I'm pretty sure the "battlefield" is wherever our combatants meet enemy combatants in legal standards. So if our guys happen to run into an enemy combatant in a cafe, I think they're free to go at it. It's the definition of "enemy combatant" that is strict, the dude has to be uniformed or armed.
Shooting an enemy soldier on the battlefield is not murder or an extra legal violation of their constitutional due process, its killing. Specifically ordering the death of an enemy leader, regardless of citizenship status, doesn't make it execution, it makes it assassination. Nothing requires that we have to capture and try each enemy soldier to determine their guilt or innocence because their deaths are not a criminal justice matter, but a martial matter
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but it sounds like the order here is basically "shoot on sight", whether the guy is on or off something that could reasonably be called a "battlefield". Isn't it considered a war crime to shoot an enemy combatant when he's sitting unarmed in a cafe supping a latte?
If they have surrendered its not allowed to kill them. But I doubt you'd really expect soldiers to call ahead and make sure people are ready before attacking. Or saying "they look like they're enjoying themselves" if they came across enemy soldiers sipping mochas at Starbucks. Endangering civilians by firing in a civilian area might potentially be a no-no but that's a separate matter.
We're not at fucking war. Al-Alwaki is not the leader of an enemy army. America is not facing an existential threat. It is a criminal justice matter. It is national security in that he is accused of wanting to kill Americans, but then every murder is a national security issue.
ETA: It is also ridiculous they are asking him to turn himself in. Turn himself in for what? He hasn't been charged with a crime.
Please. Of course we are at war. Military force is authorized by Congress. There's armed conflict going on as we speak. Members of this board have been getting their ass shot at, sometimes while urinating. You can argue with how or even if this war or wars should have been undertaken but they have been.
And how exactly you can believe the actions of armed entities primarily made up of foreign nationals that reside outside the legal jurisdiction of the United States seeking to attack the United States constitutes a criminal justice matter is kind of mystifying. I fully and openly opposed the Iraq War. We can't provide security from al Qaeda and the like through tanks and bombing. But thinking its a matter of criminal justice can only be reached by embracing ignorance born of blind contrariness and a disconnect from reality.
It's pretty hilarious what people are advocating here.
Alright, lets assume that the President has the right to assassinate American citizens without any due process who are deemed a threat to national security, national security being defined as conspiring to or attempting to overthrow the US government or inflict violence on US citizens without presenting any corroborating evidence to any judicial authority whatsoever.
By extension, does this mean that people like, say, Tim McVeigh or the Unabomber would also be allowed to be killed without trial? Would have been acceptable when the Unabomber's brother turned him in to, rather than arresting him, to simply have blown up his shack with a predator or sent delta force to slit his throat in the middle of the night?
What about militia groups with stated goals to overthrow Obama or threaten the US government? Surely it would be allowed to assassinate these domestic threats without trial or hearing, after all, technically they are all commiting treason according to the constitution, even if they have not actively taken up arms or even have plans to.
What about members of hate groups? The KKK has certainly performed its share of violence on American citizens, go ahead and round up everyone associated with it and kill them. Drug dealers and cartel members? Sounds like a national security risk to me, round them up too. Abortion clinic bombers? Hell, kill them all, and shit some of those fundamentalists give money directly or indirectly to them, so might as well kill them too.
Shit, drunk drivers? Recklessly endangering the lives of americans, national security risk, summary execution traffic stop time.
And if someone finds out we killed the wrong people, or someone innocent died, well, that could hurt confidence in the state, sounds like a national security risk to me. That guy that fucked the president's wife back in college? National security risk, shit, say he's with the KKK, no one will know the difference.
Once you start allowing executive fatwas with no judicial review, it becomes really hard to set a point where it's not ok to sneak into someone's house at night and murder them.
And sure, shit goes on behind closed doors in the dark of night now. The difference is, that these operations represent a risk, they are done in secrecy, and they are done sparingly because the people in charge know that if they got caught it would be a fiasco/international incident/etc. There's a big difference between occasionally operating outside the law to get things done that need to be done and openly stating "It is now the policy of the US goverment that we can kill whomever we want, wherever we want, with no process of review, sanction, appeal, or even arrest."
Edit: And seriously, this is not a case where some operative got caught on an assasination mission and confessed to a foreign government who made it public like the Israel thing was recently. This is literally a case where the US government authorized killing someone, and had an announcement put in the fucking Washington Post.
It's pretty hilarious what people are advocating here.
