Is the US behaving like Russia?

Forums: Politics, Russia, Extra-Judicial Killings
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Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and political dissidenter was summarily assassinated by the US security forces, today.

Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian citizen and political dissident was also summarily assassinated by the Russian security forces. some time ago.

What is the difference? We are used to Russia treating its dissenting voices by killing without trial. Despite this the international condemnation was fierce and Russia was rightly criticised for not conforming to natural justice by failing to bring the people they do not like to trial.

Where is the outcry against the US? How is it that accusations against Awlaki were not tested in court? What exactly was his crime?
Is this what we can now expect from the US? Political dissent treated with death, disappearance and rendition?

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@chaz wyman,

chaz wyman wrote:

Where is the outcry against the US?

You want to get in touch with JTT. You'll get all the "outcry" you can handle, and more.

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I think the American born man taken out by drone the past week was no longer an American. He moved away and made war on us; therefore he gave up being one of us.

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@chaz wyman,

These folks, and US citizens in general, the press included, don't do outrage over US war crimes, US terrorism, US extra-judicial killings, US genocidal actions, US theft of other nations wealth, so you shouldn't be at all surprised at the lack of outrage over this, Chaz.

This isn't the US behaving like Russia. This is the US behaving like the US. Extra-judical killings have been the lifeblood of American foreign policy for well over a century.

Quote:

Extrajudicial Killings: US Government "Death List" for American Citizens

by Prof. Francis A. Boyle

This extrajudicial execution of human beings constitutes a grave violation of international human rights law and, under certain circumstances, can also constitute a war crime under the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949. In addition, the extrajudicial execution of U.S. citizens by the United States government also violates the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution mandating that no person "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

The U.S. Government has now established a "death list" for U.S. citizens abroad akin to those established by Latin American dictatorships during their so-called "dirty wars." The Bush Administration reduced the United States of America to a Banana Republic waging a "dirty war" around the world in gross violation of international law, human rights law, and the laws of war. It is only a matter of time before the United States government will establish a similar "death list" targeting U.S. citizens living here at home. As someone who used to teach Constitutional Law, President Obama knows better.

Francis A. Boyle teaches at the University of Illinois College of Law.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17527

Even as they engage in this sort of criminal behavior, they hypocritically love to point out other nations actions.

Quote:

http://mtrtmk.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/india-commits-1600-extra-judicial-killings-in-2010-us-state-dept/

WASHINGTON, April 8: The Indian government and its agents have committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings, in Jammu and Kashmir, says a US State Department report released on Friday. According to the department`s 2010 human rights reports, as many as 1,616 extrajudicial or unlawful killings were committed in India up to Oct 17 last year.

all the while,

Quote:

2011-09-02 Extrajudicial killings in the Philippines: What we can learn from Wikileaks
Submitted by natoreyes on Sat, 09/03/2011 - 06:18
Analysis Philipines Wikileaks

From 2004-2010, the Philippines witnessed one of the worst waves of human rights violations in its history. Hundreds of activists were killed or abducted. Hundreds more were arrested and faced with trumped-up charges. The magnitude of the abuses caught the attention of the international community. The issue also further isolated the regime of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The main suspects in the killings and disappearances were state security forces.

There were numerous embassy cables on the US position regarding extrajudicial killings in the Philippines. My own estimate is that there were more than 40 cables that referenced extrajudicial killings in the Philippines. These cables ranged from scenesetters for visiting US officials, to actual reports on the actions taken by the US embassy and the Philippine government on EJK’s.

...

Perhaps the best summary of the US position on EJK appears in a scenesetter for US Congressman Steve Chabot. In this February 15 2007 cable signed by Kristie Kenney, the US wanted to send the message that the Philippines needs to “control the problem” of EJK’s.

“We press the government at every opportunity to resolve these killings, and I have discussed them with President Arroyo and key members of her cabinet, as well as the Armed Forces Chief of Staff and the Chief of the Philippine National Police. They all tell me they are as appalled as we are, but we remain insistent that they must get control of this problem,” Kenney said.

