The distinction between war and murder becomes a fine one...

Forums: U S Politics, Collateral Damage, Politics, Civilian Deaths, Casulaties Of War
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The series of articles by Tom Junod looks like it will be excellent. It will continue all week.

I haven't read the whole thing yet but I think it will be worth following and I thought some of you might be interested. I'm copying over the opening paragraph(s) of each post so far....

Quote:

July 9, 2012, 7:46 AM

The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama

Sure, we as a nation have always killed people. A lot of people. But no president has ever waged war by killing enemies one by one, targeting them individually for execution, wherever they are. The Obama administration has taken pains to tell us, over and over again, that they are careful, scrupulous of our laws, and determined to avoid the loss of collateral, innocent lives. They're careful because when it comes to waging war on individuals, the distinction between war and murder becomes a fine one. Especially when, on occasion, the individuals we target are Americans and when, in one instance, the collateral damage was an American boy.

More: http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-lethal-presidency-0812

Quote:

July 9, 2012 ,7:47 AM

Obama's Administration Killed a 16-Year-Old American and Didn't Say Anything About It. This Is Justice?

He was just a boy.

Let's start there. He was an American boy, born in America. Though he'd lived in Yemen since he was about seven, he was still an American citizen, which should have made it harder for the United States to kill him.

It didn't.

It should at the very least have made it necessary for the United States to say why it killed him.

It didn't.

More: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/abdulrahman-al-awlaki-death-10470891?miaou888

Quote:

July, 10, 2012, 8:58 AM

America Targets People to Kill. Why Is Congress AWOL?

In Monday's post about the Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama, I described the killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old American citizen who, though the son of a man accused of many crimes — the son of Anwar al-Awlaki — was never accused of any crimes himself. I described how he was killed by an American drone strike in Yemen, while in the company of other teenage boys, including a second cousin. I described how the Obama administration has never so much as really acknowledged the killing, despite the twin facts of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki's citizenship and innocence, and I called for Congress to pass a law that would not outlaw lethal operations against American citizens but that would outlaw lethal operations against American citizens taking place in total secrecy.

I also admitted that such a law would never be introduced, debated, or passed — that in asking for even a minimum of disclosure concerning the death of an American citizen killed by America, I was indulging a fond, rather sentimental fantasy. Of course such a law could never be passed by Congress, although the Obama administration has been at pains to demonstrate that the power it claims — the power to kills our enemies where it finds them — is derived from the explicit authorization of Congress, rather than from the commander-in-chief clause of the Constitution.

"The Bush administration believed that it was actually illegal for Congress to pass any law restricting it in the area of national security," a former lawyer for the Obama administration told me. "But if Congress outlawed drone strikes, the Obama administration would stop them tomorrow."

http://www.esquire.com/archives/blogs/politics/by_tag/lethal%20presidency/15;1

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Type: Question • Score: 25 • Views: 14,073 • Replies: 257

@boomerang,

Boom your observations were remarkably pertinent to me as I had often ruminated on the very theme. My No. 2 Son, a policeman for some 8 years, reports that in no instance did he feel required to pull his weapon. I have no doubt however, that he had considered the act while others of his stripe might have actually done so, then pulled the trigger

...and in most such cases would have been judged as accidental or justified

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This is difficult reading.

It is my shame that I do not mourn these deaths, yet I shall not.

I would rather a hundred radicals and their families be vaporized than a single US soldier step foot on foreign soil.

Joe(It's a personal failing of mine.)Nation

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@Joe Nation,

Yes, it is difficult reading. I don't think he's criticizing the policy so much as he's criticizing the secrecy.

He writes:

Quote:

The American people, for the most part, have no idea who has been killed, and why; the American people — and for that matter, most of their representatives in Congress — have no idea what crimes those killed in their name are supposed to have committed, and have been told that they are not entitled to know.

This is not to say that the American people don't know about the Lethal Presidency, and that they don't support its aims. They do.

And I think that's true. I really had no idea of the extent of it though.

I haven't yet finished the long article so I'm not quite ready to say much more.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

I'll read this. Might take me a while to report - my attempt to read all those comments on the NYT article about milk threw my computing on a complete loop and I finally gave up after not getting half way through and there was interesting stuff there. I have been warned by google that I have inadequate connection speed to see instant google. Cripes, I must act on this soon, which means calling the phone company I despise.

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As I understand it these people are plotting to kill U.S. citizens in the U.S.. I am sorry that some innocents are killed but the fact that one is a teenager dosent mean he isent a terroist.

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@boomerang,

Methinks Mr. Junod doth protest too much. (To the point where the whole article begins to seem like thinly-disguised anti-Obama propaganda.) I agree with Joe Nation -- some of that reading is very sorrow-inducing but it is difficult to mourn the deaths of people caught in cross-fire when American lives are stake.

The death of the 16-year-old was unfortunate collateral damage. Junod, while admitting that the father was a strongly-suspected terrorist, almost makes it sound as though the son had been targeted. He wasn't. Nor were any other innocent civilians.

I don't know about anyone else here, but personally I see absolutely nothing wrong with Obama's targeting specific individuals for termination with extreme prejudice rather than bombing a whole village because one terrorist is suspected of trying to raise support there. You can't have it both ways -- you can't deplore the collateral civilian deaths while viewing with alarm an Obama administration policy of minimizing such deaths by targeting known individual terrorists.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Really? I don't see it as anti-Obama in any way.