Words. Lots of words.
*tweet* Slippery Slope Fallacy, in which one believes that an event will eventually snowball into other events of wildly different circumstances just because. Yellow card. Docked 5 yards; Corner kick team blue with a free field goal. Restart the down.
As it is, I don't think I can really comment on the matter until I see how the US plans to implement it. For example, if they actually honest-to-goodness plan on sneaking someone in close to him for the sole purpose of killing him, I might start to have issues with the kill order. However, if this is more so that some UAV pilot back at base doesn't get into legal trouble should he be at a meeting that is crashed by a predator, that's something different.
It's pretty hilarious what people are advocating here.
Words. Lots of words.
*tweet* Slippery Slope Fallacy, in which one believes that an event will eventually snowball into other events of wildly different circumstances just because. Yellow card. Docked 5 yards; Corner kick team blue with a free field goal. Restart the down.
As it is, I don't think I can really comment on the matter until I see how the US plans to implement it. For example, if they actually honest-to-goodness plan on sneaking someone in close to him for the sole purpose of killing him, I might start to have issues with the kill order. However, if this is more so that some UAV pilot back at base doesn't get into legal trouble should he be at a meeting that is crashed by a predator, that's something different.
Precedent is not the same thing as slippery slope.
What you are arguing is that, for example, if OJ Simpson killed his wife and the government decided not to prosecute because he was a beloved sports figure, that no one else should be worried because there's only one OJ Simpson and he's not married anymore.
(Obligatory nonsense sentence about first post goes here)
This is an issue I feel pretty torn on. On one hand, I greatly worry about what this sort of thing can bring in the future.
Even without due process, his guilt seems hard to argue against. Add to that the fact that there is likely even more classified information on him that confirms this, along with the likely inability to physically capture him, and suddenly a kill order against the man seems at the surface to be fairly justified.
Unfortunately, on the other hand, carrying out this order can set a scary precedent for future events, and with our constitutional laws, this really should not be allowed to happen so casually. It may be ok for this one situation, but I worry about what impact this order could have as time passes. And since there ARE laws against this, I can't help but feel that brushing the law off so casually can be a good thing for the country as a whole. It certainly was not during Bush's reign...
Yes you can say "if the President can order the assassination of someone without oversight he can order the assassination of anyone" but if it becomes the jurisdiction of the courts to review and override tactical and strategic military decisions then you are stripping the President's powers of national security and neutering his ability to properly conduct national security matters.
So your answer, once we fill in our bingo sheet, is that the President does indeed have lawful authority to issue kill orders on American citizens regardless of due process guarantees?
Neat.
Edit: basically, your response to that worry, the worry "we are giving the president unlimited extra-judicial power," is... okay?
If you're not talking legally then all you got is a slippery slope argument.
Inductive reasoning is not a slippery slope argument.
"Joe ignored the law by assaulting someone, so perhaps we should be concerned that he may ignore the law and assault someone else." is not a slippery slope arguement.
"Walmart fired someone in contravention of state labor laws, so if we don't penalize them they might violate more labor laws" is not a slippery slope argument.
"The government ordered the assasination a US citizen without due process or oversight and against the constitution, so therefore if left unchecked the government may order more assasinations against US citizens without due process or oversight" is not a slippery slope argument.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
edited October 2010
Well, my response basically sums up into:
1) The "War on Terror" is not a war. The war with Iraq and Afghanistan were wars. Terror, by contrast, is not a subject which is a target for an actual war, and the assimilation of war powers to criminal situations is a dangerous development.
2) The expansion of executive powers has the potential to destroy this country. A guy in Yemen does not.
If you're not talking legally then all you got is a slippery slope argument.
Inductive reasoning is not a slippery slope argument.
"Joe ignored the law by assaulting someone, so perhaps we should be concerned that he may ignore the law and assault someone else." is not a slippery slope arguement.
"Walmart fired someone in contravention of state labor laws, so if we don't penalize them they might violate more labor laws" is not a slippery slope argument.
But "Walmart fired someone in contravention of state labor laws, so if we don't penalize them then eventually every major retailer will fire anyone willy nilly for whatever reason" is.
The way I see it is that the CIA and the NSA do stuff like this already. This administration for some reason decided openness was the way to go on this one. I don't know why, maybe transparency is really that important to them.
But, yeah, in general American Citizens should not be killed off by government agencies. But then again, we specifically have things like the CIA to do things that are not legal. I guess sometimes you have to go outside the law to protect it.
