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Assassinating Americans
Conor Friedersdorf blogs at True/Slant and The American Scene. Follow him on Twitter at Conor64.
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Obama has declared he has authority to eliminate U.S. citizens if they are terrorist suspects. Conor Friedersdorf on the frightening consequences of unchecked executive power to kill.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair revealed something stunning last week: The Obama administration believes it is empowered to assassinate American citizens. “We take direct action against terrorists in the intelligence community,” Admiral Blair told Congress. “If we think direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”
Perhaps we’ll learn more about how they decide which Americans to kill in coming weeks. It may be as responsible a death panel as the world has ever known!
Of course, executive branch death sentences violate the Fifth Amendment prohibition on depriving someone of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” but it’s so passé to invoke the Constitution when terrorism is at issue. Or so President Obama seems to think. He has personally authorized at least one drone attack against an American citizen who is alleged to be a cleric associated with al Qaeda, assuring us via subordinates that these decisions are not taken lightly—there is no higher hurdle in the executive branch than direct presidential approval—but offering no mechanism for another branch of government to check his decisions, and few details save that the targeted citizen must pose an imminent threat to U.S. interests. Call it the Iraq War standard.
Is our polity losing it? In proposing that middle-aged citizens be counseled by medical advisers to prepare for end-of-life decisions, the president is widely accused of supporting “death panels”—a charge trumpeted loudly by select conservatives and repeated endlessly by the national media, though avoided by many serious Republicans.
Mere weeks later, it is revealed that President Obama presides over an actual death panel, shrouded in mystery except for the fact that it literally orders the killing of United States citizens, absent any oversight. Existing hit lists include at least three Americans.
And the response?
Crickets.
Folks who claim the president is a closet radical bent on irrevocably transforming the republic are silent when faced with the most extreme power he has claimed. Perhaps their strange deference is owed to the fact that George W. Bush authorized the CIA and the military to kill American citizens given strong evidence they were tied to terrorist actions. (As far as I can ascertain there is no confirmed case of the Bush administration assassinating an American citizen accused of terrorism.)
In any case, the left is now far more derelict in protecting and defending the Constitution. The Democratic Party presently controls both houses of Congress, and liberal interest groups are best positioned to influence the White House. For what are they waiting? “Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with terrorism,” Glenn Greenwald writes. “Amazingly, the Bush Administration’s policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals… produced intense controversy for years. Shouldn’t Obama’s policy of ordering Americans killed… produce at least as much controversy?”
Yes, it should!
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Aemsere
I'm compelled to comment that the system allows _all_ American presidents this power....if they choose to take it.
There is not a doubt in my mind, that Lincoln, Rosevelt and Washington all decided to have Americans assassinated without due process.
John Yoo's torture memo's explore which lines can be crossed under which circumstances...but they're entirely clear with respect to the power vested in the president. If he deems it necessary, he has extraordinary leeway...so much so that his leadership would be able to compete with any king that was around at the time the constitution was written.
But that's just it; the constitution was founded at a time of monarcs and emperors - it's outdated. The amendments are around to make up for that, but the system is, by design, made such that the executive branch can make a power grab if it deems it necessary.
President Obama is not at fault for this...it's the bloody cowboy mentality that, in the grand scheme of things, keeps most of the world safe. The only thing Obama could do is not use the stuff bush implemented...he has absolutely no power to prevent his successors from reimplementing these death panels, just as those presidents who came before bush turned out to have no power to prevent bush from implementing the death panels in the first place.
khepri
Aemsere: "it's the bloody cowboy mentality that, in the grand scheme of things, keeps most of the world safe."
I like your Spinozistic invocation of grand schemes, but your thesis is not correct. The cowboy mentality, when it replaces reasonable international policy adjustment, more often than not reduces the practitioner's safety. Case in point: not even a 700 billion dollar defense budget can buy us peace of mind or perceived "safety." This is what the cowboy mentality produces--not results that lead to the original goals in any way whatsoever. True, war-making and military ferocity are called for on rare occasions, as history so well shows. But the "cowboy mentality" is more about perpetual, creeping war and tv dinner chest thumping than it is about combatting a real, tangible enemy. We will be in the middle east for the next fifty years--so much for the success of your point of view.
Dreamer4Ever
It's not a "belief." Presidents HAVE this power. Wise people have been working like hell to curtail it for years, but hey, why do you want the terrorists to win? As they say.
It's ugly, awful, and nothing new. And it's not going away. Neither are the other powers of the Bush-expanded-federal branch.
For example, I am dead certain that they are still torturing in Gitmo. Rendition continues. False flag interrogations. So on. Nothing will change.
mcmchugh99
No one ever really controls the power of presidents in foreign policy, especialy in war time.
mcmchugh99
Obama walked away from his own supporters early after teh election when he decided to run a Clinton III administration.
