyne
@Matthew:
No, it means that he moved overseas to work with an acknowledged terrorist group that has killed thousands of people (not just 9/11, but also in London, in Bali, in Madrid). Though I’m always fascinated by the people who are convinced that al-Awlaki was doing press releases for al Qaeda and had no idea they were killing people
You do realizing that assisting someone in committing (or even in attempting to commit) a crime is not actually free speech, right? Providing material and training in how to build a bomb and helping that person choose a target is not “free speech.” It’s criminal conspiracy and, if deaths do occur because of the assistance you gave, it also means murder charges for you, not just for the guy who actually exploded the bomb.
Though I admit, I would love to have you try to hire a hit man to kill your wife and then listen to your whining in court about how it was protected “free speech” for you to give him instructions and money.
dm9871
Seriously, the comments on this thread are very disturbing.
It’s interesting how broadly people accept the idea that al-awalaki had done something that warranted his killing, as though they saw the evidence or that was determined in some regularized way. Of course none of us have seen the evidence and none of us know the process by which it was determined. I suppose due process is just what the executive says it is.
Underneath that view is a trust of Obama. I wonder if they would feel the same way if that power was exercised by a President Cheney or Bachman or Ryan. And that’s a pretty good signal that this is a constitutional violation.
And no mention of Al-Awalaki’s U.S. citizen son who was also killed or dozens of other innocents killed via drone.
Daulnay
@Cacti:
Yea, never mind that Britian also slaughtered the Tasmanians to the last woman and child. The Brits were not civilized when it came to non-whites, any more than the U.S. was. I think that Ghandi helped them see themselves more clearly, and that the Brits, now, are better than they were then. I used to think we were better now, too.
arguingwithsignposts
Do I smell the whiff of black helicopter exhaust enveloping this comment section?
dance around in your bones
Oh, for fucking sake.
I’ve only read about 10 comments (so perhaps I am wrong) but an American citizen who repeatedly and publicly declares himself as opposed to his country and government? and pledges to aid and abet the ‘enemy’? ….kinda GIVES UP ALL RIGHTS.
Look, I am not a huge fan of drones por que the collateral damage, but it seems a more precise/somewhat better solution than the Vietnam-style Agent Orange kinda bombing.
Fucking technology.
jp7505a
@FlipYrWhig: David Koresh was not one of DOJ’s brightest days but I seem to remember that the Branch Davidian’s killed four ATF agents who were serving a legal warrant. they could have worked out a surrender arrangment at followed the normal due process path in the federal courts but they chose differently. It was their choice. There were enough TV cameras around that compound that a white flag would have been hard to miss
WereBear
@Matthew: I don’t believe he signed a LegalZoom document to that effect, but “treason” often covers it. He didn’t confess, exactly, he bragged of his plans to murder Americans and allied himself with a known enemy group whose purpose is just that.
And he was sentenced to death in a Yemen court, per this thread.
I don’t care if it’s my own relative; they break into my house and declare they are going to murder me with a chainsaw, I’ll forgo the legal niceties if need be.
Ben Franklin
@Sly:
Yeah, that was over the top.
Ben Franklin
@Soonergrunt:
if they got it, their argument collapses to it’s essence, which is nothing more than “Obama is worse than Bush! We should’ve had Hilary”
Heh. It’s much simpler to dismiss, in your format.
.
Mnemosyne
@dm9871:
Marcy Wheeler at Empty Wheel accepts the evidence, though she still has a lot of legitimate questions about how the decision was made to target al-Awlaki.
I’m fascinated by how many people on the left are convinced that al-Awlaki, the guy who was the spiritual advisor to the 9/11 hijackers and who left the US to continue working with al-Qaeda in Yemen, was a totally innocent guy who just made videos and had no idea al-Qaeda was killing people. Because it’s totally plausible that al-Awlaki was advising the hijackers at bin Laden’s request but had no idea that they were planning an attack until after it happened, amirite?
Daulnay
@Marc:
Greenwald really doesn’t have enough news to be a primary source. If you had said Kos, or even FDL, you might be right.
Some people read Greenwald with skepticism. He makes arguments worth considering, sometimes, even if he’s not intellectually honest and full of hyperbole. We should have the argument over drone attacks, to sort out the questions they raise. If it takes a Greenwald to raise the problem, then he deserves thanks for that, even if he does a chest-beating, intellectually dishonest job of it.
jp7505a
@Corner Stone: ok. wasn’t sure of the details, just remember see that there was a link of some sort
Ben Franklin
@Daulnay:
If it takes a Greenwald to raise the problem, then he deserves thanks for that, even if he does a chest-beating, intellectually dishonest job of it
You just hit on the salient thought re: Obama; Some of his supporters are ambivalent about his intentions on Civil Liberties.
We support his re-election, in spite of the warts. But not asking the questions, is well, abdicating our role..
dance around in your bones
I also have to say (becuz my edit time ran out) that the al-Alwaki case is FAR different from the “Oh, the FBI/CIA whatever alphabet letter group you can think of tricked this dude into thinking he was striking a blow for ‘freedom/Islam!) WHATEVER THE HELL – he repeatedly and publicly spoke out/threatened his home country.
You know, fuck this dude. It’s not like he was some random anonymous blogger criticizing his government. He seriously wanted to fuck some shit up !!
(I AM sorry that his kid got blown up though).
(Actually, REALLY sorry.)
(Unless he was going to follow his father’s footsteps, which I guess we will never know now).
Ben Franklin
@jp7505a:
It is an assist to one’s conscience, during War, to dehumanize the enemy
Kay
I like TNC a lot but I just thought it was a terrible column. To me, it’s this bizarre stretch comparing Harry Reid attacking Mitt Romney (both of whom are wildly powerful people who can presumably handle political attacks without grave bodily injury) with actual WAR. WTF?
That just doesn’t work for me. He can object to both things, but putting them together? Nope. Not right. Not a good fit. Wrong approach.
Maude
@arguingwithsignposts:
That’s why my eyes are watering.
pika
@El Tiburon: Ok, here’s what I can’t stand about this sudden “slippery slope” concern from folks like you about the courts and the rule of law in the U.S. : If you know ANYTHING about the Black Freedom Struggle in the U.S., then you know why appeals to some mythical time in the U.S. past when “we” used to have laws and courts and due process that worked are wishful thinking and ignorant delusion *at best*. Greenwald, Barr, etc. as well as myriad now-blocked FB people refuse absolutely to deal with this point, much as lefty folks angry about the ACA because it wasn’t single payer refuse to acknowledge the anti-black racism at the heart of the New Deal they now so fervently and romantically defend.
Ben Franklin
@Ronzoni Rigatoni:
adversus solem ne loquitor
Ben Franklin
@pika:
“much as lefty folks angry about the ACA because it wasn’t single payer refused to acknowledge the anti-black racism at the heart of the New Deal they now so fervently and romantically defend.’
Baloney. No one I’ve seen here has suggested that Obama is not opposed reflexively just because he’s Black.. I suppose if we criticize Israel, that makes us anti-Semetic.
xian
@Both Sides Do It: so just checking, you don’t believe Awlaki was planning or organizing actual terrorist attacks on the US?
Jane2
@dm9871: Agree completely.
Daulnay
If al-Alwaki was a traitor, giving aid, comfort, material advice, and directing attacks against the country, the U.S. government should have conducted a trial, proven the case, and sentenced him in absentia.
I’ll grant that he probably was. I have no problem with trying to capture him, either, nor with a death penalty (though innocents must not get killed in the process).
To proceed with indictment, trial, and execution solely at the discretion of the executive takes us down the road to dictatorship. That makes it a very, very bad idea no matter how reprehensible, evil, and dangerous the guy is.
