If I understand Sifo correctly, he's all good with us shooting a convoy of baddies in Yemen, just worried that it is not a good thing to have a government kill it's own citizens.
That's certainly part of it. If an AQ convoy were the target and an US citizen happened to get killed, then I really don't see an issue. From what I can tell in this case we targeted an US citizen for assassination. That does have me uncomfortable. What exactly were his "crimes"? I know he's known for being a "recruiter" for AQ. As near as I can tell that involves spouting off about his ideology on the internet and mosques. It kind of sounds like he was playing it close to the edge of where his rights allow. I'm really not convinced that we could have gotten a conviction on him had we arrested him. I think the decision was made to simply off him to stop the damage he was doing regardless of the Constitution.
I'm still waiting to hear how an US citizen gets exempted from his/her constitutional rights. I just don't get that at all.
The thing is, this is one more example of overstepping what our government should be doing. Just real quick off the top of my head we also have the OBL assassination, 0bamacare, TSA groping children, EPA using CO2 as an excuse to impose restrictions, the Solyndra scandal, the Fast and Furious scandal, a state Governor calling for suspending elections, and just recently the raid of Gibson Guitars. BTW I had a long talk with a friend of mine Saturday night about the Gibson raid. He used to be the top Gibson dealer in the country and knows Henry Juszkiewicz personally. Henry seems to be quite confident that this raid had nothing to do with wood. I'm sure with just a little bit of though this list can be much longer. So yes, this specific case is disturbing and has me wondering just where MY rights lie regarding free speech. When exactly do I get my exemption from my constitutional rights because of what I say? It is just a single example of a much larger trend though. We seem to expect and accept that the boundaries will continually get pushed further and further.
The Secret Memo That Explains Why Obama Can Kill Americans
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."
Obama hasn't just set a new precedent about killing Americans without due process. He has done so in a way that deliberately shields from public view the precise nature of the important precedent he has set. It's time for the president who promised to create "a White House that's more transparent and accountable than anything we've seen before" to release the DOJ memo. As David Shipler writes, "The legal questions are far from clearcut, and the country needs to have this difficult discussion." And then there's the fact that "a good many Obama supporters thought that secret legal opinions by the Justice Department -- rationalizing torture and domestic military arrests, for example -- had gone out the door along with the Bush administration," he adds. "But now comes a momentous change in policy with serious implications for the Constitution's restraint on executive power, and Obama refuses to allow his lawyers' arguments to be laid out on the table for the American public to examine." What doesn't he want to get out?
So the legal reasons are now secret? Not being allowed to know the law is a form of tyranny. It allows the government complete say in what's legal and what not legal with no one to answer to. No, I'm not comfortable with this at all.
As far as Anwar al-Awlaki's rights are concerned, he knew he was wanted by the feds. He could have surrendered to the authorities and had his day in court with all rights afforded by the constitution. Instead, he chose to become a fugitive and risk death. Obama did fine by me.
I'm willing to give the government a significant amount of leeway in prosecuting this war. Dude was a bad actor who advocated violent jihad against the US. Is the TEA Party next? I don't see it. Completely different things.
Buellkowski, why do you claim he denounced his citizen ship. I gather it has to do with the article you posted about him lying about where he was born so that the government would pay for his education. That seems very weak at best. In any legal sense, he was a US citizen when killed.
Hootowl, should a conviction by a foreign country cause a US citizen to lose their constitutional rights? Yemen operates under sharia law. You find that good enough to then assassinate someone without due process. Has the US military really become the executioner to sharia law?
I understand the hatred toward al-Awlaki. The problem I have is when the government uses that sort of hatred to further their bounds of power. This has played out many times in history, and I'm not aware of instances where the outcome is good. It's easy to say this is a single exception we have allowed to our constitution, and feel good about that. What happens when we start defining groups to be that exception?
There is also believed to be an official, "secret list" of those citizens who can be targeted.
Insiders say that list includes the names of about 100 America citizens.Although I have been unable to get any official confirmation of that.
The White House public affairs office refused to comment on that when I called to inquire about getting a copy of that list. Needless to say my request for that information was denied.
I guess we are already past that stage. What am I worried about though. It's only a hundred or so people. At least they aren't targeting me... I hope... Yet...
These kinds of fubar situations are why the Geneva Code was established, and why it's followed.