Really, it is above my pay grade to say that this guy should be offed or not. I think the official government stance should be "Never do this" but then the secret thing is to do it anyway in extreme situations.
JebusUD on
and I wonder about my neighbors even though I don't have them
but they're listening to every word I say
I'm just curious - I'm not making a judgment either way - but is public scrutiny/transparency a necessary or important part of convicting any specific person of a crime? I'm no poly sci guy, lawyer, or whatnot so this is really just a general question.
edit: What I mean is, if someone gets convicted behind closed doors...well does that ever happen? Should that never happen? Does the public's perception matter at all in relation to any particular trial (if a trial existed)? Should the public at least be made aware that a trial occurred?
But "Walmart fired someone in contravention of state labor laws, so if we don't penalize them then eventually every major retailer will fire anyone willy nilly for whatever reason" is.
No it isn't. A laxity of compliance with a law following non-enforcement of that law is not an unreasonable concern. If walmart were allowed to contravene labor laws as a matter of state policy, other retailers could claim the same ability to do so under the doctrine that the laws were not routinely enforced and that they deserve equal protection under the law(people have gotten out of sodomy charges, adultery charges, etc by invoking this), especially if the officials openly and directly stated the policy of nonenforcement for wal-mart. Once it becomes government policy not to enforce a law then for all intents and purposes the law is essentially repealed.
Edit: Sure you could make the arguement that "well, surely they wouldn't because most major retailers are not fuckheads." Which seems to be the argument presented here. "This one guy is an asshole, surely we can trust the government to only ignore the constitution just this once and not use the power for arbitrary and specious reasons".
But historically, there are plenty of examples of governments suspending the rule of law for seemingly valid and proper reasons that then turned nasty when the suspended protections weren't in place anymore. To godwin it, sure, at first Hitler may have just taken the Rheinland and Sudeten, and honestly those lands probably should have been German after WW1 anyway, but it wasn't unreasonable for someone in 1938 to say "Germany is going outside of international law, even if for valid reasons, and this might potentially lead to bad things in the future". That's not a slippery slope argument.
If you're not talking legally then all you got is a slippery slope argument.
Inductive reasoning is not a slippery slope argument.
"Joe ignored the law by assaulting someone, so perhaps we should be concerned that he may ignore the law and assault someone else." is not a slippery slope arguement.
"Walmart fired someone in contravention of state labor laws, so if we don't penalize them they might violate more labor laws" is not a slippery slope argument.
In both of those scenarios, investigation and prosecution would move forward because laws were broken, not because those laws might be broken again. If it could be completely verified that those laws wouldn't be broken again, the people responsible for prosecuting the case would still be compelled to do so if they have a case.
The issue we're actually discussing is the targeted killing of American citizens who are outside the reach of our judicial system and a threat to national security. You can argue what the government is doing is illegal and we hold firm to rule of law, or that even though it might be legal it would be a bad way of going about it because of whatever reason. But if all you come up with is unrelated scenarios of doom that you claim will come to be if we let this happen, then yes, that is a slippery slope argument.
I'm just curious - I'm not making a judgment either way - but is public scrutiny/transparency a necessary or important part of convicting any specific person of a crime? I'm no poly sci guy, lawyer, or whatnot so this is really just a general question.
edit: What I mean is, if someone gets convicted behind closed doors...well does that ever happen? Should that never happen? Does the public's perception matter at all in relation to any particular trial (if a trial existed)? Should the public at least be made aware that a trial occurred?
Well you have a right to a trial for criminal matters.
I'm just curious - I'm not making a judgment either way - but is public scrutiny/transparency a necessary or important part of convicting any specific person of a crime? I'm no poly sci guy, lawyer, or whatnot so this is really just a general question.
edit: What I mean is, if someone gets convicted behind closed doors...well does that ever happen? Should that never happen? Does the public's perception matter at all in relation to any particular trial (if a trial existed)? Should the public at least be made aware that a trial occurred?
Well you have a right to a trial for criminal matters.
I know that, I'm talking about the transparency of a trial, its proceedings, and its outcomes, but maybe that's too broad a topic to thrust into this one anyway.
I still haven't seen anything substantial that this is actually an order to assassinate rather than what it appeared to me to be from the beginning: authorization to use lethal force if necessary to apprehend him.
