Beyond the Pale with Obama

I have for some time intended to compose a list of those things that Obama is doing that are beyond the pale.
That is, not just things that I disagree with, but things which are beyond his legal authority to do.  This may  be a good time to begin this since one of them is in the news.

1.  Obama is using drones to kill American citizens without benefit of trial or any other judicial protections.  If you doubt it check out the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki.  Persons selected for this fate are reviewed by a group in the Executive Department.  The president has quoted a congressional statute to justify this. The administration's response to the question of what protected the target's constitutional rights was that these were always considered in the meeting in which the target was designated to be killed!!  Those acquainted with the ACLU will not be surprised to learn that they have a problem with this.

I support Obama's extensive use of drones.  Al-Queda has stated that it is at war with us.  I accept that and therefore I believe that we are at war with al-Queda.  Therefore, I do not have any objection to members of al-Queda being targeted for killing without Constitutional considerations.  That includes American citizens who have clearly signed on al-Qaeda.  The president can do this based on war powers.

Now I understand that this may sound a bit contradictory.  It is not.  The difference is that I believe that this "interaction that we are having with al-Qaeda" is a war.  But for curious reasons the President does not want to call it a war.  Therefore he is not able use that justification.

What I believe is beyond the pale is not the targeted assassinations, but the claim that this is being done within the Constitution and without the use of war powers.  Based on previous comments to that effect, the President's position on this is ludicrous.

We will see if the current hearings on the new head of the CIA forces a change in his position.

I  believe that it will.

torture and murder

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A very interesting piece in the N Y Times details Obama's "targeted killing strategy" in the conflict with terrorism.

Do you remember the outrage that was exhibited by liberals over the fact that Bush had water poured in the faces of known terrorists to obtain information?  Now comes their guy, Obama, who solved the problem of what to do with prisoners by just not having any!  No prisoners!  A sort of "kill'em all and let God sort it out" approach. The silence from the liberals is deafening.
The ACLU gets credit for being consistent in condemning both.

Some excerpts:

"A few sharp-eyed observers inside and outside the government understood what the public did not. Without showing his hand, Mr. Obama had preserved three major policies — rendition, military commissions and indefinite detention — that have been targets of human rights groups since the 2001 terrorist attacks."
....

"Yet the administration’s very success at killing terrorism suspects has been shadowed by a suspicion: that Mr. Obama has avoided the complications of detention by deciding, in effect, to take no prisoners alive. While scores of suspects have been killed under Mr. Obama, only one has been taken into American custody, and the president has balked at adding new prisoners to Guantánamo." 

...

"That record, and Mr. Awlaki’s calls for more attacks, presented Mr. Obama with an urgent question: Could he order the targeted killing of an American citizen, in a country with which the United States was not at war, in secret and without the benefit of a trial?
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel prepared a lengthy memo justifying that extraordinary step, asserting that while the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch."

I invite you to read the last one again.  I think that it is clear that the requirements of due process include: "Right to a fair and public trial conducted in a competent manner.  Right to be present at the trial.  Right to an impartial jury.  Right to be heard in one's own defense."  All of that is taken care of by a conference inside the executive branch!!  Relax, what could go wrong?  
This is where you end up when you adopt the principle that foreign terrorism is just another crime.

PS  If you refer to "water boarding" as torture, then perhaps you should also refer to "targeted killing" as murder.
PPS  I support both policies in the way in which I think that they were conducted.
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Cruel America

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Cruel America by Jonathan Schell
This article "appeared" in the October 17, 2011 edition of The Nation.

Mr. Schell talked about Gov. Perry, the death penalty, Republicans and other cruel people, Iraq, Bush and Cheney, and torture.

He criticized Obama too - for not holding Bush and company accountable for their crimes.

Funny though, he apparently hasn't heard about Obama's assassination of American Citizen Awlaki.
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The Death of Awlaki

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A search of this blog for Awlaki produces a short list of entries beginning with this one so you will have to scroll down.

I don't have much to add to that, but I will repeat (more or less) this:

"Basically, I think I'm OK with it. I am assuming that the President has a very serious procedure for putting someone on such a list and doesn't just wake up some morning and say, 'You know that guy really got on my nerves.' I would think that the procedure should involve some sort of self proclaimed identification with our enemies."

and I will add that:

I am still amused that some people think that it is totally outrageous that W's people poured water in the face of a known foreign terrorist and, simultaneously, are not troubled when O's people cross into a foreign country and assassinate an unindicted American citizen.