I was very surprised at this, since I thought he was about real change. Of course the Republicans have simply become hysterical at the idea of ANY change, but the substance of Obama's policies has actually turned out to be very beneficial for the big banks and health insurance companies, while he foreign policy in substance is not all that different from Bush's.
With obama, you have to ignore the rhetoric and watch what he actually does.
khepri
And what he "actually does" is soooooo heartbreaking.
nortonclybourn
Oh come off it.
RawhideRex
So they heading says Obama makes the claim...and then in the very first paragraph..it says it wasn't Obama but Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair who made the claim.
So which is it?
khepri
Which is Edgar Bergen, and which is Charlie McCarthy? Only Barky Orahma knows.
befriendz
If this was not an opinion blog comment, but a comment by a real journalist, this would be a great example of yellow journalism that I show to my journalism students as examples of how twisted thinking and the power of the pen can create slander. This has nothing to do with Obama doing anything. This law would be in effect even if Sarah Palin were president. Now there is a scary thought, you betcha.
eurydice9276
Oh, Conor, you poor baby, growing up in a cave. You must be the last person on the planet to know this.
LanceRH
Connor: "As far as I can ascertain there is no confirmed case of the Bush administration assassinating an American citizen accused of terrorism.)"
Yet from the very article cited in the link to "personally authorized,":
"In November 2002, a CIA missile strike killed six al-Qaeda operatives driving through the desert. The target was Abu Ali al-Harithi, organizer of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Killed with him was a U.S. citizen, Kamal Derwish, who the CIA knew was in the car."
Let's see, who was President in November 2002...?
Seriously, Connor, read your own damn sources.
Randyrocker
As long as the President makes sure his fingerprints aren't anywhere to be found. Will you feel safe knowing you can become a target and no one would be the wiser? Is this what you call being able to live freely in the United States of America, or should you ask yourselves, how safe you feel when you go to sleep at night, every night? Stop thinking it one day won't be you in the crosshairs.
khepri
Randy you're raising a good question. It's a tough thing deciding between the expedience of killing right now, vs. going through constitutional procedures and so on. I understand the folks who want the blood spilled instantly, but as Ben Franklin said in his Poor Richard's Almanack, "short term gains bring long term pains." Certainly w 700 billion allocated to the Pentagon this year, we can afford to step aside from the joy of the kill just to preserve....not appearances but the constitution. Unless, of course, we have outgrown that old infatuation.
magoo363
The author of this article might want to familiarize himself with FM 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare. Killing people on the battlefield is never taken lightly and there are rules for the soldiers who have to do it.
khepri
Ready, fire, aim.
billybob
yes, i will feel safe. get off your conspiracy theory horse for a second and look around. you aren't in a movie, and no one in the government gives a sh** about you...nevermind wants to kill you.
finderj
I am uncertain that these killings can legitimately be called "assassinations".
Legal execution, maybe. KIlled resisting arrest, or shot in the commission of a crime. Not "assassination".
No president is going to sanction the killing of an American citizen who is anything less that a traitor to his country. ANd I do not mean that the person has opposing political views, or espouses an unusual political ideology.
I mean that this person is aiding and abetting terrorists in planning and carrying out attacks on US citizens. If they are indeed doind this, it is highly unlikely that they will ever be properly arrested and called to trail. No, they will live out their pitiful existences in some country that actively promotes killing American civilians.
If the CIA thinks they are a threat, then I say carrying oiut the sentence such activity merits is fully justified.
Good for you, Mr. President.
crypto
Lemme get this straight now.....it's ok for Obama to kill an american citizen if he suspects they're a terrorist or support terrorism. But a real terrorist, like the "panty bomber" gets a fair civilian court trial cc omplete with rights. If you agree with it that's good support. If you don't agree with it blame it on BUSH. Is that what I heard????
LanceRH
Crypto: Good point.
The only distinction I'd like to point out is that in practical terms we're talking about the difference between a pawn captured in a domestic situation and someone who is actively working with organizational leaders on the battlefield.
I'm not saying it's a perfect distinction, but otherwise, its really easy for terrorist leaders, who are smart enough never to step foot near our country, to use "citizen shields" on the battlefield and in their hide-outs.
Yes, there is a blurry line between what seems best each situation. The ideal is the enemy of the real. That's the job of a chief executive and commander-in-chief - to actually "make the call" and be held responsible for it.
TaterSalad
We have "only" ourselves to blame for this mess:
This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone has it all figured out. It's sad that most of the people of the US don't.
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president.
The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.
The republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FlEbBZLzo0
liberatorquest
The only fool here is you Tatersalad(I used to like tatersalad, lol), reading crap from the Czech Republic, give me a break!!!! What that Czech and you haven't realized, is that it really doesn't matter whom we put up as president of that bureaucratic monster of a government we have created!!!! With the best of intentions and with all the luck in the world, he or she can only hope to achieve a tiny fraction of what they intended to achieve. The system is set up to be almost impossible to change, and to linger in inefficiency and mediocrity!!!!
Thank you.
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