If this is an assassination order, then so is the FBI's top ten most wanted list.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
i dont understand why they don't go ahead with charging him though
after doing some reading and listening to some of his lectures/writings, it doesnt seem that difficult of a case to make against him for inciting rebellion and insurrection against the US
at least start the process for revoking his citizenship the right way
If you're not talking legally then all you got is a slippery slope argument.
The issue we're actually discussing is the targeted killing of American citizens who are outside the reach of our judicial system and a threat to national security. You can argue what the government is doing is illegal and we hold firm to rule of law, or that even though it might be legal it would be a bad way of going about it because of whatever reason. But if all you come up with is unrelated scenarios of doom that you claim will come to be if we let this happen, then yes, that is a slippery slope argument.
When de facto repealing the very laws that prevent those scenarios from occuring is what we are discussing, then it's not a fucking slippery slope argument.
"We're repealing/no longer enforcing the law against rape, so women may get raped more in the future without consequence or punishment" is not a slippery slope.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
I still haven't seen anything substantial that this is actually an order to assassinate rather than what it appeared to me to be from the beginning: authorization to use lethal force if necessary to apprehend him.
If this is an assassination order, then so is the FBI's top ten most wanted list.
Don't the people on the FBI's top ten most wanted have warrants out for their arrest?
I still haven't seen anything substantial that this is actually an order to assassinate rather than what it appeared to me to be from the beginning: authorization to use lethal force if necessary to apprehend him.
If this is an assassination order, then so is the FBI's top ten most wanted list.
Don't the people on the FBI's top ten most wanted have warrants out for their arrest?
Okay, fair enough.
Do you feel that everybody identified as a high-priority target - including, for instance, Osama Bin Laden and any other named member of Al-Qaeda - should be criminally charged and have a warrant issued prior to their inclusion on the high priority target list?
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
I still haven't seen anything substantial that this is actually an order to assassinate rather than what it appeared to me to be from the beginning: authorization to use lethal force if necessary to apprehend him.
If this is an assassination order, then so is the FBI's top ten most wanted list.
Don't the people on the FBI's top ten most wanted have warrants out for their arrest?
Should be considered armed or dangerous, use of lethal force is authorized to defend yourself, wanted dead or alive, yadda yadda.
This is nothing new.
syndalis on
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
When de facto repealing the very laws that prevent those scenarios from occuring is what we are discussing, then it's not a fucking slippery slope argument.
"We're repealing/no longer enforcing the law against rape, so women may get raped more in the future without consequence or punishment" is not a slippery slope.
You're not really receiving what I'm sending so this will be end of transmission for me.
Those scenarios you listed aren't the same as the one we're discussing, either you're not smart enough to notice that or you're just being intellectually dishonest. And you haven't cited any laws that would supposedly be broken that connect any scenario you made up to the very real situation we're talking about.
I still haven't seen anything substantial that this is actually an order to assassinate rather than what it appeared to me to be from the beginning: authorization to use lethal force if necessary to apprehend him.
If this is an assassination order, then so is the FBI's top ten most wanted list.
Don't the people on the FBI's top ten most wanted have warrants out for their arrest?
Okay, fair enough.
Do you feel that everybody identified as a high-priority target - including, for instance, Osama Bin Laden and any other named member of Al-Qaeda - should be criminally charged and have a warrant issued prior to their inclusion on the high priority target list?
Is Osama Bin Laden a constitutionally protected citizen of the united states? If so, then yes? It's not like getting a warrent out for someone's arrest, including the ability to use lethal force if necessary to apprehend them, is hard. It's not as if using the military to apprehend criminals in foreign nations with permission of the government of those nations is unprecedented. My local PD can get a warrant to arrest someone within an hour, why the hell can't the US government?
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Do you feel that everybody identified as a high-priority target - including, for instance, Osama Bin Laden and any other named member of Al-Qaeda - should be criminally charged and have a warrant issued prior to their inclusion on the high priority target list?
Well, I suppose there are some sticky situations with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and whether it is to count as a battlefield. Those might require a more studied response. But, in general, yes. And when it's an American citizen who is most certainly not on a battlefield, then most definitely.
I am not convinced that the legal apparatus for fighting organized crime is not the appropriate one to apply to international terrorism.
I still haven't seen anything substantial that this is actually an order to assassinate rather than what it appeared to me to be from the beginning: authorization to use lethal force if necessary to apprehend him.
If this is an assassination order, then so is the FBI's top ten most wanted list.
Don't the people on the FBI's top ten most wanted have warrants out for their arrest?
Okay, fair enough.