Obama didn’t take the safe and legal road, he took a shortcut. That shortcut endangers us all.
I am surprised to see people here quoting the AUMF as if it excuses this policy. The AUMF endangers our republic. It cut a hole in the legal fence around executive powers, giving the executive branch near-dictatorial powers. Why are you embracing one of the worst, most dangerous legacies of the Cheney/Bush years, folks?
WaterGirl
All war is barbaric. We’re killing people, for pete’s sake.
As far as I’m concerned, Al-Alwaki committed treason. He turned against this country (that’s okay) but he consorted with the enemy to take actions against it. He was a traitor to his country, and that’s treason.
The penalty for treason is death.
I do not understand all the concern for this guy. He was a traitor to his county. That’s the end of the story for me.
And drones? I don’t like the collateral damage, but it’s a hell of a lot better than declaring war and bombing the hell out of a country. I’m fine with the drones if it decimates Al Qaeda and leaves the world safer. Using drones beats the shit out two wars, one of which has lasted a decade.
Edit: He was working with a terrorist group that has declared war on the U.S. He was in a war against the U.S. That’s why this solution is fine with me.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Phil Perspective:
And why should I trust these magical archives? Because you’re just so awesome, and earnest? No thanks.
Google ‘SIGINT’. Your answer’s in there.
AxelFoley
Coates has been bought, plain and simple.
Todd
@dm9871:
Translates to: “I want to examine the original long form birf certificate, becuz Ah know he’s a Kenyan Muslin….”
pika
@Ben Franklin: Your comment illustrates exactly what I am talking about. http://www.derailingfordummies.com
srv
You can kill people with oil, gas, coal, pipeline explosions, tanks, artillery, manned aircraft and guns.
If someone gets killed by nuclear energy or a drone, that’s completely different.
1badbaba3
@dm9871: Well, personally I prefer the way Uncle Billy Sherman used power much more than that of Bobby Lee.
Does that help?
jp7505a
@Ben Franklin: in quoting the blond I was being sarcastic with reference to your ‘scorhed earth’ comment. And yes if I were a Palestian, for example, getting shot up by American f-16’s I would hate America also. But to the broader point that anmerica is unpopular, I doubt there is much we can do about it. America will impact countires all over the world. A lot of older conseractive folks in Pakistan, for example, are not going to be happy that their daughters and grand daughters want to dress and act like a Hollywood star. I think most of the folks on this thread would agree on equal rights for women right to vote, etc. Try selling that in a village off in a remote village in Afghanistan. heck even in WWII our British allies resented us because ‘we were over sexed over paid and over here’ . I’m not sure we even want to discuss what theFrench think of us and these two countries are our oldest allies.
Ben Franklin
@pika:
Yeah. That’s clearly what’s going on.
Ben Franklin
@jp7505a:
I commented to Sly that it was over the top to say scorched earth, but only in scale.
It’s much like a cop using a 12-gauge scatter gun to protect the innocents adjacent to, and within range of the perp. That aberrant load, doesn’t discriminate; doesn’t care if the baby is thrown out with the bathwater.
Hence; scorched earth...
Daulnay
@Kay:
Kay Says:
People forget that TNC grew up in a pretty mean neighborhood. He talks about the difference between what it takes to prosper in that environment versus the gentler one that we’re all used to. A tough-guy demeanor helps your survival in a rough neighborhood.
His point seems to be very different from the one that people here are drawing. He is not criticizing Obama. He’s saying that Obama has turned out to be the ‘tough guy’ that Cheney thought himself to be, not that Obama has become the vicious would-be dictator that Cheney hoped to be. He’s complimenting Obama and mocking Cheney for being a pretender.
jp7505a
@Ben Franklin: ah ok. One of the limits to this format is you lose the facial expressions and body language that add context to the discussion. The result often is two people shout that they are in violent agreement with one another. :-)
Daulnay
@WaterGirl:
There was no trial proving that he was a traitor, and deserving of execution. Innocent people are dead because of the method of his execution. Neither of those things are fine with me, and the first of them harms our republic far too much.
dm9871
@Mnem
“I’m fascinated by how many people on the left are convinced that al-Awlaki, the guy who was the spiritual advisor to the 9/11 hijackers and who left the US to continue working with al-Qaeda in Yemen, was a totally innocent guy who just made videos and had no idea al-Qaeda was killing people. Because it’s totally plausible that al-Awlaki was advising the hijackers at bin Laden’s request but had no idea that they were planning an attack until after it happened, amirite?”
I can’t speak for anyone else on the left, but:
(1) no one is saying he’s “innocent” – but in America the executive’s mere assertion that someone is guilty is not a constitutional reason to kill that person; how do we know when someone is guilty?
(2) Since when does things like “being spiritual advisor” to someone who does something bad make someone bad? I mean seriously. That makes a whole lot of priests and ministers guilty of stuff. There is just so much sloppy guilt-by-association stuff going on here. But whatever, they’re Brown and They Hate Us. So whatever. Even if he had “an idea” that AQ was killing people – is that now a crime too? What crime?
(3) Look, if there really is evidence that this guy was involved in a conspiracy to kill Americans or break our laws, that’s great. I would hope that that evidence would be submitted to a proper authority – like a grand jury.
Somehow the ideas of due process and habeas corpus managed to be sufficient for 7 centuries, through all sorts of threats. The mere fact that some dudes in a cave hate us shouldn’t cause us to shred the principles that have gotten us here. And by the way, one’s chance of being killed by a terrorist attack is a ton less of getting killed in a car accident (which kills 40,000 people per year by the way). This is not about actual danger. It’s about something else – tribalism.
Ben Franklin
Assange to US.
“Stop the Witch Hunt”
Ben Franklin
@jp7505a:
Well, the din does make it hard to distinguish *>)
Matthew
@Soonergrunt: Seriously, you are completely wrong about the Constitution. US citizens are protected by the Constitution no matter where in the world they find themselves. You’re either lying or just plain wrong, and either way you’re ruining this dialogue. You don’t give up your rights as a citizen when you leave the country. Either learn about the subject or stop talking about it. This is embarrassing.
Ben Franklin
@Matthew:
Forget it Matt. It’s Chinatown. *grin*
Chris
@pseudonymous in nc:
If you consider that the purpose of Cheney’s wars is to enrich people in the oil lobby and military industrial community, these wars HAVE to be huge and expensive.
Mnemosyne
@Daulnay:
It is illegal to try someone in absentia in the US.
So now what’s your plan?
Roy G.
Since Emmanuel Goldstein will always be alive somewhere, the ‘realists’ here are perpetuating an endless war which knows no boundaries, and a few ragged terrorists now take as much money and weapons to fight as the Soviet Union once did. Mission Accomplished.
I can’t wait to hear these arguments applied to Julian Assange.
Ben Franklin
@Mnemosyne:
So now what’s your plan?
See Aleppo
Mnemosyne
@Matthew:
Uh, no. If you commit a crime in France, you are tried under French law, not US law. The US can demand that they be allowed to monitor the trial for fairness and provide counsel for the US citizen, but they can’t demand that the defendant be charged and tried under US laws.
I mean, Jesus, this is stuff you can get by watching a couple of episodes of “Law and Order.”
jp7505a
@Matthew: I think the point soonergrunt was trying to make was try and enforce your 5th ammendment rights against self incrementation in a Turkish court after getting caught with a stash of pot. There was a highly publized trial in Italy – Amanada Knox – she was tried via Italian law not American. Certainly as an American citizen she has her American constitutional rights but they are not enforable outside the US, unless there is some treaty agreement. American military are protected by SOFA agreements so they are in a different category
Mnemosyne
@Ben Franklin:
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria. Does it have some other significance not available in Wikipedia in your firebagger brain?