What are the Geneva code rules for an active spy, embedded in a civilian population, actively engaging in a military effort (for example attempts to murder US troops and civilians).
I think it is summary execution... which is why you shouldn't be a spy.
We got to this point by embracing the lie which is "Moral Relativism". We have lived with it so long we might not recognize it anymore. That's where there is no longer an absolute right or wrong. Everything is accepted. What used to be obscene is embraced (for example).
Well now there is no one left to say with conviction "Death by the state without trial is wrong" because as some here point out - "It's all relative to what they were doing."
"It's a crazy world - lots of smells." Michael Scott
That's not moral relativism. Moral relativism is saying its OK to rape a woman or a little boy because its part of their culture. Wrong is wrong. By making the argument that a terrorist is the same as the average criminal and should be treated as such, you are practicing moral relativism yourself.
This guy was a terrorist who was killed on the battlefield. Terrorists use the entire world as their battlefield, so wherever he is, he's fair game. There's no 'front line' in this war. We can't play by WW2 rules when confronting WW3 tactics.
I totally see the moral problem here... but it's not a problem of moral relativisim, its a problem of terrorists being willing to involve non combatants as their core strategy (both as targets of attacks, and as human shields).
That is the root of the moral problem. I believe a lot of things really strongly, some enough to die for (I hope). I don't believe any of them enough to kill someone innocent for (attack pure civilian targets).
I'm conflicted about attacking a combatant that has choosen to shield themselves in a quasi-civilian populace. I'd at a minimum demand everything reasonable be done to protect the non combatants. I'm not sure that "no risk to anyone" is a reasonable bar to set though, as that criteria may spare 5 innocent (or maybe aware but not involved) civilians, just long enough to have 3000 completely innocent people murdered in cold blood.
No easy answers here...
My one beef with this (at the risk of making it political) is that Obama ran against Bush for exactly the kind of non-transparency that Obama has now embraced. Don't get me wrong, I think the non transparency might be reasonable for these kinds of sensitive operations. So my beef was with the candidate that was poking on something he should have known might be a necessity.
He was either too dumb to know it, or was willing to completely undermine America in front of her allies and enemies in order to win office. I hope he is just dumb, but fear it was closer to treason.
Interesting observation that the 5th amendment applies to all persons, not just US citizens.
He does note that this is a "context free interpretation" of the 5th amendment. To put it in it's proper context, it is part of the US constitution that governs our people and our land. In a way he may be right in that the 5th amendment reaches as far as our constitution. The constitution doesn't apply to all people in all lands however, even when in US custody. An example is the Gitmo detainees. They (the vast majority at least) were gathered outside of our borders on the battlefield. They are not US citizens and have not been on US soil, therefore the constitution, and therefore the 5th amendment do not apply.
al-Awlaki OTOH was an US citizen so the constitution and the 5th amendment do apply... Unless you are on a secret list covered by secret laws.
Again, how many exemptions of the constitution are too many. What value of n do you apply in the n+1 equation. It seems that the value of n is now somewhere greater than 100.
I just hope that your name is higher on the list than my name.
The author states that "the Fifth Amendment protects all persons, not just citizens. Thus by Qadhi's literalist, context-free reading of the amendment, all battlefield killings by U.S. forces are unconstitutional. Qadhi seems to have mistaken the Fifth Amendment for the Kellogg-Briand Pact."
He's saying this Qadhi person is misreading the constitution in a context free way, not that he himself is taking a context free approach.
The courts have said that the gitmo detainees have constitutional rights. They're not on US soil, and they're not citizens, but the government still has to treat them as if they were. (I don't agree, by the way). I know, I know, no charges, etc. They're being tried by military courts. They're also a special case, as under the Geneva Conventions, they don't even qualify as POWs. They are explicitly exempted by the Convention because they are terrorists. Only uniformed personnel are qualified as POWs under the convention. Spies and terrorists have zero protection.
The authors point was that if the 5th amendment was insurance of not being killed as a wartime enemy of the US without a trial, then every soldier to ever be killed by the US had his 5th amendment protection violated the second the bullet hit him.
The author states that "the Fifth Amendment protects all persons, not just citizens. Thus by Qadhi's literalist, context-free reading of the amendment, all battlefield killings by U.S. forces are unconstitutional. Qadhi seems to have mistaken the Fifth Amendment for the Kellogg-Briand Pact."