Do you feel that everybody identified as a high-priority target - including, for instance, Osama Bin Laden and any other named member of Al-Qaeda - should be criminally charged and have a warrant issued prior to their inclusion on the high priority target list?
Is Osama Bin Laden a constitutionally protected citizen of the united states? If so, then yes? It's not like getting a warrent out for someone's arrest, including the ability to use lethal force if necessary to apprehend them, is hard. It's not as if using the military to apprehend criminals in foreign nations with permission of the government of those nations is unprecedented. My local PD can get a warrant to arrest someone within an hour, why the hell can't the US government?
Citizenship is irrelevant. Due process is a human right, of all persons, regardless of nationality.
The relevant issues here are (a) whether or not lending direct material support to a terrorist organization is sufficient reason to circumvent due process and (b) whether or not what al-Awlaki is doing satisfies that criterion.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Do you feel that everybody identified as a high-priority target - including, for instance, Osama Bin Laden and any other named member of Al-Qaeda - should be criminally charged and have a warrant issued prior to their inclusion on the high priority target list?
Well, I suppose there are some sticky situations with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and whether it is to count as a battlefield. Those might require a more studied response. But, in general, yes. And when it's an American citizen who is most certainly not on a battlefield, then most definitely.
I am not convinced that the legal apparatus for fighting organized crime is not the appropriate one to apply to international terrorism.
I'm pretty sympathetic to the bolded statement.
I'm not entirely certain where I stand either but the idea that at the very least having a judge sign off on the evidence against high-priority targets, even if it is done in private, seems like a good idea.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
When de facto repealing the very laws that prevent those scenarios from occuring is what we are discussing, then it's not a fucking slippery slope argument.
"We're repealing/no longer enforcing the law against rape, so women may get raped more in the future without consequence or punishment" is not a slippery slope.
You're not really receiving what I'm sending so this will be end of transmission for me.
Those scenarios you listed aren't the same as the one we're discussing, either you're not smart enough to notice that or you're just being intellectually dishonest. And you haven't cited any laws that would supposedly be broken that connect any scenario you made up to the very real situation we're talking about.
So we're not discussing the US Government publicly announcing its intention to kill (not apprehend, but kill outright) a US citizen with no charges filed against him in a non-battle situation, when legal methods, or even clandestine methods, could easilly be used to accomplish the same goals, for nebulous and poorly defined reasons like "national security is involved"?
Why don't you enlighten me to the legal methods we could use to get ahold of Mr. al-Awlaki in Yemen.
The only other alternative I know of is rendition, which might be a little hard to pull off by a squad of white CIA agents in what is probably the rural part of an Arab country.
I still haven't seen anything substantial that this is actually an order to assassinate rather than what it appeared to me to be from the beginning: authorization to use lethal force if necessary to apprehend him.
If this is an assassination order, then so is the FBI's top ten most wanted list.
Don't the people on the FBI's top ten most wanted have warrants out for their arrest?
Okay, fair enough.
Do you feel that everybody identified as a high-priority target - including, for instance, Osama Bin Laden and any other named member of Al-Qaeda - should be criminally charged and have a warrant issued prior to their inclusion on the high priority target list?
Is Osama Bin Laden a constitutionally protected citizen of the united states? If so, then yes? It's not like getting a warrent out for someone's arrest, including the ability to use lethal force if necessary to apprehend them, is hard. It's not as if using the military to apprehend criminals in foreign nations with permission of the government of those nations is unprecedented. My local PD can get a warrant to arrest someone within an hour, why the hell can't the US government?
Citizenship is irrelevant. Due process is a human right, of all persons, regardless of nationality.
The relevant issues here are (a) whether or not lending direct material support to a terrorist organization is sufficient reason to circumvent due process and (b) whether or not what al-Awlaki is doing satisfies that criterion.
The problem with those are that: a) this is being done without establishing any laws to define what direct material support to a terrorist organization even means, and that b) because of a, that this is being done extralegally, there are no further legal limitations to this ability.
Once you start saying "The law doesn't apply in x situations", then it's trivially easy to expand the definition of x to include virtally anything. There's a reason why almost every dictatorial government in history going right back to Sulla and Ceasar have invoked "emergency powers" when ascending to power. Threats to national security could be interpreted to mean virtually anything, if this was something granted by congress with a sunset and defined terms it would still be bad but would be different. This is someone lifting a blank check from a wallet and hoping that no one notices.
Why don't you enlighten me to the legal methods we could use to get ahold of Mr. al-Awlaki in Yemen.
