If an American citizen is living in Yemen and directing military and terrorist attacks against U.S. interests and citizens, do we have the right to kill him? That’s the question the administration doesn’t want to have to answer in court. They think they have that right, but they don’t want to settle it legally.
And it is a legal question. Or, better put, of course the president has the right to kill someone who is living abroad and who is trying to kill us. But he doesn’t have the right to order the death of a U.S. citizen without any due process or even a review by any outside parties. Otherwise, the president can start killing U.S. citizens without even explaining himself.
What Obama is trying to do here cannot stand. I don’t care about some terrorist in Yemen’s rights. But I do care about setting up a process that can lead to the worst imaginable kinds of abuses. If this guy is as bad as they say, then they should submit their evidence to the courts. In the meantime, Congress needs to clean up some loose ends with the law. If Obama is relying on the Authorization to Use Military Force against those who carried out or are affiliated with 9/11, then he’s on really thin ice. If we face a situation where new actors are trying to blow up our airplanes, then new authorizations are needed.
It’s really the lack of foundation in law that is outrageous here. If this guy were operating in Afghanistan, it wouldn’t matter that he’s an American citizen. But the battlefield is supposedly borderless. That’s not a tenable legal footing. And if the administration were willing to submit their evidence to real judicial review, we could have confidence that innocent Americans will not be targeted in the future.
Again, it’s not about this guy in Yemen. It’s about the administration trying to have the right to act on their say-so without any accountability. I very much hope they lose this case.
Is this Obama, or is it the Department of Justice on autopilot?
If it’s Obama, he’s afraid to be labeled soft on terrorism because he observed the Constitution. Or there is a sophisticated strategy going on to have the courts put a limit on this sort of presidential power once and for all. Will the conservatives on the Supreme Court take the bait just because it’s a Democratic president? Just delivering up the information doesn’t set precedent.
They’ve argued state secrets before and have not yet been definitively slapped down by the courts.
Either he wants to preserve the doctrine of state secrets or he wants the courts to overturn it? Does Obama want to win this case or lose it?
I think he wants to lose this case. it’s part of remedying the errors of bushco. imo he’s laying a foundation for really addressing the problems of bushco – as they say, patience is a virtue.
I’d like to believe that. Seems a little far-fetched, though.
why is it farfetched? Obama is a constitutional law prof
Perhaps you’d like to join the reality based community.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/09/25/obama-doesnt-know-why-the-fuck-hes-entitled-to-kill-al-
awlaki-he-just-is-damnit
On this one, I think that interpreting what Obama personally wants out of this is exercising ESP. And arrogantly assuming what goes through his head. And that sort of remote thought analysis is hardly the reality-based community. Which is why I laid out the alternatives.
The process has not totally played out. And the President isn’t the only decision-maker in this. Indeed, we don’t know whether he has spent time thinking about this or even looked at it at all. One would hope he has, but given everything else he is dealing with there is no certainty that this is policy-driven.
I’m totally with you, Tarheeldem.
I think that on the substance of the issue, probably everybody on this thread is in agreement. The idea that the executive branch can assassinate an American citizen without any judicial review is just appalling. The fact that they are hiding behind the state secrets clause is a terrible thing. If the courts do not ignore this, we are in big trouble (I am not optimistic that they will).
But I think it is a big mistake to attribute this move to Obama personally. Perhaps this is just one of my pet peeves, but I really hate the way that people seem to personalize politics, attributing good or bad motives to Obama rather than seeing the more important story which is the institutional factors that make a policy possible or impossible. Boo, you are generally pretty good about this, reminding us that, for example, the absence of a public option in the health care bill reflects the outcome of senatorial processes, rather than some dark perfidy in Obama’s soul, as so many people would prefer to believe.
In this particular case, I suspect that Obama had nothing to do with the decision whatsoever. Remember that he promised that the Justice Department would remain free of political influence, in contradistinction to the way was run under the Bush administration. I strongly suspect that all the decisions about these cases get no farther than Holder. To say that this is “what Obama is trying to do here”, or to say that “Obama doesn’t know why he’s entitled to kill somebody” (SueJazz’s link), or to say “Obama argues his assassination program is a state secret” (title of Greenwald post) is making things unnecessarily personal.
This is not to say that the president is ultimately responsible for what happens in his administration. He is. But I think we have gotten into a bad habit of turning things into moral dramas when this is not the appropriate level of description.
I agree.
If politics becomes the stage for moral dramas, there is a serious judgment of history on the failure of progressives to deal with the Limbaughism in their own families and personal networks. If we can exercise courage and smarts in that area, some of our other problems will start to unwind.
No one over the past 40, 50, 200, how many years has clean hands.
an insult is not an argument.
That is a bold act of faith. The situation is so ambiguous with regard to policy that patience is all we are left with.
True indeed. I’m convinced I’m correct, however. How else does one contain the bushco overreach?
I’m not really feeling this benefit of the doubt here.
When it comes to invoking the States Secrets privilege, I’m pretty sure Obama wants to sign off on that. I think he wants the right to go after any terrorist any time, without legal delays, and without having to justify it in court, even after the fact. Maybe if I was responsible for the country’s safety I would feel the same way. But it has to be a system that is accountable. What they’re arguing for would not be accountable.
If they need to set up a special court, then they should do that. But they can’t have the right to designate a citizen a terrorist and then kill them and then deny anyone the right to review their evidence. That’s totally unacceptable.
“But they can’t have the right to designate a citizen a terrorist and then kill them and then deny anyone the right to review their evidence. That’s totally unacceptable.”
You`re next,
you`re next ,
you`re next,
& you`re next.
Next!
I agree accountable system is a necessity for us, and you may be right about Obama wanting the right to go after any terrorist any time; he makes use of a combination of usa might and international cooperation overall, but in this particular issue I don’t which side of the balance he’s counting on. I can’t take credit for the idea about him losing this case – read in early 2009 a speculation about the O admin waiting for the right court cases to push some of the issues of bush overreach into the courts – nor can I link, alas, b/c I can’t recall at all who wrote it but it struck me immediately as the way he’d go about it – restoring separation of powers, constitutional process, with an eye to rights and protections for citizens. It’s not possible to be a black man in the usa and not be fully aware of the fragility of protections – unless one is Clarence Thomas (is he black?).
If you’re right, he’s as big a menace as Nixon or Joe McCarthy ever were. He has no right to kill anybody on his own say so. As to the “country’s safety”, everybody this side of Jack Bauer knows that this is a bogus, self-serving lie very close to 100 percent of the time it’s invoked.
The Obama administration like the ones before it is killing by both deliberate and accidental targetting thousands if not tens of thousands of innocents every year in military actions that arent even wars declared. Most of these deaths remain unreported and even if mentioned names are not in a continuing dehumanization. Do these people have any rights? Should they have any rights? Should those who kill or order the killing be held accountable?
Who says that these people are “terrorists”? If Obama decrees willy-nilly that an American citizen is a “terrorist,” does that mean that you’re okay with this person being killed immediately? Apparently so. Of course you don’t care about someone in Yemen because you’re so consumed with the “someone is trying to kill us!” meme that you cannot see straight. What if this supposed “terrorist” is in France? Germany? Brittain? Does Obama have the right to hurl a bomb at any of those countries? I think you’d blanch at that notion because of where those countries are and the predominant population. But if supposed “terrorist” is in Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, etc. they are fair game for an Obama-sanctioned murder.
Now that’s the stupidest position that I’ve ever seen with regard to our Constitution. But thanks for clearing up the mystery.