President Lincoln concluded that famous speech that the world would little note, nor long remember by praying “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The current administration might be of the people and even for the people, but it sure as hell is not by the people when the reasons for decisions of life and death about U.S. citizens can be kept from them by the most transparent administration in the history of the universe.
Drone strike
This past week a federal judge denied requests from The New York Times and ACLU for access to a Justice Department memorandum outlining the legal justification for drone assassinations of U.S. citizens, such as Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a strike in Yemen in 2011. Both the Times and the ACLU promise to appeal.
In a speech in March Attorney General Eric Holder made this contorted argument: “Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces. This is simply not accurate. ‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”
While the Fifth Amendment guarantees due process, the Sixth guarantees a public trial — not a judge, jury and executioner all rolled up into one person, without any checks or balances between the three branches of the federal government.
One of the lawyers for the ACLU, Jameel Jaffer, said, “This ruling denies the public access to crucial information about the government’s extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens and also effectively greenlights its practice of making selective and self-serving disclosures.” The whole truth and nothing but the truth? Nah. If you thought Lincoln’s denial of habeas corpus was wrong …
Here are a couple of graphs from the ruling by Judge Colleen McMahon that reveal a certain level of frustration with Alice-in-Wonderland nature of her own ruling and the Catch-22 in which the law entraps her:
When the government is hiding something, you know they’ve got something to hide.
Can’t wait to read what the blog idiot, the man in the shadows, has to say about this.
I was thinking the same thing, Bruce.
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That’s because great minds think alike Tom!
No, great minds travel in the same plane, fools think alike.
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Who is the “man in the shadows?”
Well, Petey, what is your comment on President 007?
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What a switch! The Liberals were screaming the same thing when Bush was in charge and the Conservatives were justifying his actions – something about enemy combatants. How times change!
It matters not to me who the boss is, if we have a confirmed traitor its no skin off my nose to give what we get from them. I just wish leadership would grow some gonads and show the world its proof.
How many American citizens were targeted for assassination during the Bush Administration?
Eric Holder quoting the Constitution as meaningful in this, or any, issue is curiously odd, even surprising. Over two centuries of politicians. judges, lawyers, and legal scholars deciphering how new laws apply under that ancient document and he says, “just because”, and the judge agreed.
There are two issues, Mr. Mitchell. The first is the relatively technical issue of whether the government needs to disclose classified information pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. From a quick look at the briefs, it seems quite clear that the Government is on very solid legal ground in arguing that the FOIA demand is meritless. That is why they won the case.
The second question is whether, as you appear to contend, as an American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was entitled to a “public trial” and whether it was correspondingly wrong of the Obama Administration to kill him via a guided missile strike. That is not a completely easy question. But, ultimately, I disagree with you, and agree with the President. If an American citizen leaves the territory of the United States, declares war on America, plots violence against America, encourages shoe bombers to take down U.S. airplanes, I do not believe that the government is required to empanel a grand jury, obtain an indictment, mount a kidnapping operation, bring him back to the US, and put him on a trial subject to the Federal Rules of Evidence and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. If you leave the country, declare war on America, and take actions to kill Americans, it is reasonable for the Commander in Chief to take action against you. As for the Sixth Amendment, it applies only in cases of a criminal prosecution. Since al-Awlaki was not the subject of a criminal prosecution, the Sixth Amendment does not apply.
As to whether this is “hypocritical”, I cannot recall any instance in which then-Senator Obama, Senator Biden or anyone else currently concerned with the national security of the United States argued that an American citizen who plotted acts of terrorism against the US from foreign shores could not be targeted for military action.
Are you suggesting that if Osama Bin Laden had held U.S. citizenship it would have been wrong to kill him in Pakistan?
I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
That phrase “foreign and domestic” covers traitors, whether they be in the government, in the public, or outside the borders. “All enemies” is clear.
Nyp was very wordy but the answer is directly in front of anyone who has served this country, either militarily or as an elected official or even as a hired person in a federal job.
I say again I wish the leadership would grow some gonads and make their reasons public. Unless they have more use for those reasons, maybe another traitor or two?
Not quite that easy. The President could not order the summary execution of Timothy McVeigh, even though he was a domestic terrorist waging war on the United States government.
McVeigh was a loner. He lost his mind, didn’t join an avowed enemy of the USA.
Steve, you don’t know that McVeigh lost his mind, his actions seem well organized, his rather minor mistake was driving on a major highway without license plates and a state trooper stopped him. If he’d had license plates on that car the chances are he would still be around, look around and you will see cars without license plates right here in Las Vegas, it’s not a big deal for some people but it’s meat for state troopers. There’s more to the McVeigh story than we will ever know, how do we know he wasn’t sponsored by someone or some nation?
Because McVeigh is a very public record.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-mcveigh-profile,0,5449661.story
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcveigh/conspirators.html
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19950505&slug=2119431
And many more.
As you say, there could be some conspiracy theory surrounding McVeigh but that is all it would be, theory. While Anwar al-Awlaki definitely joined an enemy of the USA and became a real traitor to this country.