The article is a bit confusing on that point. Qadhi (whoever he is) does use the word citizen. It is correct to refer to al-Awlaki as such, because he was a US citizen. Why the author calls this a red hearing I have no idea. Yes it is the author who makes the claim that the 5th amendment applies to everyone. He then applies this to Qadhi's "context free" interpretation claiming that Qadhi's interpretation must mean that all battlefield killings are unconstitutional.
The details of who said what in that exchange don't mean much though. It's all mangled thoughts from what I can tell. The bottom line is that the Constitution applies to citizens, and al-Awlaki was a citizen. Any conversation of who else is covered is meaningless to this discussion.
As to the Gitmo detainees, I was under the impression that they were being treated according to conditions specified in the Geneva Convention, not according to the US Constitution. Neither apply to most of them however, we are just kind that way.
The authors point was that if the 5th amendment was insurance of not being killed as a wartime enemy of the US without a trial, then every soldier to ever be killed by the US had his 5th amendment protection violated the second the bullet hit him.
The author is just wrong in how he mangled these thoughts together.
There is never an issue about killing an enemy in war, no matter what country he may be from. I think your nuts on this one Sifo. But I appreciate the discussion!
Well Blake, let's hope that it is nothing more than me being nuts. I still don't believe that the Constitution allows for assassination of our citizens in times of war. I do see a difference between someone being assassinated and being killed in battle. This was an assassination.
I did mention from the start of this that I'm conflicted on this whole issue. That happens when you follow the Constitution sometimes.
"The author is just wrong in how he mangled these thoughts together."
Maybe. It is a bit poorly worded. However, we do grant constitutional rights to non citizens. The constitution states what the government can do. The bill of rights states what it can't do. It doesn't say that it only applies to citizens, just that the government can't do these things. So with that in mind, can we deprive an enemy soldier of life without benefit of trial? Haven't we violated his rights? Those rights apply to citizens and non citizens alike, so his citizenship is not relevant. Absurd isn't it?
Dead guy was a traitor. He joined an organization that has declared war against the US. That made him a perfectly legal target, not regardless of his citizenship, but because of it. If he hadn't been a citizen, he couldn't have been a traitor. It was not feasible to arrest him, and he was obviously guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Every time he opened his mouth he confirmed his treason. Hellfire. Case closed.
Just my opinion.
I don't have any doubt that once all the hand wringing is done, the president's actions will be exonerated. I'm a bit surprised that the left is among the folks that are upset. I thought the savior could do no wrong. I was also a bit upset to see that Ron Paul thinks this is wrong. I was on the fence about him (I have a strong libertarian streak) but this tipped the scales.
These are my opinions, and to some degree, I'm just being argumentative in order to foster additional thinking about this subject. However, I'm certain that offing this dude was the right thing to do, and I don't see it as the end of the constitution nor its protections.
Interesting Hootowl. The Constitution only applies to non-citizens when they are on our soil. A non-citizen on non-US soil has no protections under our constitution. They may enjoy certain rights under international treaties such as the Geneva convention.
Every time he opened his mouth he confirmed his treason.
And this is where I see the whole assassination being on thin ice. You may have heard of the 1st amendment. It's true that the 1st amendment has certain limitations, and those limitations may have been crossed making him a traitor. The 5th amendment still applies requiring that he get due process. Until then you can't legally establish him as a traitor, only an accused traitor. You could try him in absentia and convict him without he presence. We didn't do that step though. Due process has been eliminated from the process for a US citizen.
I do think that in the end the right thing has been done. It's a few less terrorists. It's painfully clear to me that it was done outside of our laws however. That does chip away at our constitution every time you do it. Secret memos that explain why it's legal? Since when are our laws secret? Our legal system demands public trials where all evidence and applicable laws are public knowledge.
I'm still unclear where his ACTIONS actually violated our laws. Did he pass classified information to our enemy? Did he pass weapons to our enemy? Did he attack our military on the battle field? Did he attack a civilian target on our soil? I do know he dealt in very unpopular ideas.
I was hoping for some concrete examples of his actions that would enable a person to be able to say this is why he should have been charged with "aid and comfort to an enemy" or "inciting violence". Even if those examples exist he was denied the right of due process guaranteed under the 5th amendment.
I took a look at some stuff on the internet about inciting violence. It seems the standard is that you must be likely to incite imminent lawless action. I don't see him falling into that category. Inciting a crowd to riot would fit the imminent requirement.