Here the issue was not really achieving justice for the victims or correcting the wrongs done by the AFP. The issue was the containment of a problem: avoiding international fall-out, the further degeneration of the AFP and the further complications in US involvement in Philippine counter-insurgency efforts.

http://wlcentral.org/node/2217

1 Reply

@chaz wyman,

Not as much of this as I would have expected.

You might get more traffic here if you had a better title.

While I believe that the Kremlin might have accused Litvinenko of planning an attack against Putin, I don't think anyone bought that.

On the other hand, there is pretty good evidence that al-Awlaki participated in the planning of several attacks against the US.

I don't know that anyone realistically puts these two cases in the same class.

An argument I have heard being made is that al-Awlaki was an enemy combatant in an on going war, and a key member of the command structure of enemy forces. He was not a dissident living in peaceful exile in a foreign country. He wasn't executed for crimes he was alleged to have committed, but "taken out" as a means to disable the enemy's command and prevent additional future attacks.

This makes sense to me, but I agree that there should be a wider debate on the subject. Not with the intention of putting an end to the Obama drone strategy that has been very effective, or creating a political **** storm for the Administration, but to maintain, at least the semblance, of something of a fence around Executive power.

I agree with those who argue that such an effort can have undesirable consequences, but I don't see a problem with the Executive branch giving us some idea of why it believes this action was warranted and what limitations, if any, will be applied to similar actions in the future.

I'm fairly sure the president consulted with DOJ officials before giving the order to take al-Awlaki out, but so did President Bush when he approved the order to water-board (torture) KSM.

Let's face it neither of these presidents sought legal experts to tell them what they could or could not do. They went to them seeking a legal clearance for the decision they had already made. Lawyers are great at finding justification. It's what they do and the White House has access to some very good ones.

Good ones can do what their employers want them to do while preserving a credible appearence of propriety.

Critics, and the most passionate of them, will always scream to the rafters that the impropiety they see is deliberate and blatant, but citics don't have to prove their case in a courtroom, and they rarely are.

There was a report on this story during one of the Sunday News Talk shows and apparently when Administration officials were asked why al-Awlaki didn't enjoy all of the rights and privleges of an American citizen hey responded something to the effect of "That's top secret."

Not a very satisfactory answer, if its true, and one we should not accept from any Administration.

I'm sure there is all sorts of information concerning al-Awlaki that truly is Top Secret and which the government should not be required to reveal, but it's hard for me to see what can be confidential about the legal reasoning that differentiated al-Awlaki from other American citizens on the day he was killed by the American government.

It's unlikely they will have much more of a sympathetic ear than mine, but Top Secret doesn't cut it.

The increased use of drones in battling al-Qaida is one of the few policies of the Administration with which I agree, and I would not like to see it come to an end because of contraversy, but I don't think matters of national security should be used a political footballs. If you take a different position on this issue than you've taken on similar ones in the past, and simply because a different political party governs the White House, then you are playing football.

3 Replies

@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

Let's face it neither of these presidents sought legal experts to tell them what they could or could not do. They went to them seeking a legal clearance for the decision they had already made. Lawyers are great at finding justification. It's what they do and the White House has access to some very good ones.

THE UNITED BANANA REPUBLIC OF AMERICA

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

He was not a dissident living in peaceful exile in a foreign country.

Neither was Litvinenko, he was living in England.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Quote:
He was not a dissident living in peaceful exile in a foreign country.

Neither was Litvinenko, he was living in England.

And England wasn't a foreign country to Litvinenko?

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

Of course not, it's England.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Of course not, it's England.

More of your terribly subtle humor I suppose.

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

Humour.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

I don't know that anyone realistically puts these two cases in the same class.

That's really not a very realistic appraisal, Finn. That's just not like you, trying to advance a spurious notion.

I think that there are many legal scholars who put these in the class that's aptly named 'extra-judicial killings'.

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@JTT,

More on the nature of the US's long and storied tradition of extra-judicial killings.

CIA Support of Death Squads

The information below is from CIABASE files on Death Squads supported by the CIA. Also given below are details on Watch Lists prepared by the CIA to facilitate the actions of Death Squads.