Heliopause
It’s amusing how Juicers switch to a pre-adolescent moral calculus when confronted with something like this: “But the other kid is worse!”
So yes, by the raw metric of body count Cheney is still much worse than Obama (who is in turn infinitely worse than me, by the way). Shame on you, TNC, for flaunting the playground rules.
jp7505a
@Mnemosyne: or traveling to Mexico where you need Mexican car insurance and are warned at the border if you get in trouble it is Mexican law that applies. The Embassy can old offer advice
xian
@Both Sides Do It:
organizations
Ben Franklin
@Mnemosyne:
Hey, the question was asked, and answered. Is this a new question?
xian
@Marc: yeah, but the question is whether the US should be enforcing death sentences passed by a non-US court. that part does seem like a slippery slope to me.
jp7505a
I think the answer is no we should not be enforcing death sentences passed by foreign courts but I suspect that Obama would have pulled the trigger on the drone, regardless of what the Yemanese court decided. He did it for American reasons, good or bad, not Yemanese reasons
TG Chicago
@Soonergrunt: That’s an incredibly foolish thing to say. If one points out that the President is killing American citizens without any due process, why does one need to come up with some other “solution”? Why can’t you simply point out that it’s illegal and wrong and dangerous”?
xian
@jp7505a: i agree– just criticizing that particular line of defense
Mnemosyne
@dm9871:
Of course, it was not actually based on the executive’s “mere assertion” — are you disputing that al-Awlaki worked for al-Qaeda? Was he just some guy standing around in the desert who got killed because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time? Are we allowed to take al-Awlaki’s own statements at face value when he said he was working with al-Qaeda and was committed to killing Americans, or do we have to assume he was lying for mysterious reasons of his own?
Conspiracy? Accessory before the fact? Believe it or not, if you have good reason to believe that someone is going to commit a crime and you fail to go to the police, under US law you are now an accomplice to that crime. “Free speech” doesn’t cover you.
And then what? As I pointed out above, it’s illegal to try someone in absentia. So you indict him with a grand jury and then … wait for him to politely turn himself in for trial? We have no extradition treaty with Yemen, so we can’t ask the authorities in Yemen to arrest him and turn him over to us for trial. So what’s your next step after the grand jury indictment?
Wait, what? You really think that all of the trials in 14th century Europe followed the same rules of due process and habeas corpus that we have today? All of those witches who were burned at the stake had fair trials?
xian
@TG Chicago: because of context. the larger discussion is what is this being done in response to. Does Obama have an anti-US citizen bloodlust or was the drone-killing of Al-Awlaki a response to something? That latter thing is what we are looking for alternatives for.
That is, it’s a way of someone saying “OK, let’s say you’re right and these drone attacks are terrible and must stop. Now, how would you propose to deal with a terrorist leader publicly encouraging and planning terrorist attacks on the US from foreign soil, and do you have different approaches to recommend depending on whether said terrorist-org-affiliated person is a US citizen or not?”
I think it’s a legitimate question.
dm9871
There is so much misinformation getting throw around here about the application of the U.S. Constitution overseas.
First of all, yes, if you are arrested in another country by the authorities of that country, generally, it is that other country’s law that applies. But that’s not really the question.
The constitution defines the powers of the U.S. government and the rights of people in relationship to that government.
The Supreme Court of the U.S. has said that various U.S. citizens overseas can invoke the U.S. Constitution to protect their rights in relation to the U.S. government. See for example, Reid v. Covert or Rasul v. Bush.
Even foreign nationals living overseas can invoke the U.S. constitution in relation to the U.S. government. See e.g. U.S. v. Toscananio.
priscianusjr
@Phil Perspective:
Mnemosyne
@Ben Franklin:
As long as we take the runcible spoon as a given, I suppose it does.
Ben Franklin
The focus must remain on Al Awlaki for simplism and rectitude. When the discussion strays from black/white to shades of grey, the discussion becomes unmanageable. That,cannot, happen.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@dm9871: This thread is winding down, so this likely won’t be seen by many, but anyway…
I assume you’ve seen Junod’s piece from Esquire from July – http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/obama-secret-authority-10621533
If you haven’t already, read the whole series.
I’ve also read, somewhere, that the reason the Administration hasn’t commented on al-Awlaki’s son’s death and similar issues is that to do so would have violated assurances to a foreign government (presumably Yemen) that we would not comment on such things happening in their country. True? I dunno. Plausible? Absolutely.
There’s a lot more going on in these operations than we can know.
To be clear, yes, more transparency is needed. But will it be enough to remove reasonable concerns? I don’t think so. At some point, you have to decide who you want to believe.
My $0.02.
[edited to try to fix blockquote…]
Cheers,
Scott.
TG Chicago
@mistermix:
What precisely do you mean by “people like al-Awlaki”?
People who made anti-American propaganda? People who have been accused of crimes but for whom the government has not seen fit to bring up charges?
In my view, if you want to kill someone for being a terrorist, you first must prove conclusively that he is a terrorist. And that’s not only my view, it’s also the law.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@TG Chicago:
And since we can’t trial in absentia, then what? Indict and.. no, wait, no extradition treaty either. So again, now what?
Ben Franklin
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Indict and send a squad of Federal marshals to Yemen or even Pakistan to drag them
in?
Not to be snide, but if we have the cajones to send the Brits after Assange, what’s the diff?
Mnemosyne
@dm9871:
Both Reid v Covert and US v Toscanino reference treaties that the US had with the foreign countries in question — Reid, in particular, doesn’t seem to apply since the issue was that the defendant was tried by a US military tribunal overseas despite being the civilian wife of a service member and the court decided that she should have been given a civilian trial in the US instead since the military base was technically US soil. And Toscanino closes one of the supposed better avenues to bringing al-Awlaki to the US for trial since it forbids the US from abducting accused criminals and forcing them back to the US for trial.
Rasul v Bush is also a different situation since Rasul was actually under the physical control of the US government at the time since he was a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. Unless you think that Yemen is a US state where the US government could have picked al-Awlaki up at their leisure at any time, the cases are not similar at all.
jp7505a
@TG Chicago: Which seems to bring this thread full circle. You are in the oval office. Your national security team presents you with evidence of an American, hiding in a location beyond the reach of US law enforcement who is involved in planning a mass casualty attack on an American city. They also present you with a plan to ‘take him out’ with a drone strike. What do you do? One side on this thread will issue the srrike order, while others at least in theory would not. Obviously you also issue orders to try to stop the attack but what happens if the CIA doesn’t detect the next attack plan that this guy is involved in?
I imagine the thoughts going thru your mind are: I don’t want to do this for any number of good moral and eithical reasons but if the next attack succeeds and it is revealed in the post attack investigation that I didn’t pull the trigger when I had the chance, I will be lucky if I’m only impeached.
THis is only partally specultive – just google bill clinton and attack plans on ben laden before 2000. There was a lot of criticism of the Clinton admin for not launching the Tomahawks missles for fear of co-lateral damage.
Not an easy job or set of decisions. That’s why most presidents enter office with a nice head of dark hair and leave with a head full of grey hairs. I know I wouldn’t want the job, even if it does come with my own airplane and helicopter
dance around in your bones
@Matthew:
Uh, this is just
estupidouninformed.If you have ever gotten afoul of the law in another country, you know all the American Embassy can do is maybe send a letter to your relatives. Otherwise, you are on your own.
dm9871
@Mnem:
(1) Lord knows, people never falsely confess or brag about things they didn’t do. That’s why we have trials even when people confess. Is due process just not important? Obama’s assertion that the executive, by himself, is all the process that is due, is as odious a theory of the Constitution as anything Bush said.