He's not saying the policy is wrong, just that it's different from anything we've used in the past and that once upon a time we had a real problem with targeting individuals for assassination.

He writes:

Quote:

You are not the first president with the power to kill individuals. You are, however, the first president to exercise it on a mass scale. You inherited the power from George W. Bush as one of several responses to terrorism. You will pass it on to your successor as the only response, as well as an exemplar of principle.

And then he asks how we got to this point and goes through the history.

I'm not sure it's fair to call killing the son "collateral damage". He was targeted separately from his father, who he had not seen in two years.

This isn't to say that the son is innocent. I haven't read that far yet.

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@RABEL222,

I'm not sure we'll ever know that. We don't really know who has been killed or why they were targeted.

The father in this story wasn't plotting to kill anyone, he didn't have to. He was much more dangerous than that. He took pride in the fact that he was able to incite others to kill.

Edit: My mistake, I hadn't read far enough -- he WAS plotting to kill people.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig Andrei wrote:

...I don't know about anyone else here, but personally I see absolutely nothing wrong with Obama's targeting specific individuals for termination with extreme prejudice rather than bombing a whole village because one terrorist is suspected of trying to raise support there. You can't have it both ways -- you can't deplore the collateral civilian deaths while viewing with alarm an Obama administration policy of minimizing such deaths by targeting known individual terrorists.

Maybe the critics of this policy should see, or re-see, Apocalypse Now? The US is not doing that. Why can't the US get credit for designing a more humane paradigm to fight a war (on terrorism)?

But, don't get me wrong. I am not criticizing Apocalypse Now methodology. It was the late 1960's and we did not have drones yet. So, we only had helicopter gunships and F4C Phantoms. Meaning that during the Civil War, many wounded were amputated. Today we can save limbs, before they become gangrenous. So, in the future, we may not even have to do a drone (used as a verb, like Google is now a verb). I dream of a neat needle sized laser, satellite launched, that can give an enemy an orchiectomy, when an agent on the ground says, "Sir, you dropped something."

I do think an orchiectomy is humane, especially if it prevents prostate cancer!

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Okay, I finished the article.

It really isn't an attack on Obama or a criticism of this type of warfare, it's really a lamentation on the death of due process as guaranteed by the Constitution.

I think that's something well worth thinking about, whether one agrees with the policy or not.

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@boomerang,

Boomerang wrote:

The distinction between war and murder becomes a fine one...

No it doesn't. The Constitution is very clear on killing Americans without due process of the law; Obama is just plain wrong. Things couldn't be less subtle. Obama is riding roughshod with the Constitution, not to mention international, which he's violating when he whacks foreigners that way. Worse yet: since Obama is a professor of constitutional law, I must assume his transgressions are intentional and premeditated.

I'm not sure what to do this as a (potential future) citizen; it's not as if Obama's Republican challenger would disrespect the constitution any less than he does. Nevertheless, what Obama is doing here is very, very troublesome.

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@Thomas,

It has been a long time since I have agreed with most of what our presidents do in that part of the world.

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@Joe Nation,

You're a sick person ... honestly. No-ones life is worth more then another.

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@Thomas,

That wasn't my line, it was a quote from the article.

I think I agree with you (and with the author of the article) but I really haven't had a chance to think on it long enough. I know it should be clear but I confess to being conflicted.

I do know that this is a scary path for America to be on.

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@Thomas,

Did you read the full article, Thomas?

What did you make of this part?

Quote:

What you want us to know about the process — the review process, the targeting process — is essentially what you want us to know about yourself, Mr. President. It is moral and responsible. It is rigorous and reflective. It is technocratic, but it encourages people to ask hard questions and engage in passionate debate. When it makes a mistake, it learns from its mistakes, and gets better. It is human and flawed, but it tries really hard. It starts with meetings involving as many as one hundred people from different agencies and ends with the approval of targets by John Brennan and the approval of operations by you. Your responsibility is full and final, and in the end you emerge as agonized and humane, heroic and all-powerful.

.........

In a speech he gave in March, Attorney General Eric Holder articulated the central doctrine of the Lethal Presidency: "The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process." Of course, he is speaking of American citizens. The Constitution guarantees combatants from other countries nothing. And yet we still give them something like due process; we still give them the meetings involving one hundred members of the executive branch, we still give them the impassioned interagency debate, we still give them the input of Justice and State, we still give them John Brennan, we still give them you, Mr. President, and your moral prestige. And if they are citizens, well, then, there is, in the words of John Brennan, "additional review" — additional review that must surely constitute due process.

(emphasis mine)

I'm not sure I buy it but I'm kind of stuck there.

2 Replies

@boomerang,

Since I have not read the entire article, thanks for the quote an bold. I was thinking due process might involve the judicial side of the government, and now they're saying ". . . additional review that must surely constitute due process." I'm stuck, too.

1 Reply

@roger,

I'm really questioning everything I thought I knew about due process. I always assumed that it involved the court at some point.

But the article points out several times that the courts have no role in waging war.

So the waters are muddied even more.

It's very scary to think whether due process is served can be decided by a committee in secret. Especially when death is the verdict.

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@boomerang,

and the committee is made up of politicians and career military men...

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@boomerang,

This has been going on for more than 60 years. Secret assassinations have been carried out by the CIA for years. Since bush it has been taken over by the military. At least the president might know what is going on with the spooks.

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The distinction between war and murder becomes a fine one...

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