Assassination: A presidential power?

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

So the United States government assassinated a US citizen on foreign soil with a drone strike. His name was Anwar al-Awlaki. His alleged transgression? He's a propagandist for al-Qaeda, and the government accused him (without presenting evidence) of being a planner behind terrorist attacks. Glenn Greenwald sums up my feelings on the issue rather succinctly: not only does this present a new vista in presidential power (people thought it was bad when Bush jailed folks without due process? lol) but it's a serious and lasting threat to our constitutionally guaranteed rights of process and speech.

So, who gave Obama the license to kill his own citizens? Nobody. He just crafted it for himself, and we're too busy cheering another dead terrorist to notice what it means.

Comments

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Al Walkiki isn't some US citizen who may or may not have ties to terrorism. Stop with the bullshit equivocation and you'll have a much better discussion.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

I feel like all the political communities are going through some sort of mass willful ignorance. Half because they get to criticize obama and half because they'er afraid someone might call them hypocrites for being mad Bush was wiretapping anybody who might possibly be a terrorist (amongst other things such as indefinite detention and torture of people who might and sometimes weren't terrorists)

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

I wonder why Hugo Chavez hasn't been killed yet. He also hates America and often speaks against the US, doesn't he? Not to mention Ahmadinejad. Hell, I heard Iran sponsors terrorism.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

The people in Gitmo aren't people we just decided to luck up.

See, how that works?

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm hearing the following sentiment very often these days: "Good riddance, I won't shed a tear for this terrorist". In fact civil rights and "what we [US] stand for" have never been anything more than a catchy slogan. Arbitrarily killing people just because we can - meeeh. They're evil anyway, so what are you complaining about; etc.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Do you really not see any difference in a situation where we're fighting an armed conflict against a group and perform a military action against a leader and a situation where we're capturing and jailing just anyone who happens to be in the area at the wrong time?

Maybe y'all hid in a bunker and just haven't watched the news in years so you don't know who this guy is?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Some lawyer from his family should sue the government over this. I'd love to see how this would play out in the courts. So when I looked around on Wikipedia, his father actually brought a law suit to get his son taken off the "targeted kill list." I found this:

Lawyers for Specially Designated Global Terrorists must obtain a special license from the U.S. Treasury Department before they can represent their clients in court.

What?

A judge threw out the lawsuit, saying the overseas killing of terrorists is beyond judicial review. Yikes.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Someone had already sued the government over this and lost.

"The federal judge who dismissed al-Awlaki’s case in December said the court did not have the authority to override a political decision made by the executive branch involved in an armed conflict.

The court “concluded that even though he happens to be a U.S. citizen, he can still be treated like any other belligerent,”

The federal judge who dismissed al-Awlaki’s case in December said the court did not have the authority to override a political decision made by the executive branch involved in an armed conflict.

The court “concluded that even though he happens to be a U.S. citizen, he can still be treated like any other belligerent,”

[cill-ros.livejournal.com]

Once upon a time, political assassinations were covert affairs, known about but not proved. Now governments can openly announce the fact, knowing that the media not only won't criticise, but will openly celebrate it.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

It's some interesting story-telling here where
killing the King of a Nation for political gain

is now equivocated with killing members of an organization
that killed thousands of Americans on American soil and continue
to try to do so again.


It seems interesting how the context of all this seems to be forgotten

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Oh but it's a "war". Anything goes when you're at war, see?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I find it telling that the mass-murdering, despotic USSR which was under nobody's definition squeamish about mass-murder wanted trials of the Nazis where the democracies in the 1940s just wanted them hung, just as democracies in the 2000s want them shot without trial. You'd think the USA would have learned from the Nuremberg trials that maybe Stalin had the right idea and at the very least would not leave itself open to the problem of the USSR under a murderous, thuggish prick being morally superior to the USA at any point, let alone centuries behind the lines. Trials are better than simply ordering people to be killed, if nothing else from a simple propaganda viewpoint.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Funny how the tide turns, isn't it?

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Yes I'm sure this thing is not like the other thing.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

So like, when someone kills another person, like a police man killing a person, it's like, an assassination? I'm wondering how this jives with differing intuitions. For instance, soldiers are US citizens, but if a soldier crosses the line on the battlefield, we kill him just as much as the other guy. Is this an assassination?

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

And before all the opportunistic whining about "hypocrisy" comes in, I never objected to targeted strikes or assassinations. Bush or anyone. The State kills people all the time. In our very own country. And we yet somehow preserve a sense of reasoning that doesn't fall into silly and simplistic fundamentalist thinking.

"We shouldn't kill people without warning in a non-battlefield situation" is some righteous horseshit if I ever saw it. We kill people all the time, in regular wars, off the "battlefield". It isn't like we warn the training depot that we're going to friggin bomb it out of a sense of some outmoded chivalry.

[yahvah.livejournal.com]

Maybe Congress granted a letter of marque and reprisal to President Obama and Obama ordered his henchmen to get'r done.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Heh, you know the United States Code still contains a law banning Americans from serving on privateers without Congressional approval.