(2) If there is a conspiracy, then there is no problem. Indict him. Also you are wrong: if you believe that a crime may be committed, your failure to report it does not make you an accomplice. Period.
(3) Seize him and try him. Or alternatively, gain the cooperation of the Yemeni government and have him arrested there. Or if his involvement is mainly one of spiritual advisor, perhaps just leave him be. Or deal with the problem in any number of other ways that doesn’t violate the U.S. Constitution.
(4) I’m not saying that trials used to be better back in the 14th century – before for example, the right to an attorney existed for people who couldn’t afford one. But the due process clause and habeas corpus clause exist and have existed for a long time. We ought to follow them rather than ignore them. They are the law, and they don’t stop being the law merely because scary brown people hate us.
(4)
Mnemosyne
@Ben Franklin:
You should probably get a cart to move those goalposts with. You’ll hurt your back otherwise.
A moocher
@Irving: not to you, maybe. The government of china may well view them as much of a piece, especially in view of the Muslim revolts brewing in the western parts of the nation.
Ben Franklin
@dm9871:
41% of the entire world budget for Military spending is paid by US taxpayer.
2nd is China @8%. We are supposedly the Leaders of the Free world. Ya think the Rule of Law factors in to our Guardianship ?
MBunge
@Ben Franklin: “The focus must remain on Al Awlaki for simplism and rectitude. When the discussion strays from black/white to shades of grey, the discussion becomes unmanageable”
Wait…so you’re admitting that actually discussing the practical realities as opposed to the airy theories ISN’T a good thing for your side?
Mike
Svensker
@dance around in your bones:
See, the whole “inalienable” thing has some meaning. You might want to see what that might be.
jp7505a
@Ben Franklin: For the sake of the discussion in this thread a black and white choice is probably the only way to proceed or each answer would be the size of a law library. But when you are the president with the national security team, or congress trying to draft a law dealing with this ( yes insert congress joke here) or SCOTUS trying to interept the law within the context of the constitution, then it is all shades of grey. There is a reason why laws are many pages long and SCOTUS decisions take up rows of book shelves in law llibraries.
Ben Franklin
@MBunge:
so you’re admitting that actually discussing the practical realities as opposed to the airy theories ISN’T a good thing for your side?
My side? Aren’t we on the same side?
Mnemosyne
@dm9871:
It would probably help if you would follow links like the one I provided to Empty Wheel. We have sworn testimony by other convicted al-Qaeda members that al-Awlaki was active in planning terrorist attacks and provided both materials and training.
If you want to continue to believe in the face of all of the evidence that al-Awlaki was a totally innocent guy who was framed by the US government, that’s your conspiracy theory, but don’t expect anyone to give it any more credence than they do to your theory that Bigfoot was really behind 9/11.
Great, you indict him. And now what? (Also, you may want to Google “misprision” and “accessory before the fact” to correct your other statement.)
Illegal under US law. Now what?
We have no extradition treaty with Yemen, so even if they arrest him, he can’t legally be transferred to US custody. Now what?
Such as? All of your other solutions violate US law and the US Constitution, so I’m curious to find out what your Constitutional solutions would be.
We’re not ignoring them. We’re pointing out that they don’t apply in this case. When US citizens joined the Wehrmarcht in WWII, was the US supposed to hold off on bombing enemy positions because some of the soldiers in the ranks may have been US citizens? Was Abraham Lincoln a war criminal because he sent Union soldiers to fight against Confederate forces rather than arresting all of the Confederates and putting them on trial for treason?
Mnemosyne
@Svensker:
US citizens have an inalienable right to join foreign armies and demand that the US refrain from bombing their positions without a trial?
Ben Franklin
@jp7505a:
The Posse here (obots extrordinaire) like to manage the discussion to limit any critique of Obama, as though he were a Holy Relic. The available ‘facts’ are as rare as hen-teeth, but they ram-rod facts the Authoritarians find useful to their agenda. But they don’t want to discuss the ‘airy’ probabilities because air feeds the fire.
Both Sides Do It
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: Actually it’s a difficult legal question as to whether the AUMF authorizes force against people who joined AQ after 9/11. See page 8 of the link below. But that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that it’s a very real empirical question as to whether Awlaki is a part of the organization that the AUMF authorizes force against. The executive branch can’t make that decision for the reasons below.
As for the Phoenix example, I agree: the questions of apprehending someone in Phoenix and Yemen are completely different. And the executive branch can’t unilaterally answer those questions, for the reasons below.
@Cacti: I left out quoting “or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons” because it has no bearing on this question. Right? The “harbored” in that sentence is past tense; it’s a continuation of the verbs in the clause “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks”. It applies to actions that happened before the attacks occurred. There’s no question of Awlaki doing that.
And even if he had, that feeds into the question of how this stuff gets resolved legally, which is your “the president gets to determine this stuff, and the AUMF is overly broad” point. That language does not give carte blanche to the President to point his finger and say “you’re fair game under the AUMF”. That’s crazy. Not even Scalia and Alito think that.
(The analysis below is more fleshed-out in this google docs pdf)
Instead, there’s a presumption of reasonableness that governs executive actions and which subjects them to review by other institutions. It is not reasonable for the executive to unilaterally determine the rules and process governing who and who is not a combatant, who and who is not part of Al Qaeda, and when due process does not apply. Clearly.
In addition, there are several legal doctrines developed by courts that restrict the ability of the executive to interpret legislative language. One of the strongest, that has repeatedly been invoked in wartime and against the 2001 AUMF specifically, is that the executive requires an explicit authorization by Congress if someone’s Constitutional rights are at stake or if Constitutional processes have the potential to be violated. The executive unilaterally determining not only who is judged to be under the AUMF, but also the criteria under which those judgements are made, and the situations in which those criteria apply to people outside the obvious institutional structure of the Taliban and AQ, carries huge Constitutional risks.
As such, it requires more explicit authorization than “the president is authorized to . . . determine” language in the AUMF. For example, leaks about the legal analysis used to justify killing Awlaki indicate the question turns on whether it was possible/reasonable to abduct him with some combination of US, international, and Yemeni cooperation. That is exactly the kind of legal determination that the AUMF does not provide the executive authority for, and which is clearly a question about Awlaki’s Constitutional rights to due process.
In addition, Obama wasn’t determining whether Awlaki helped, aided, etc. the organization that carried out 9/11. He was determining whether the activities Awlaki was doing were sufficiently connected to an organization that has been almost completely decimated and is questionable whether still exists as a cohesive whole.
Unilateral executive decisions on this stuff are not legal.
@xian: Que Tom Cruise from A Few Good Men. “It doesn’t matter what I believe! It matters what I can prove!” Or rather, who has to prove what.
The executive might have had the best intelligence ev-ah indicating Awlaki was aiding terrorists. But, as per the above, unilaterally using that intel against Awlaki in that manner isn’t legal. I don’t give a shit that Awlaki’s dead. I give a shit that the legal machinery used to kill him is broken.
dance around in your bones
@Svensker: Oh Gawd, I know about ‘inalienable rights’ and all that.
But people (here and otherwhere) sometimes act like this is going on, like, everywhere and ALL THE TIME.
As far as I know, this has happened ONCE. For a wildly outrageous American citizen who dedicated his life to……….killing Americans and anyone else he disagreed with.
Fuck, I could be wrong (in fact, prolly am more often than not) but……………THIS guy? Over him I shed no tears, ultimamente.
I’d feel a lot worse if this was happening to random critics on the Internet. And, ya know, you’re talking to an old hippie here who was VERY anti-gov back in the day.