You will generally find those people among those who say that they believe that we should deal with terrorists in the same way we deal with other criminals.

Shooting bin Laden and all that

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I just heard a story that Churchill and Roosevelt composed a list of about 50 Germans who were to be shot on sight as WWII was coming to an end. They dropped the plan because, when they showed it their ally Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, Uncle Joe wanted to raise it to 5,000.

You have to exercise some restraint, but I am willing to support giving the American president pretty wide latitude in dealing with bin Laden, al Awlaki, etc.
One can support:
a) using EITs on random suspects in the conflict.
b) using EITs on those known with certainty to be among the enemy.
c) killing,without warning, those who have "joined in the war on us"
and, occasionally, some innocents around them.

I haven't met anyone who supports a).

This whole question exposes some strange attitudes of some folks.
They will support c) but not b). It seems to me that, for the terrorist, b) is a better outcome than c). I think it seems that way to at least some of the terrorists, too. In particular, those who surrender rather than "fight to the death" may perhaps be said to prefer b) to c).

I agree with Sherman: War is hell.

They need to reconvene at Geneva.
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Wanted, dead or alive

"A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit that had sought to block the American government from trying to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, a United States citizen and Muslim cleric in hiding overseas who is accused of helping to plan attacks by Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen."

It is a bit puzzling that we have not heard more from the political and chattering classes about this. Particularly the left which, you will recall, went berserk when W engaged in scanning the nature of someone's email traffic. At least the ACLU stepped up here to question whether it is appropriate for the Ex. Branch to just put an American citizen on a kill or capture list.

Basically, I think I'm OK with it. I am assuming that the President has a very serious procedure for putting someone on such a list and doesn't just wake up some morning and say you know that guy really got on my nerves. I would think that it should involve some sort of self proclaimed identification with our enemies.
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Anwar al-Awlaki

Headline: A Yemeni judge ordered police Saturday to find a radical U.S.-born cleric "dead or alive" . The man in question, Anwar al-Awlaki, is already on the CIA's kill or capture list.

Those on the left will say Obama's rapproachement with Islam works.
Those on the right will say Bush's attack on the Taliban (the Afghan government which protected Al Queda) was noted by the Yemeni govt.

Perhaps the combo works well.
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The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

The US has placed Anwar Awlaki on a kill or capture list. His father is sueing to have him removed from it. Obama's people will probably use a variation of the title in their arguments in court.
The expression "suicide pact" was first used by Justice Robert H. Jackson in a dissent in Terminiello v. Chicago, in 1949.
The sentiment had been expressed earlier but not that concisely.
Thomas Jefferson: Changed his mind about how much power the Federal Government had when he got the chance to make the Louisiana Purchase. In justifying his actions, he later wrote: "[a] strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means."[1]
Abraham Lincoln: Suspended habeas corpus (a congressional power) as a wartime measure to maintain order and when criticized he responded: “ … Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?"
Later in the war, after being criticized for the arrest and detention of Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, Lincoln wrote that he was arrested "because he was laboring, with some effect, to prevent the raising of troops, to encourage desertions from the army,. . . Must I shoot a simple-minded deserter, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?"

First Amendment

I did not participate on Draw Mohammed Day - see 5-20 but I think that we need another presidential speech on the 1st Amendment.
Note: Awlaki, who put Molly Norris on their assassination list, is himself on America's kill or capture list.

organizational warfare

OK, so here are some questions. Can an organization “declare war on a country”? Can a person, citizen or not, “declare war on a country”? If a person joins an organization that has declared war on a country, may the country consider him to be an enemy combatant? Of course they can make the statements or take actions that make the statements for them. But does the country have the right to treat that as a war situation? What are the rights of and permissible actions available to the country in that situation? Can it take them at their word and treat them an “enemy combatants”? If they hide in dark alleys in foreign countries can it go there and kill them? If the answer is yes then what kind of procedure should a government go through before they put someone on that “kill or capture list”?
Obama has a kill or capture list and Awlaki is on it. The left is finally starting to ask questions about it. This is the same left that went berserk when Bush poured water in the faces of known terrorists but ….