[existentme.livejournal.com]

Man, first this extra-judicial, but totally understandable and justifiable assassination action, and then someone citing Greenwald on talkpolitics - I tremble to ponder what might possibly be next.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Haven't been on talkpolitics in a while. That place sure looks empty. :S

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It's a dramatic acceleration of what the previous SOBs were doing....

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

Sonofa... late again. *Picard facepalm*

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

I love all the squirming that's going on here. So far a few conclusions are sticking out:

- this is a war; everything is allowed - so shut up and proceed with your original programming
- he was the leader of a terrorist organization, so his citizenship doesn't count (besides he's too brown)
- Bush did a lot of bad things, so it's only fair if Obama does too
- no no no, actually Bush did a lot of bad things but this thing that Obama does is not the same, it's different (it's way better)
- moral principles? pfeh! they're for the dumb sheeple who believe this shit when it's pronounced in TV speeches; what actually matters is what's good for us

Etc.

I'm liking this. Stay classy, Amurrkka.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty complex straw man you've created there. Maybe you shouldn't waste the time and go with the arguments people actually make?

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Obama's tactic of focused targeting on particular individuals and then killing them with fleshless drone gadgets may seem more cowardly as opposed to sending thousands of troops in for no known reason and no clear plan...

...But it's the cheaper option. And these are times of crisis, right? Think from the pragmatic side, people!

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

I won't pretend to be comfortable with this. The slip on the slope is quite large. It would be a lot less of a problem if Congress had ever just had the stones to actually declare war back in 2001 instead of to once again roll over and tell the Executive Branch that whatever they wanted to do was okay. But Congress had not done that since 1941 so why ruin 60 years and 10s of 1000s of dead Americans and orders of magnitude more dead Koreans, Vietnamese and Iraqis just to actually follow the Constitution.

But Congress did not declare war, so I am left with an utterly imperfec parallel. If, in 1943, we knew of an American citizen not merely living in an Axis country, but actively planning their military operations, I do not think the Bill of Rights would demand that we try to arrest him rather than to drop a bomb on his head. Goodness knows, we dropped bombs on a lot of Axis commanders, and we even deliberately hunted down Admiral Yamamoto's airplane.

But I would prefer this parallel a lot more if Congress would once and for all actually play it's legitimate part in War Powers.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

THIS is a very fair analysis.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Could an attempt to arrest al-Awlaki have caused the death of American military or law enforcement personnel? If that question is answered in the affirmative, then the only logical approach is the one that was taken. Any other discussion of the matter is a quasi-intellectual circle jerk.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

new to livejournal? ;)

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Thank you for introducing this topic here. It was in dire need of discussion.

I posted my thoughts in my own journal (http://novapsyche.livejournal.com/2511643.html) before I came across the issue here. To me, it's very simple. President Obama has become enamored with the powers vested in the office and, like nearly all who came before him (with the exception of Washington), seeks to enlarge those powers. But this is the power of a king. This is one of the very powers we went through a revolution in order to extinguish--the power of one man to determine the death of one of his own citizenry.

[whoasksfinds.livejournal.com]

another dirt nap for a scum bag jihadist. score another one for the CIA's drone program. hoorah!

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

God help them if Ron Paul becomes President. They'll be facing an army of process servers.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

If you decide to join a major international terrorist organization I think it's foolish to let a US passport be something a person can hide behind.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

The global cop does bang-bang again and saves the world from tyranny through killing people. In other news, the Sun will set in the west tonight at 19:10.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

Actual, global cop is trying to save his own people from being killed by terrorists.

Not "tyranny" or anything else.


You *do* remember this, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Terrorists

You *do* remember THIS, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/911_attacks

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

we're too busy cheering another dead terrorist to notice what it means.

Not all of us are. But yes, it's disconcerting at how many continue to not notice the many things that are going on that are a serious and lasting threat to our whole constitutional system.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

It's not against the Constitution

You *do* remember this, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Terrorists


Now, what part of that was unConstitutional?

[madjacktech.livejournal.com]

Food for thought that I haven't seen mentioned in all the above posts...
The MSM reports both that this terrorist, while American born (to Yemeni parents), was a Yemeni citizen, and/or dual US/Yemen citizenship.
IIRC, you can't have dual citizenship (or it's at least very difficult to obtain citizenship of another nation w/o renouncing the first one).
And I very much doubt if he considered himself an American citizen, either.
He was a citizen of Yemen.
'Nuff said.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

What you "doubt" is your opinion.

You may find it difficult to have a dual citizenship in some cases, and very easy in other cases. Depends which countries we're talking about.

How many of the people living in America are feeling American? And how many American expatriates are feeling American? What does "feeling" have to do with anything? And while we're at it, what does you "doubting" something have to do with anything?

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Hmmm I am watching CNN right now and what do I see? "Cheney criticizes Obama, says killing of American hypocritical". Cheney is the last one who should be opening his mouth about this right now. And I wonder what made him speak so much after the end of his term, why was he so silent during it?

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

What's even worse is the number of mouth-breathers
who wont even ask the question you've raised.