I don’t know, maybe they are all still EVIIIIIL but….THIS guy???!!!
Oh shit, maybe I’ll just fasten my onion to my belt and call it a day.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
I can has unmoderationlichtkeit, plz?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
burnspbesq
@Schlemizel:
What if the Taliban sent a drone to shoot a hellfire missile at Obama? Would that be a law enforcement operation given that he is trying to kill them? No.
Of course not. It’s an act of war. If you haven’t noticed, we are at war.
burnspbesq
@Ben Franklin:
That’s hysterically funny. You wouldn’t know a fact if it walked up, unzipped your pants, and started sucking your dick.
jp7505a
@Ben Franklin: ?????? Actually I thought I was agreeing with you. The comment format does not lend itself to long answers with multiple options. A more limited set of choclate/vanilla and maybe vanilla fudge keeps the discussion managable. Hopefully every one realizes that the devil is in the details. And it is in those details that the actual decisions have to be made by real world leaders.
And as far as the ‘obots extrordinaire’ there seem to be a large number of folks here who do not like Obama’s drone strike policy one little bit. Even those of us who would ‘pull the trigger’ are not enthusiastic about the policy. It seems like the least worst of a set of very bad options
Both Sides Do It
@FlipYrWhig: Waco was really fucked up. If you’re saying Awlaki’s killing is like Waco, I think you’re arguing more than you want to.
But in general, and I think the comment I have in moderation will make this more clear, I would love it if the War on Terror were being conducted like that FBI raid. There were Congressionally set statutory procedures governing the escalation from other law enforcement agencies to the FBI and the FBI’s use of force. And in the aftermath of that disaster the FBI was subject to Congressional investigation and judicial oversight.
None of which is true for stuff like the Awlaki operation. The executive determines the organization he works with is covered under the AUMF, the executive determines that it’s not feasible to abduct him or to use non-lethal force, and it’s all in secret; none of the legal justifications are subject to review by other branches.
That’s what I want, and that’s what I’m concerned about. It’s not illegal for Obama to use a drone to take out Awlaki. It’s illegal for Obama to do so using the decision-making mechanisms and processes that he utilized.
Ben Franklin
@jp7505a:
Even those of us who would ‘pull the trigger’ are not enthusiastic about the policy. It seems like the least worst of a set of very bad options
I was just fleshing your comment out. I agree with the comment above, as well. I just want, it done in a chronological order, as in Law. I am not a pacifist.
Ben Johannson
@WereBear:
Treason must be demonstrated in a court of law. The Constitution is quite specific in that regard.
@Mnemosyne
U.S. citizens do, in fact, have the right to encourage and advocate violence against the United States. The Constitution continues to apply to all citizens regardless of their geographic location.
Ben Franklin
@burnspbesq:
You wouldn’t know a fact if it walked up, unzipped your pants, and started sucking your dick.
I have a feeling you have a personal relationship with your own facts.
Svensker
@Mnemosyne:
No, she said that if you go against the government, you “give up all rights”. And I’m saying that you cannot “give up” rights because they are inalienable.
I’m not arguing whether the guy was a bad guy or not. I have no idea. I’m arguing what the relationship is between the government (in this case the U.S.) and its citizens.
Ben Franklin
@burnspbesq:
What if the Taliban sent a drone to shoot a hellfire missile at Obama?
What if a Terrorist had info about an imminent nuclear strike in a US city; would you waterboard him?
Does that reasoning, ring any bells?
Ben Johannson
@dance around in your bones:
You need to think about that statement.
Chris
@Ben Franklin:
This
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@dance around in your bones:
That’s the flip-side of a counterfeit coin.Citizenship has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Non-citizens are afforded the same protections as citizens if they are within the reach of the protections of the Constitution. That reach extends pretty far: Throughout the US and its territories (as long as the courts are functional- that is, as long as civil war hasn’t rendered those courts not functional), and to sovereign states with which the US isn’t at war (and, again, as long as the courts of those states are functional). So if the courts of Yemen- a state we recognize as sovereign but with whom we don’t have an extradition treaty- had control over the area in which al Awlaki was operating yet refused on legal grounds (no extradition treaty) to turn al Awlaki over, then his assassination would be illegal under both international law and the laws of the US. This would be true whether al Awlaki had been a US citizen or not.
Svensker
@dance around in your bones:
I don’t necessarily disagree with you. But I still don’t think one should say that “you give up all rights” if the government doesn’t like you. Not a great precedent.
jp7505a
@Both Sides Do It: Given what seems like a lack of clear law in this area the statement – It’s illegal for Obama to do so using the decision-making mechanisms and processes that he utilized. – may not be true. I suspect that a very very broad reading of the role of commander-in-chief would cover Obama’s claim.
THAT!!!!!! of course is the problem. The national security state has allowed for to many broad claims of authority without any accountability. Congress has to take the lead and enact laws to deal with this. They can do the same thing here that they did in the 1970’s when they passed the War Powers Act. oooops that didn’t work out so well did it.
The president says it’s unconstitutional, SCOTUS won’t touch it and the past half dozen congress never heard of the law
As long as our congresscriters (D and R) prefer to cheer or jeer from the cheap seats, the President (D or R) will act in ways that he thinks protect the national interest. The country did not look to congress on 12/7/1941 or 9/11/01, They looked to the president and he will use that power. It may not be nice, it may not fit the separation of powers that we learned in civics 101 but as long as Congress doesnot push back the the executive will act. The electorate can vote the bums out but the experience of the past couple of decades doesnot argue that the new bums will be any better.
sorry but very cynical
Ben Franklin
@jp7505a:
Not cynical, so much as practical. Fact is; a big reason Guantanamo is still open is because Obama knew the asswipes in Congress wouldn’t support him. Drones? I think he’s relying too much on Democratic Yoo sagacity.
Mnemosyne
@Ben Johannson:
You can talk about how you want people to act violently against the US. You can set up websites and videos and write newsletters talking about it all day long.
You cannot provide them with materials and training to carry out those acts, which is what al-Awlaki did.
I realize people really, really want this to be about al-Awlaki saying mean things about the US and getting killed for it, but directly providing bomb-making materials and training is not covered under free speech. Helping someone plan a criminal act is not covered under free speech.
I don’t know why this is so hard for people to understand: you do not have a First Amendment right to directly assist someone in planning a crime. You can publish a book about bomb-building that’s sold to the general public, but the minute you directly assist someone in building a bomb, you have committed a crime.
dance around in your bones
@Svensker:
Svensker, I am not arguing that people don’t have ‘inalienable rights’. In fact, I think they DO.
But, in the real world, those rights dissolve like sugar paper.
I think THIS GUY gave up his ‘inalienable rights’ when he made multiple videos & etc supporting Al Q’aeda. Ya know, fuck him.
I say this as someone who has traveled extensively around the world and has NO ILLUSIONS about my A’merkan ‘inalienable rights’.
I dunno, maybe this is wrong? But I have no sympathy for the dude. Maybe it would be better if he stood trial aqui en los Estados Unidos and we could learn more.
Pero, yo no se.
Besides, my grandkids are driving me nucking futs. NOBODY should be close to 60 and living with their grandkids.
Maybe visiting them once a year.
Hesoo Kristo.
General Stuck
These threads are so pointless. With people arguing well past different starting points for their conclusions. If you believe that we are at legal war with AQ, then the rules of law that take precedence, are the laws of war.
That are different than civilian justice systems. And for Al Awaki to go on AQ teevee more than once and personally announce his allegiance to that group, the group that is the subject of the AUMF, as well as clear UN agreement with the war on AQ, then that person has made himself a mortal enemy of US of A, and citizenship does not protect him. Being a good example of the theory that the US Constitution should not be a suicide pact, to protect the rights of a citizen that has taken up arms against his country, in a foreign land. There is a very very long legal history that supports this proposition. In the US and world community.