The only other alternative I know of is rendition, which might be a little hard to pull off by a squad of white CIA agents in what is probably the rural part of an Arab country.
Federal judge issues warrant, authority of arrest transferred to military, proceed as normal militarily, if subject killed while resisting arrest then too bad(see Mr. Manuel Noriega).
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
I'm not entirely certain where I stand either but the idea that at the very least having a judge sign off on the evidence against high-priority targets, even if it is done in private, seems like a good idea.
I don't know if that would satisfy me, but I do know that what terrifies me is the idea that the state secrets doctrine entails an entirely free hand.
Edit: From The New York Times editorial board (they say it better than I could):
The court established the secrets privilege in 1953, in United States v. Reynolds. It said the government could withhold evidence if revealing it would jeopardize national security. In that case, the government suppressed a 51-page report about the crash of an Air Force plane on which electronic equipment was being tested.
The privilege turned out to be conceived in sin: the now-declassified report contains no secrets. Instead, it recounts how the engine failure that led to the crash might have been avoided. A lawyer involved said the report “expressly finds negligence” by the Air Force.
I think enthusiasm for state secrets should absolutely be tempered by the fact that the case it was invented for was actually, in reality, a strategically irrelevant cover-up of government error.
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If they have surrendered its not allowed to kill them. But I doubt you'd really expect soldiers to call ahead and make sure people are ready before attacking. Or saying "they look like they're enjoying themselves" if they came across enemy soldiers sipping mochas at Starbucks. Endangering civilians by firing in a civilian area might potentially be a no-no but that's a separate matter.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Please. Of course we are at war. Military force is authorized by Congress. There's armed conflict going on as we speak. Members of this board have been getting their ass shot at, sometimes while urinating. You can argue with how or even if this war or wars should have been undertaken but they have been.
And how exactly you can believe the actions of armed entities primarily made up of foreign nationals that reside outside the legal jurisdiction of the United States seeking to attack the United States constitutes a criminal justice matter is kind of mystifying. I fully and openly opposed the Iraq War. We can't provide security from al Qaeda and the like through tanks and bombing. But thinking its a matter of criminal justice can only be reached by embracing ignorance born of blind contrariness and a disconnect from reality.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Alright, lets assume that the President has the right to assassinate American citizens without any due process who are deemed a threat to national security, national security being defined as conspiring to or attempting to overthrow the US government or inflict violence on US citizens without presenting any corroborating evidence to any judicial authority whatsoever.
By extension, does this mean that people like, say, Tim McVeigh or the Unabomber would also be allowed to be killed without trial? Would have been acceptable when the Unabomber's brother turned him in to, rather than arresting him, to simply have blown up his shack with a predator or sent delta force to slit his throat in the middle of the night?
What about militia groups with stated goals to overthrow Obama or threaten the US government? Surely it would be allowed to assassinate these domestic threats without trial or hearing, after all, technically they are all commiting treason according to the constitution, even if they have not actively taken up arms or even have plans to.
What about members of hate groups? The KKK has certainly performed its share of violence on American citizens, go ahead and round up everyone associated with it and kill them. Drug dealers and cartel members? Sounds like a national security risk to me, round them up too. Abortion clinic bombers? Hell, kill them all, and shit some of those fundamentalists give money directly or indirectly to them, so might as well kill them too.
Shit, drunk drivers? Recklessly endangering the lives of americans, national security risk, summary execution traffic stop time.
And if someone finds out we killed the wrong people, or someone innocent died, well, that could hurt confidence in the state, sounds like a national security risk to me. That guy that fucked the president's wife back in college? National security risk, shit, say he's with the KKK, no one will know the difference.
Once you start allowing executive fatwas with no judicial review, it becomes really hard to set a point where it's not ok to sneak into someone's house at night and murder them.
And sure, shit goes on behind closed doors in the dark of night now. The difference is, that these operations represent a risk, they are done in secrecy, and they are done sparingly because the people in charge know that if they got caught it would be a fiasco/international incident/etc. There's a big difference between occasionally operating outside the law to get things done that need to be done and openly stating "It is now the policy of the US goverment that we can kill whomever we want, wherever we want, with no process of review, sanction, appeal, or even arrest."
Edit: And seriously, this is not a case where some operative got caught on an assasination mission and confessed to a foreign government who made it public like the Israel thing was recently. This is literally a case where the US government authorized killing someone, and had an announcement put in the fucking Washington Post.