Angola Bolivia Brazil Cambodia Central America
Chile Columbia Costa Rica Cuba Dominican Republic
Eastern Europe East Timor Egypt El Salvador Europe
Georgia Germany Greece Guatemala Haiti
Honduras Indonesia Iran Iraq Israel
Italy Latin America Mexico Nicaragua Norway
Panama Paraguay Philippines Puerto Rico Russia
South Africa South America Syria Thailand Turkey
Uruguay USSR Vietnam Death Squads: Miscellaneous

CIA set up Ansesal and other networks of terror in El Salvador, Guatemala (Ansegat) and pre-Sandinista Nicaragua (Ansenic). The CIA created, structured and trained secret police in South Korea, Iran, Chile and Uruguay, and elsewhere — organizations responsible for untold thousands of tortures, disappearances, and deaths. Spark, 4/1985, pp. 2-4

1953-94 Sponsorship by CIA of death squad activity covered in summary form. Notes that in Haiti CIA admitted Lt. General Raoul Cedras and other high-ranking officials "were on its payroll and are helping organize violent repression in Haiti. Luis Moreno, an employee of State Department, has bragged he helped Colombian army create a database of subversives, terrorists and drug dealers."

His superior in overseeing INS for Southeastern U.S., is Gunther Wagner, former Nazi soldier and a key member of now-defunct Office of Public Safety (OPS), an AID project which helped train counterinsurgents and terrorism in dozens of countries. Wagner worked in Vietnam as part of Operation Phoenix and in Nicaragua where he helped train National Guard. Article also details massacres in Indonesia. Haiti Information, 4/23/1994, pp. 3,4

CIA personnel requested transfers 1960-7 in protest of CIA officer Nestor Sanchez's working so closely with death squads. Marshall, J., Scott P.D., and Hunter, J. (1987). The Iran-Contra Connection, p. 294

CIA. 1994. Mary McGrory op-ed, "Clinton's CIA Chance." Excoriates CIA over Aldrich Ames, support for right-wing killers in El Salvador, Nicaraguan Contras and Haiti's FRAPH and Cedras. Washington Post, 10/16/1994, C1,2

For a country by country review of these war crimes, see,

http://www.serendipity.li/cia/death_squads1.htm

1 Reply

@JTT,

In this case it was justified. He had helped plan attacks on U.S. citizens and preached more attacks. When you declare war you should expect retalitation wether foreign or U.S..

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@RABEL222,

There is such a thing as the rule of law, Rabel. Civilized countries abide by it.

1 Reply

@RABEL222,

Did he ever declare war on America, and if so, does that have bearing on his standing as an American citizen?

There certainly is reason to believe he participated in the planning of prior attacks, but the truth of that allegation was never adjudicated.

I'm not sure what his ongoing threats signified in terms of his legal status on the day his killing was ordered.

If you kill a cop you should expect retaliation, but are we OK if the Mayor's office decides to hunt the guy down and pick him off with a sniper, all without the bother of a trial?

If the prisoners who were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and imprisoned in Gitmo deserved the consideration of the US Supreme Court in determining what rights the US Constitution afforded them, why not this American citizen?

It's not as if he was killed in a gunfight during an effort to capture him or while leading a terrorist attack on a US military base. The US government hunted him down and took him out with a sniper from the skies.

Considering the hue & cry that accompanied virtually every action taken by the Bush Administration in prosecuting the War on Terror, the relative silence resulting from this act is deafening.

Forget about demands for investigations and prosecutions, we're not even hearing requests for explanations.

I believe a very good argument can be made for the legitimacy of the the Administration's action, and fully support it. If interest in the matter doesn't go beyond where it stands right now, I'm hardly going to advocate marching on DC, but the blatant double standard applied by the Left here on A2K and in the wider world is stunning, and reveals how partisan politics will so often trump principle.

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@JTT,

What civilized countries? Almost all leaders of so called civilized countries are ruled by the almighty buck. You dont have a clue how the real world works.

0 Replies

Is the US behaving like Russia?

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