If you don’t think we are in a legal war situation, and reject the AUMF and UN resolutions saying we are, then the purest argument of the abject sanctity of the constitution applies, no matter.
Both Sides Do It
@jp7505a: Completely agree.
Spot-on analysis of the practical realities of power.
I just think that makes it more important to point out abuses of the law when they occur.
But I’m probably as cynical as you in thinking that just analyzing this stuff and pointing it out will do anything. Threats of prosecution, mass political movements, maybe. But that’s almost as utopian as anything else.
Mnemosyne
@jp7505a:
This. The whole point of having the separation of powers is that Congress has a responsibility to oversee and regulate the executive. Once they give up that responsibility, they give the executive the power to pretty much do whatever he wants.
Congress has fallen down on the job, but who’s easier to blame, the 535 members of Congress who have collectively abdicated their Constitutional responsibilities or the 1 head of the executive branch?
Ben Johannson
@Mnemosyne: Sir (or Madame),
It is not sufficient to simply accuse Awlaki or anyone else of providing material assistance. There is no evidence that this ever occurred other than the word of the Executive. All we have is an accusation this occurred; the Justice Department never even filed an indictment or placed the man on its Most Wanted list.
jp7505a
@Ben Franklin: Could be. MY earliest memories of politics and the government were the Army McCarthy hearings. My rosey view of the US governemnt started to erode when Ike lied about the U2. By the time we were fully involved in Vietnam it had been pretty well shredded. However it is the government we have, probably better than most, on balance, and just have to keep pushing toward that ‘more perfect union’
Ben Johannson
@dance around in your bones:
There is no provision in the Constitution for those who wish to surrender their rights. The term “inalienable” means you cannot give them up or be deprived of them, under any circumstances.
jp7505a
@Mnemosyne: Truth be told the role of CONGRESS is defined in Article I. That isn’t just a co-incidence.
Ben Franklin
@jp7505a:
We must all console ourselves with that thought. I do find myself devolving some on the issue of End Justifies Means, when it comes to politics, where seldom, is anyone killed.
Mnemosyne
@Ben Johannson:
Can’t a single one of you follow a link that I’m now posting for the third goddamned time in this thread?
No rational person is currently arguing that al-Awlaki was not a member of al-Qaeda who helped plan terrorist operations. If you have proof that Abdulmutallab was lying and therefore committed perjury when he gave a statement under oath that al-Awlaki gave him materials and training for his bombing attempt, please provide it.
Al-Awlaki was not assassinated because of what he said. He was assassinated because of what he did. Clinging to your belief that he was an innocent cleric who was killed because he said mean things about the US is completely irrational at this point.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Ben Johannson:
See, what you’re doing here is attempting to bring this into the sphere of civil law. Civil law doesn’t apply. The law of war applies. Even when freeing Mr. Milligan (who was arrested in Indiana during the civil war) with the Ex parte Milligan decision, the SCOTUS ruled that habeas corpus didn’t apply in areas in which the courts of the US were rendered not functional by the rebellion, and that the laws of war (no habeas rights under those) applied in those areas in which the rebels had rendered the courts not functional.
General Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
No use arguing with these people, they have found another nugget of purity to sling against the Obama worse than Bush wall, and that is that.
Mnemosyne
@Ben Johannson:
Are we allowed to mention at any point that the word “inalienable” is not actually in the Constitution? Nor is “unalienable.” People are confusing the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence when they talk about how it says we have inalienable or unalienable rights.
dance around in your bones
@Ben Johannson: Oh My God, get real.
There are things written on parchment and there is the real world..
Gawd Damn, I wish the parchment thingies would prevail.
Ben Johannson
@Mnemosyne: You appear unaware that in our legal system one is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I’m afraid Abdulmutallab does not rise to that level, firstly because the word of one accused terrorist isn’t exactly trustworthy, but also because we don’t have access to his words. What you link is a government-approved narrative, not his actual testimony.
jp7505a
@Ben Franklin: In spite of the lies and disfunction, if the system is to work we have to have some level of trust (with a healthy dose of skepticism) in our leaders, I think we are at the point of the comment about a second marrage being hope over experience!
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Ben Johannson:
Again, civil law does not apply to the situation.
Mnemosyne
@General Stuck:
I understand why people want to argue that al-Awlaki did nothing more than say mean things about the US — if that was the case, then there would be no question at all that the US was wrong to assassinate him and it would be a very simple black-and-white case.
But once you admit that al-Awlaki was a criminal who was conspiring to kill people, suddenly you have to open up the whole can of worms that asks how you stop him from killing people. Al-Awlaki was not a stupid man. He knew that he was exploiting loopholes in US and international law to make it virtually impossible for the US to act against him. He knew that he could wave his US citizenship like a shield and make it impossible for the US to bomb any al-Qaeda encampment where he was known or suspected to be.
Once you admit that al-Awlaki worked for al-Qaeda, a whole lot of messiness and gray areas open up. It’s not nice and clean like it is when you claim all al-Awlaki did was say mean things.
dance around in your bones
@Mnemosyne:
Danke schane, tash a kor, danke velle, muchas gracias, thank you very fucking much.
THE GUY STATED VERY CLEARLY WHAT HE WANTED TO DO.
There was no confusion. He said it HIS OWN DAMN SELF.
Sorry if I am a simplistic fool.
Ben Franklin
@jp7505a:
A cautionary note from RWR; “Trust; but verify”
NR
@dance around in your bones: So according to you, the government should be free to ignore the Constitution whenever they decide it conflicts with the “real world.” That’s great. I can’t imagine that power ever being misused.
Mnemosyne
@Ben Johannson:
Wow, I didn’t realize the conspiracy went so deep that even Marcy Wheeler is working for the government and posting fake testimony on her website. Tell me, is there anyone who’s not part of the conspiracy to pretend that al-Awlaki was working for al-Qaeda? Obviously, al-Awlaki was in on the conspiracy since he said multiple times that he worked for them, but was bin Laden a secret CIA agent, too? Does al-Qaeda even exist?
Questions, man. So many questions.
jp7505a
@Ben Franklin: yep
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: @jp7505a: Precisely. My take is that under the laws we have now, it is legal, not illegal, to kill Awkaki with a drone, or a covert ops team, or a space laser. The executive branch has exerted power under the law and has expanded that power like a pitcher who expands the strike zone when the ump gets lax. The question then becomes… How do you stop that? And the answer, seems to me, is to pass a new law outlawing such practices, then fight to have it upheld by the Supreme Court. I think it’s going to be a heavy lift, though, and has been since the Iran/contra hearings, let alone since 9/11.
dance around in your bones
@NR:
Please do not put words en mi boca.
Didn’t I just say that I wished the parchment thingies would prevail?
Fuck, NR………you just wanna be contrary or sumpthin’.
Bill Stewart
@Doggie D: (1) expensive land wars in Asia – Well, yes, why would the military-industrial complex want a war that wasn’t expensive?
(2) October surprise war between Israel and Iran – No, I don’t think anybody’s that stupid, even the right-wingers in Israel. I realize that predictions about politicians not being stupid are often overly optimistic, but certainly they realize that such a move against a Moslem country would be suicidal, even though they’re Shiite and Persian instead of Sunni and Arab; it’s not like just bombing South Lebanon.
WJS
@General Stuck:
I missed where Congress voted to declare war on the tactic of terrorism.
How’s it been working out so far?
1badbaba3
@Ben Johannson:
Fuck that shit. You fire at me and/or my flag Imma take you out. I don’t need no fuckin’ constitution to understand that. Neither should you, or anyone else for that matter.
