Transparency Will Be The Touchstone Of This Presidency
BY Herschel Smith
13 years, 2 months ago
Outside the U.S. government, President Obama’s order to kill American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without due process has proved controversial, with experts in law and war reaching different conclusions. Inside the Obama Administration, however, disagreement was apparently absent, or so say anonymous sources quoted by the Washington Post. “The Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting of Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday, according to administration officials,” the newspaper reported. “The document was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Aulaqi, the officials said.”
Isn’t that interesting? Months ago, the Obama Administration revealed that it would target al-Awlaki. It even managed to wriggle out of a lawsuit filed by his father to prevent the assassination. But the actual legal reasoning the Department of Justice used to authorize the strike? It’s secret. Classified. Information that the public isn’t permitted to read, mull over, or challenge.
Why? What justification can there be for President Obama and his lawyers to keep secret what they’re asserting is a matter of sound law? This isn’t a military secret. It isn’t an instance of protecting CIA field assets, or shielding a domestic vulnerability to terrorism from public view. This is an analysis of the power that the Constitution and Congress’ post September 11 authorization of military force gives the executive branch. This is a president exploiting official secrecy so that he can claim legal justification for his actions without having to expose his specific reasoning to scrutiny. As the Post put it, “The administration officials refused to disclose the exact legal analysis used to authorize targeting Aulaqi, or how they considered any Fifth Amendment right to due process.”
American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.
There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.
Not too long ago:
On October 6, 2011 at 6:45 pm, TS Alfabet said:
I frankly cannot understand the lack of concern in the conservative community over this sordid affair.
We should never allow our personal feelings about someone (even enemies like Anwar Al-Awlaki) to interfere with our fundamental principles or let our guard down when it comes to preserving our freedom and rule of law.
The path to tyranny and abuse of law is always precipitated by someone whom the majority of the people can easily regard as “the enemy.” Conservatives seem to be saying, “Well, killing Awlaki was no big deal because he was *clearly* a declared enemy of the U.S. He deserved to die and good riddance.” And usually this is followed by a ridiculous analogy that we cannot expect to separate out U.S. citizens on the battlefield, totally obscuring the fact that Awlaki was not on any battlefield but was carefully and methodically hunted down by drones and only killed when the drone operators were sure that we were killing only Awlaki and no “innocents.”
Now we have this report of a secret list of Americans that can be killed without further discussion or public inquiry.
This is terrible precedent being set here. We have to think about the future and how this kind of thing might be abused by a future Administration who may decide that the Secret List can be used not just for Al Qaeda members but for, say States Rights members, or Tea Party organizers. Far fetched? When SWAT teams can kill people with relative impunity— with merely a, “Sorry, we broke in the wrong door and killed the wrong person”— then we have reason to worry. The State is already too big and far too powerful. And they want to nullify the 2nd Amendment in any way they can.
Attention should be paid.
On October 7, 2011 at 12:06 pm, Warbucks said:
The original question posed was done with supporting arguments that we needed a new law to cover this situation. The counter argument was, we do not need a new law, that existing laws are better than a law that will likely be politically abused. Justice is working its course using existing laws via exposure of very material points. The debate has been around since the Lincoln assassination. Respectfully, a perfect law, I would argue can not be written to cover every situation in war. If the current situation rises to a high enough level of concern it will bring down even an alleged (or implied) corrupt Justice Department.
On October 7, 2011 at 8:41 pm, Warbucks said:
A more productive move would be to take this crame course in banking then reform the banking system away from the Rothchilds’ control: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXt1cayx0hs&sns=em
On October 11, 2011 at 7:51 am, Dave said:
Contrast the ‘fair trial’ offer for Khalid Sheik Mohammed with the drone kill of Anwar Al-Awlaki. First, they kill U.S. citizens overseas. Then they kill us on U.S. soil. Then they broaden the definition of ‘enemies of the U.S.’
Shades of Janet Reno here.