*tweet* Slippery Slope Fallacy, in which one believes that an event will eventually snowball into other events of wildly different circumstances just because. Yellow card. Docked 5 yards; Corner kick team blue with a free field goal. Restart the down.
As it is, I don't think I can really comment on the matter until I see how the US plans to implement it. For example, if they actually honest-to-goodness plan on sneaking someone in close to him for the sole purpose of killing him, I might start to have issues with the kill order. However, if this is more so that some UAV pilot back at base doesn't get into legal trouble should he be at a meeting that is crashed by a predator, that's something different.
Precedent is not the same thing as slippery slope.
What you are arguing is that, for example, if OJ Simpson killed his wife and the government decided not to prosecute because he was a beloved sports figure, that no one else should be worried because there's only one OJ Simpson and he's not married anymore.
You realize that common law precedent is not the only meaning of the word 'precedent'?
Oh, I'm sorry, apparently you do not.
This is an issue I feel pretty torn on. On one hand, I greatly worry about what this sort of thing can bring in the future.
Even without due process, his guilt seems hard to argue against. Add to that the fact that there is likely even more classified information on him that confirms this, along with the likely inability to physically capture him, and suddenly a kill order against the man seems at the surface to be fairly justified.
Unfortunately, on the other hand, carrying out this order can set a scary precedent for future events, and with our constitutional laws, this really should not be allowed to happen so casually. It may be ok for this one situation, but I worry about what impact this order could have as time passes. And since there ARE laws against this, I can't help but feel that brushing the law off so casually can be a good thing for the country as a whole. It certainly was not during Bush's reign...
So your answer, once we fill in our bingo sheet, is that the President does indeed have lawful authority to issue kill orders on American citizens regardless of due process guarantees?
Neat.
Edit: basically, your response to that worry, the worry "we are giving the president unlimited extra-judicial power," is... okay?
Inductive reasoning is not a slippery slope argument.
"Joe ignored the law by assaulting someone, so perhaps we should be concerned that he may ignore the law and assault someone else." is not a slippery slope arguement.
"Walmart fired someone in contravention of state labor laws, so if we don't penalize them they might violate more labor laws" is not a slippery slope argument.
"The government ordered the assasination a US citizen without due process or oversight and against the constitution, so therefore if left unchecked the government may order more assasinations against US citizens without due process or oversight" is not a slippery slope argument.
1) The "War on Terror" is not a war. The war with Iraq and Afghanistan were wars. Terror, by contrast, is not a subject which is a target for an actual war, and the assimilation of war powers to criminal situations is a dangerous development.
2) The expansion of executive powers has the potential to destroy this country. A guy in Yemen does not.
But "Walmart fired someone in contravention of state labor laws, so if we don't penalize them then eventually every major retailer will fire anyone willy nilly for whatever reason" is.
But, yeah, in general American Citizens should not be killed off by government agencies. But then again, we specifically have things like the CIA to do things that are not legal. I guess sometimes you have to go outside the law to protect it.
Really, it is above my pay grade to say that this guy should be offed or not. I think the official government stance should be "Never do this" but then the secret thing is to do it anyway in extreme situations.
but they're listening to every word I say
edit: What I mean is, if someone gets convicted behind closed doors...well does that ever happen? Should that never happen? Does the public's perception matter at all in relation to any particular trial (if a trial existed)? Should the public at least be made aware that a trial occurred?
No it isn't. A laxity of compliance with a law following non-enforcement of that law is not an unreasonable concern. If walmart were allowed to contravene labor laws as a matter of state policy, other retailers could claim the same ability to do so under the doctrine that the laws were not routinely enforced and that they deserve equal protection under the law(people have gotten out of sodomy charges, adultery charges, etc by invoking this), especially if the officials openly and directly stated the policy of nonenforcement for wal-mart. Once it becomes government policy not to enforce a law then for all intents and purposes the law is essentially repealed.
Edit: Sure you could make the arguement that "well, surely they wouldn't because most major retailers are not fuckheads." Which seems to be the argument presented here. "This one guy is an asshole, surely we can trust the government to only ignore the constitution just this once and not use the power for arbitrary and specious reasons".
But historically, there are plenty of examples of governments suspending the rule of law for seemingly valid and proper reasons that then turned nasty when the suspended protections weren't in place anymore. To godwin it, sure, at first Hitler may have just taken the Rheinland and Sudeten, and honestly those lands probably should have been German after WW1 anyway, but it wasn't unreasonable for someone in 1938 to say "Germany is going outside of international law, even if for valid reasons, and this might potentially lead to bad things in the future". That's not a slippery slope argument.