He ain’t Bush, not even close, despite what you all may have been told. He actually knows what he is doing. So if it comes down to who do I trust more, who do I believe more; THIS President or a bunch of assholes using moving goalposts, circular logic, and Dick motherfuckin’ Cheney to make their points, well hell, that ain’t even close.
Publius39
@FlipYrWhig:
Or, you could just repeal the 2001 AUMF, which is what President Obama is basing his war-making powers on as opposed to Bush, who based his power to prosecute the GWOT on both the 2001 AUMF and his power as CiC.
Publius39
@WJS:
They did it right here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Terrorists
scott
Once upon a time, liberals or progressives had more or less fixed standards of what they thought was right, rather than grading on a curve or comparing themselves to an opposition outdoing itself in creative twists of evil. It sure would be nice if we could address whether we like what our side is doing without consideration of whether it’s 10% or 20% less evil than what the other side is doing.
dance around in your bones
I say nuke al-Awlaki from space; it’s the only way to be sure.
Oh, wait………………
mclaren
Yes, you are missing something. Like all obots, you’re missing a conscience.
Come the revolution, you may discover your missing conscience when you get shuffled into a tribunal in an orange jumpsuit and the charges against you as an accessory to the murder of tens of thousands of innocent women and children and old men in foreign countries at which we are not at war get read out.
Publius39
@mclaren:
You better watch out; your appeal to emotion is about to fall down that slippery slope that you erected…
mclaren
@lol:
Thanks for telling your ignorant lies! It discredits you so thoroughly no one can take anything you say seriously.
Show us the evidence that Al Awlaki had anything to do with “blowing up troops.”
You can’t. There is no evidence.
Show us the evidence that Al Awlaki committed any kind of crime whatever.
You can’t. There is no evidence.
An American citizen who committed no crimes and broke no laws and was never charged with any crime was ordered murdered by an American president.
The rule of law evidently makes you uncomfortable, so you need to renounce your American citizenship pronto and emigrate to North Korea. It’s called the constitution of the united states: love it or leave it.
mclaren
@c u n d gulag:
This may qualify as the single sickest and most morally depraved comment ever made on this forum.
So refusing to murder innocent women and children and old men, for example in wedding parties, is being “weak on national security”?
Spoken like a true mirror-sunglassed colonel in El Salvador as he justified his latest mass murder of nuns.
Shame on you.
Shame!
In end, have you no sense of decency?
Ben Franklin
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
General Stuck
@Publius39:
thanky you, kind sir, or madam.
Publius39
@General Stuck:
Not a problem at all. I new to BJ, but I really like the community.
OBot, aawwwaaayyyy!!!
General Stuck
@scott:
You must be talking about a perfect world that doesn’t exist, except in fevered imaginations.
And the biggest imagining of all, is that somewhere in the recent or distant past, the democratic party was of pure and noble stuff concerning matters of war and peace.
Where do you think neo cons came from, a cracker jack box? The dem party of the past had nothing on shoot first , ask questions later. Always been a war party, but at present, has the most moderate and stable politicians that it ever has in my lifetime. They are not left wing pacifists (except for a few), but no where near the war monger party it once was. Mostly from former southern democrats, that are now the infrastructure and leadership of the republican party. Thank the Lard.
Publius39
@mclaren:
As was previously mentioned in this thread by a few other commenters, AA was a leader of AQ Yemen. We have the legal right to kill anyone associated with AQ based on the 2001 AUMF, combined with the international laws that govern the use of force. Because of his association with AQ, he could be legally target. He was killed because of his association with AQ.
Let’s put it another way: if we were at war with state A, and we declared war on that state, under the AUMF, along with international law, it would be perfectly legal to kill a general or other high-ranking official of state A based on the previously mentioned law. This is regardless of whether said general actually killed anyone. If they are part of an organization, and they make plans and policy that affect the warfighting, they can be targeted. The international community understands and agrees with this, the legal community agrees with this, and those who have better argumentative tools other than appeals to emotion understand and agree with this. Please stop with the hand wringing and teeth gnashing, please?
Ben Franklin
@Publius39:
Relatively new myself. A hearty welcome to you.
Publius39
@Ben Franklin:
Thank you sir.
jp7505a
@Publius39: We did just that in a perfectly timed air attack in 1942 when we shot down Adm. Yammamoto’s plane.
Soonergrunt
@Matthew: I can’t help that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Sorry about that. Either show us some document like a court decision that says that US Citizens who make war against the country from a location outside the reach of US law enforcement cannot be militarily targeted, or admit that you have no leg to stand on. Or better yet, simply explain what the legal rationale is for someone who has willfully absented himself from US jurisdiction being under some kind of US protection. Cause I’m pretty sure that being a named commander in an armed force at war with the US, and physically located somewhere the US can’t arrest him, surrounded by thousands of armed, loyal people, and having chosen to stay in that location while conducting his duties as a commander in that armed force pretty much precludes the possibility of an FBI agent reading him his rights.
Because I’m not talking about some smoke-filled coffee house crap theory that the Constitution is always in force everywhere on the planet. I’m talking about the real world where one has be under the jurisdiction of the agents of the US government to expect protection by that same government.
Please, tell us all about the American-born (and hence US Citizens) who managed to not get killed while fighting for the Germans in WWII. There are at least eight known who died fighting for Hitler’s Germany on the western front. Funny thing–the ones who surrendered tended to do a little bit better.
Soonergrunt
@TG Chicago: Because whether it’s wrong or dangerous is up to debate. It certainly isn’t illegal in the extant case.
If the President were to order the 82nd Airborne division to start gunning down US Citizens on the streets of Denver, that would be illegal.
But killing Anwar Al Alawki was not illegal, no matter how much you’d like it to have been so.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@WJS:
Because the government of the USA didn’t recognize the sovereignty of the Confederacy, there was no war declared then, either. That didn’t stop the SCOTUS from noting (again, in Ex parte Milligan) that they thought the law of war applied in those areas in rebellion against the government of the USA.
Ben Franklin
If the President were to order the 82nd Airborne division to start gunning down US Citizens on the streets of Denver, that would be illegal
laws are expedient vessels of the power structure. They can be altered, or eliminated without opposition’s voice. You pretend that the skin stretched over a drum, somehow signals a viable ethos. It makes sounds of fury without the resonance of morality. That’s the nature of human law.
Soonergrunt
@TG Chicago:
Exactly what law? Because there’s nothing in the US Constitution that protects somebody who has made himself unavailable to the US Court system, regardless of where he may have been born.
We didn’t have trials for members of the CSA army. Even as the President and the government of the US didn’t ever recognize either the existence or even the right to exist of the CSA, and maintained that they were US Citizens who were breaking the law, they still sent the Army out to find them, attack them, and kill them if necessary under the laws of land warfare that existed at the time. In fact, the only protection available under the law and the US Constitution for members of the CSA military was to surrender.
xian
@dance around in your bones: yes, but this is different from saying what the US government’s relationship to you continues to be.
jp7505a
We created this legal mess by not defining what the ‘war on terror’ was and what it wasn’t. The Bushies and the neo-cons saw it as a way to remove Sadam and remake the Middle East, something they had been taking about since the end of the first Gulf war.
Our legal system and military structure have a pretty good handle on the difference betweeen a crime and a war between nation states or civil wars within nation states. In this case you have non-state actors, some with help from nation-states, behaving like a nation in terms of declaring war on the US.
In general terms I think we should have declared these people criminals and mass murders who do not deserve the honorable title of soldier. If captured by law enforement, like the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber they will be tried in an Article III criminal proceeding. If captured by a police force of an ally, they will be extradited and tried in crimal court.