With Anwar al-Awlaki I am calling on the public release of info if the leadership is truly done with it too. I simply say if they are not done with it and will see more use from it then they are doing things the way they have been done for decades, no matter what party was in power. Hopefully they will not hold it for 30 years. If they did something good then they should be crowing about it unless its really bad or its a matter of more future actions based on material that needs to remain secret to be viable.
One thing is absolutely certain about Anwar al-Awlaki, he was a traitor. McVeigh? Not so much. He was easily mislead and he acted on ideas others in that group never would. Mostly, they are talkers and stay within the law. McVeigh lost it and went over the edge. The other two were accomplices, but not directly acting on the bombing. Building and using are two different things.
But he didn’t use any “assault” weapons did he? Guess we should have used his actions to ban homemade fertilizer bombs.
And, Vernon? Crazy does not necessarily mean disorganized. In many cases crazy results in hyper-organization and severe dedication.
Send the drones after all the rich people and then confiscate their money!
Start with George Soros and Warren Buffet.
Hey. Isn’t Harry Reid rich??
Times don’t change, people do.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323374504578221801531272148.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Bush just tortured them.
It is wrong for one person to be judge, jury and executioner, Petey, and not have to answer for his actions to his boss, the American people.
I know a little a bit about why information is classified. It is as often to keep it from the voters as from any enemy.
So, if Osama Bin Laden had held U.S. citizenship it would have been wrong to send in Seal Team 6 to kill him?
Pete,
I am ok with Bin Laden dead, and as the head of an organization that declared war on the US and attacked us without provocation I am ok with Seal Team 6′s orders to kill on sight. If Bin Laden had been a US citizen, he should have been given a chance to surrender and brought back to the US.
It would be wrong not to explain it to the voters.
bc: what if the task force’s recommendation to the President had been that the best way to get bin Laden was a missile strike? Not much opportunity for surrender there.
You know, I’m not saying that these questions are easy. Nor that people who look at these issues from the outside think about them differently when they assume actual national security responsibility. But they don’t fall as easily on the tired old left-right spectrum as one might think. That is why a man of the (far) right like Thomas Mitchell seems to be taking the side of the ACLU here.
I am in favor of civil liberties.
There are no easy answers and in the fog of war not all turns out as well as it should. As far as a missile strike, if I recall that is how they got al-Awlaki and thus the question remains, how much authority should a President have to kill a United States citizen?
Is there a difference in firing a missile controlled at Indian Springs or lining up a shot with a rifle at an unarmed man 20 ft away? I believe that there is a difference and that if al-Awlaki was taken by Navy Seals as bin Laden was, I would say that al-Awlaki should be taken into custody. Obama chose to not bring bin Ladin into custody and I am fine with that. If the choice had been to fire a missile at him, then fire away. I believe that, as iffy as it is to send a team over the border vs. firing a missile, Obama made the right choice. bin Laden needed to see a US soldier face to face as he died and know in his heart of hearts that the US found him and killed him. I tip my hat to the President for taking that choice.
The world is better off without al-Awlaki as well, but he was a citizen and that should mean something.
I know a good process server. Maybe we could have just issued him a summons to come to court. Being a U.S. citizen, it would have been illegal for him to refuse : )
Although it deserves a thorough investigation, I wonder how much information could be given out without compromising the sources. I suspect the U.S. didn’t find him through the Yemeni Motor Vehicles Bureau. I’m not sure that we had any other realistic choices. We could have tried some kind of kidnapping operation, at great risk to our soldiers or we could have just let him continue what he was doing.
To me, unless there is a lack of evidence that he was working with the enemy, then he renounced his citizenship when he joined their forces. No dual citizenship allowed.
“he [al-Awlaki] was a citizen and that should mean something.”
His citizenship obviously didn’t mean anything to him.
It does not matter if his citizenship means anything to him, it does not matter what he has done. It does not matter that we all agree that the world is better off without him, what does matter is that we are a nation of laws. Simply that the President decided that an American Citizen needs to die is not enough.
As al-Awlaki died as part of a military attack on a group of senior members of an enemy terrorist group, even being part of the target of that attack, is not an issue, part of the fog of war. My point in my earlier post was that if we had sent the Seals after him as we did with bin Ladin, I would expect that the Seals would attempt to take him into custody as an American citizen.
The point of Mitchel’s post is not whether Obama was justified in the killing of al-Awlaki, rather what was the basis of his decision, where is the due process. The AG has stated that “due process” and “judicial process” are not the same. So what is the “due process” that allowed the President to decide that an American citizen is to die?
The rule of law traditionally becomes somewaht modified in time of war, to the extent that “emergency powers” are often declared, such as when we placed the Japanese into internment camps in World War II. Obama’s decision pales in scope compared to the decision made about Japanese-Americans.
FDR didn’t shot them.
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It seems clear that if bin-Laden had held a US passport Mr. Mitchell would not have sent in the Seals to take him out.
Get real, Thomas. The Japanese-Americans had not declared war on their country. They were just going about their business.