The issue we're actually discussing is the targeted killing of American citizens who are outside the reach of our judicial system and a threat to national security. You can argue what the government is doing is illegal and we hold firm to rule of law, or that even though it might be legal it would be a bad way of going about it because of whatever reason. But if all you come up with is unrelated scenarios of doom that you claim will come to be if we let this happen, then yes, that is a slippery slope argument.
Well you have a right to a trial for criminal matters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
but they're listening to every word I say
I know that, I'm talking about the transparency of a trial, its proceedings, and its outcomes, but maybe that's too broad a topic to thrust into this one anyway.
If this is an assassination order, then so is the FBI's top ten most wanted list.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
after doing some reading and listening to some of his lectures/writings, it doesnt seem that difficult of a case to make against him for inciting rebellion and insurrection against the US
at least start the process for revoking his citizenship the right way
Don't the people on the FBI's top ten most wanted have warrants out for their arrest?
Okay, fair enough.
Do you feel that everybody identified as a high-priority target - including, for instance, Osama Bin Laden and any other named member of Al-Qaeda - should be criminally charged and have a warrant issued prior to their inclusion on the high priority target list?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Should be considered armed or dangerous, use of lethal force is authorized to defend yourself, wanted dead or alive, yadda yadda.
This is nothing new.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Those scenarios you listed aren't the same as the one we're discussing, either you're not smart enough to notice that or you're just being intellectually dishonest. And you haven't cited any laws that would supposedly be broken that connect any scenario you made up to the very real situation we're talking about.
Is Osama Bin Laden a constitutionally protected citizen of the united states? If so, then yes? It's not like getting a warrent out for someone's arrest, including the ability to use lethal force if necessary to apprehend them, is hard. It's not as if using the military to apprehend criminals in foreign nations with permission of the government of those nations is unprecedented. My local PD can get a warrant to arrest someone within an hour, why the hell can't the US government?
Well, I suppose there are some sticky situations with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and whether it is to count as a battlefield. Those might require a more studied response. But, in general, yes. And when it's an American citizen who is most certainly not on a battlefield, then most definitely.
I am not convinced that the legal apparatus for fighting organized crime is not the appropriate one to apply to international terrorism.
Citizenship is irrelevant. Due process is a human right, of all persons, regardless of nationality.
The relevant issues here are (a) whether or not lending direct material support to a terrorist organization is sufficient reason to circumvent due process and (b) whether or not what al-Awlaki is doing satisfies that criterion.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'm pretty sympathetic to the bolded statement.
I'm not entirely certain where I stand either but the idea that at the very least having a judge sign off on the evidence against high-priority targets, even if it is done in private, seems like a good idea.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
So we're not discussing the US Government publicly announcing its intention to kill (not apprehend, but kill outright) a US citizen with no charges filed against him in a non-battle situation, when legal methods, or even clandestine methods, could easilly be used to accomplish the same goals, for nebulous and poorly defined reasons like "national security is involved"?
The only other alternative I know of is rendition, which might be a little hard to pull off by a squad of white CIA agents in what is probably the rural part of an Arab country.
The problem with those are that: a) this is being done without establishing any laws to define what direct material support to a terrorist organization even means, and that b) because of a, that this is being done extralegally, there are no further legal limitations to this ability.
Once you start saying "The law doesn't apply in x situations", then it's trivially easy to expand the definition of x to include virtally anything. There's a reason why almost every dictatorial government in history going right back to Sulla and Ceasar have invoked "emergency powers" when ascending to power. Threats to national security could be interpreted to mean virtually anything, if this was something granted by congress with a sunset and defined terms it would still be bad but would be different. This is someone lifting a blank check from a wallet and hoping that no one notices.
Federal judge issues warrant, authority of arrest transferred to military, proceed as normal militarily, if subject killed while resisting arrest then too bad(see Mr. Manuel Noriega).
I don't know if that would satisfy me, but I do know that what terrifies me is the idea that the state secrets doctrine entails an entirely free hand.
Edit: From The New York Times editorial board (they say it better than I could):
I think enthusiasm for state secrets should absolutely be tempered by the fact that the case it was invented for was actually, in reality, a strategically irrelevant cover-up of government error.
Oh, and here you go: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=material+support+terrorism
There certainly needs to be some checks and balances and accountability, I just don't have a solution off-hand to fix the problem.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.