If captured on a battlefield by a military unit, they will be according the Geneva convention rights until transferred to civilian authority, at which time they will be tried in an Article III proceeding. If killed on the battle field or killed by a drone strike because they are beyond the reach of law enforcement, well as the saying goes fortunes of war.
Non-state actors like AQ would be labeled criminal and its members treated as such. Groups like the TALIBAN which have a link to a political entity like Afghanistan would be treated like any other irregular military force (like the VC) under the Geneva convention.
Within this frame work the strike on Al Alawki would fall with in the rules of war.
Obviously Congress would have had to pass some legislation to accomodate this structure and I’m sure I left out a few things. In cases like Al Alawki a court like FISA could be set up or Congress could require review under the existing Joint Intelligence committee structure.
Whatever approach was finally worked out it would have to recognize that the tools we need to use to deal with these non-traditional types of actors will be a mix of civilian and military. Hopefully the military options would be the tool of last resort.
TG Chicago
@Soonergrunt:
Why is it illegal? If you believe it’s legal to gun down US Citizens in Yemen, why is it illegal to do so in Denver? Is it legal to gun them down in Paris? If not, why not?
xian
@Ben Franklin:
fixed that for you
xian
@WJS: AQ is a tactic?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@TG Chicago:
Under certain circumstances- such as those that existed in, say, Richmond, VA, from 1861 into 1865- it would be legal to do the same in Denver.
TG Chicago
@xian: I agree that your question is legitimate. However, my point is this: to say that the current situation is illegal, immoral and dangerous without offering a different path is also legitimate.
Personally, I would lean in the direction of some sort of legal hearing whereby the evidence against the accused has to pass muster with the Judicial branch. Have an open hearing, though perhaps some evidence may have to be concealed from the public. Give the accused a chance to speak in his/her defense. Basically: force the executive branch to prove its case.
An assassination warrant from such a court would still make me queasy, but it would be a preferable situation to the one we have now.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@TG Chicago:
So the secret military tribunals in the wake of Operation Pastorius….?
jp7505a
@TG Chicago: Whatever type of oversight is decided upon, most of the inforation will of necessity remain secret. I would suspect that most of the information on AA was obtained by the CIA and NSA and they are not about to reveal methods and procedures.
Publius39
@xian:
Except, that isn’t the case.
Publius39
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
These secret tribunals?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Publius39:
Yeah, those. The trials ruled constitutional in that decision. One of the defendants an American citizen. Secret military tribunals. For acts of war committed inside the United States, for defendants captured inside the United States. Because the laws of war rather than the civil laws applied.
Publius39
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Civil law is suspended in the case of war, especially when those citizens actively plot against our country. This is not new.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Publius39:
Right. Whether that war is declared by Congress- as was the case in WWII- or is undeclared- as in the War of the Rebellion (aka the American Civil War). The situation about which we’re talking has more in common with the situation during the War of the Rebellion than it does with WWII.
Rex Everything
@Soonergrunt:
Yeah, cause OMG that is like totally the same thing as killing al Awlaki’s 16-year-old son!
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Rex Everything:
And why is al Awlaki hauling his kid around with him when he knows that- whether he or you think it’s legal or not- he (dad, that is) has a target on his back? Or do you think that the kid was targeted, too?
Lojasmo
@El Tiburon:
An American who travels overseas, and plots to do harm to America abroGates his or her rights as an American citizen.
The use of drones never bothered me when Bush was using them, and their use does not bother me now.
I also think the characterization of these strikes as purely one man’s decision is spurious.
jra
@Soonergrunt: “Because whether it’s wrong or dangerous is up to debate. It certainly isn’t illegal in the extant case.”
We are not in an armed conflict in Yemen, so using military force against someone in that country is illegal. I know killing the brown people is really exciting, but try to contain yourself.
NA
@Both Sides Do It:
Doesn’t that very definition you quote put al-Awalaki in a covered category, that is, as a member of an organization associated with 9/11?
Soonergrunt
@jra: Your wishing it was illegal does not make it so, just as your needing me to be a racist for you to feel better about the fact that it’s legal does not make that so either.
And since you seem to function on a third grade level of “you disagree with me so you’re big meany poopyhead” please try to remember that transnational terrorist organisations are well, transnational. And since you correctly pointed out that we are not at war with Yemen, then it’s possible, however unlikely, that you’re just smart enough to realize that is also irrelevant, since Yemen cannot exercise sovreignty over that part of the country where the late, unlamented (except perhaps by yourself) Anwar Al Alawki was staying.
We aren’t at war with England either, and it is just as fucking irrelevant because England has as much sovereignty over south Yemen as the government of Yemen does. Do try to keep up.
Soonergrunt
@Rex Everything: The person who was responsible for Alawki’s son being there was Alawki. And guess what? The US is one of the few countries that doesn’t allow 16-year-olds to serve in our armed forces. Many countries in the rest of the world, and certainly AQAP, does recruit, train, and use young men that age.
If you don’t want your teenaged son being killed in a war, don’t drag him around the countryside while you’re running around trying to kill your enemies.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@jra:
Nope. Yemen has no control over that area of Yemen. al Awlaki was where he was because the government of Yemen had first prosecuted and then found him guilty of conspiracy to commit murder of a (French) foreign national, the death penalty awaiting pending his capture.
Soonergrunt
@TG Chicago: Because the Constitution does not give the President authority to murder US Citizens who are in a place where they and the government have access to the court system. As noted previously by others who are smarter than me, that was settled during the civil war in Ex-parte Milligan.
Now, if the citizens of Colorado were to engage in rebellion, and the federal court system stopped functioning there, all bets are off.
But a US Citizen in Paris is available to the court system as we have an extradition treaty with the government of France, and that government can arrest people in Paris with little difficulty.
Whereas in Yemen, we have no extradition treaty with the Yemeni government, and even if we did, the Yemeni government does not have the power to go to the tribal areas and arrest someone. So anyone living there is beyond the reach and protection of the Court system.
fuckwit
My personal crackpot-paranoid theory: the whole media outrage about drone strikes is a voter-suppression effort ginned up by Karl Rove and Rethugs, to make liberals stay home and not vote.
Raised By Wolves
Cheney does a poor job of hiding his total lack of empathy.
Obama, on the other hand, is far better at faking empathy.
So, mission accomplished.
jra
@Soonergrunt: “If you don’t want your teenaged son being killed in a war, don’t drag him around the countryside while you’re running around trying to kill your enemies.”
Stop lying. Al Awlaki’s son was not with him when he was killed. Abdulrahman was killed in a separate strike two weeks later. He was looking for his father because he was uncertain if he was dead.
Something is seriously wrong with you if you’re so gleeful about killing the 16-year-old children of our enemies.
Soonergrunt
@jra: There’s something seriously wrong with you if you read anything that I’ve ever written to indicate that I ever felt glee about killing people.
Perhaps you should stop projecting thoughts and feelings onto me and actually try reading what I wrote and not what you need me to have written to make your point.
And if the boy was killed because he was still running around with terrorists, then why weren’t they working to get him to a safe place? I know it’s hard to believe, but other people in the world are in fact capable of being their own agents. We don’t make decisions for everybody in the world, and this insistence of yours that they cannot act independent of what we do is indicative of flat, one way thinking of the kind that gets us into these messes.
I prefer to treat people as moral agents in their own lives to the extent that is really possible for them to be so.
Because what you’re doing to me here is the exact same thing as what you and others to the Al Alawkis of the world. You need them (me) to act a certain way for your world to work the way you think the world should work, so you assign the behaviors to them (me) that you need them (me) to have, irrespective of what they (I) have ever said or done in the past.