President Obama: Trending Toward Cheneyism
Kevin D. Williamson talks sense at The Corner, repudiating President Obama’s imprudent assertion of executive power:
I hate to play the squish, but am I the only one who is just a little bit queasy over the fact that the president of the United States is authorizing the assassination of American citizens? Andy writes that this is “obviously the right call.” I might be persuaded that this is, in fact, the right call. But obviously? No hesitation there? It seems to me that the fact of U.S. citizenship ought to be a bright line on the political map.
Surely there has to be some operational constraint on the executive when it comes to the killing of U.S. citizens. It is not impossible to imagine a president who, for instance, sincerely believes that Andy McCarthy is undermining the Justice Department’s ability to prosecute the war on terror on the legal front. A government that can kill its citizens can shut them up, no? I ask this not as a legal question, but as a moral and political question: How is it that a government that can assassinate Citizen Awlaki is unable to censor Citizen McCarthy, or drop him in an oubliette? Practically every journalist of any consequence in Washington has illegally handled a piece of classified information. Can the president have them assassinated in the name of national security? Under the Awlaki standard, why not?
Odious as Awlaki is, this seems to me to be setting an awful and reckless precedent. Consider how “interstate commerce” has been redefined over time to cover that which is neither interstate nor commerce, for the sake of political expediency. It is easy to imagine “national security” being treated the same way, particularly in an open-ended conflict against a loosely defined enemy. And we aren’t assassinating U.S. citizens under the rubric of interstate commerce.
I’ve been raising this point too, and I’ve yet to get a satisfactory answer.
Mr. McCarthy is addressing the same subject today, and for once I agree with a lot of what he has to say:
According to the report, a U.S. official told Reuters that “Awlaki is a proven threat,” and therefore someone who could properly be targeted for killing. But by leftist standards — including those urged by Attorney General Holder when he was in private practice filing briefs in support of American-born “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla — Awlaki is most certainly not a proven threat. He has not been convicted in a court of law.
So here is the Obama Left’s position. If an alien enemy combatant, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mass-murders 3000 Americans and is then captured outside the U.S. in wartime, we need to bring him to the United States and give him a civilian trial with all attendant due process rights. If an alien enemy combatant is sending emails from outside the U.S. to an al Qaeda cell inside the U.S., the commander-in-chief needs a judge’s permission (on a showing of probable cause) to intercept those communications. If an American citizen terrorist outside the United States — say, Awlaki in Yemen — is calling or emailing the United States (or anyplace else), the commander-in-chief needs a judge’s permission to intercept those communications. If we capture an alien enemy combatant conducting war operations against the U.S. overseas, we should give him Miranda warnings, a judicial right to challenge his detention as a war prisoner, and (quite likely) a civilian trial. But, if the commander-in-chief decides to short-circuit the whole menu of civil rights by killing an American citizen, that’s fine — no due process, no interference by a judge, no Miranda, no nothing. He is a proven threat because … the president says so.
Of course, Mr. McCarthy agrees that individuals are proven threats who can be summarily killed merely because the president says so. Indeed, he somehow simultaneously believes that President Obama should have the unchecked power to kill American citizens, that he is a closet radical with jihadist sympathies, and that he is rightly ordering the assassination of an American jihadist. Incoherent as this is, the most troubling thing is that Obama apparently agrees with the part of this warped worldview that is most corrosive to liberty and limited government. When the Cheney wing of the Republican Party is endorsing your actions on national security, its a good sign you’re exercising dangerous amounts of unchecked power.
Will liberals go along with this?
I agree that it’s troubling that the President can authorize the CIA to murder people, but I don’t see why the fact that the person is an American citizen is the troubling part. And I’m a liberal, FWIW.
— bailey · Apr 7, 04:48 PM · #
If the US were officially and legally at war with a defined enemy and an American citizen can be classified as serving in that enemy’s forces, why would citizenship protect him from a military strike? Would we have refrained from taking out an American physicist working on the nuke for Hitler? It seems to me this is less about an individual case and more about the whole ill-conceived nature of the War on Terror.
Mike
— MBunge · Apr 7, 05:28 PM · #
Bailey,
Here’s why it’s troubling: throughout history, tyrants have held onto power by using the state to kill fellow citizens who threaten them politically. Obviously there are strong moral objections to killing anyone outside of a just war. I acknowledge them. A separate issue, however, is ensuring that the United States remains a free country where citizens are free to criticize their government and its leaders without fear of politically motivated reprisals.
If the president has the unchecked power to assassinate American citizens who are far from any field of battle, we’re suddenly in a nation where exactly the kinds of abuses that terrified the Founders are a lot more likely.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Apr 7, 05:49 PM · #
But, again, I don’t see how it turns on whether the person is a citizen. Andrew Sullivan is not a citizen, but I certainly don’t think it would be okay for the CIA to assassinate him. And my analysis of that question has nothing to do with his citizenship status.
Also, I don’t think there’s much support in the Constitution for the notion that limits on the federal government’s power turn on whether the person to whom the powers are being applied is a citizen.
— bailey · Apr 7, 06:19 PM · #
“If the president has the unchecked power to assassinate American citizens”
Unless American agents are going to steal other people’s passports, sneak into Awlaki’s hotel room and suffocate him with a pillow…is it really appropriate to use the word “assassinate”? Were U.S. snipers in Vietnam “assassinating” Viet Cong leaders when they shot them?
Mike
— MBunge · Apr 7, 06:48 PM · #
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I think you’re being a bit too flippant here, Conor. This didn’t just happen on the president’s “say-so,” though he no doubt has the last word, just like he does in regard to other military operations (subject to budgetary and other constraints that Congress can impose). And what would your alternative be? It’s easy to find fault but do you suppose that the US would have to try someone in absentia and get a death penalty conviction or something like that? Or maybe have to have “death warrants”? What sort of institutional/legal fix do you have in mind?
— Bryan · Apr 8, 10:19 AM · #
Bryan,
I’d want some sort of judicial review anytime the executive branch sought to classify someone as an enemy combatant, including a presentation of evidence to a judge and an appointed advocate for the accused arguing the case that the classification is in fact inappropriate.
I’d also want the legislature to pass a requirement that American enemy combatants can be assassinated — as opposed to being held as POWs or tried for treason — only if there’s some reason that they can’t be captured.
These requirements don’t seem to me undue burdens on national security.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Apr 8, 03:09 PM · #
“I’d also want the legislature to pass a requirement that American enemy combatants can be assassinated — as opposed to being held as POWs or tried for treason — only if there’s some reason that they can’t be captured.”
But the President would still have an unlimited right to kill foreigners any time he wanted, right?
Mike
— MBunge · Apr 8, 03:50 PM · #
This Williamson chap has no idea what he’s talking about. Sad for him that it’s now so apparent. On the other hand, Conor’s been out of the closet for quite some time now.
Do you know what conditions precedent are, Conor? Prerequisites? Constraints? Limits? Thresholds? Some might call them “checks”, as in, the “unchecked power to assassinate American citizens” is a paranoid fantasy of undereducated fools. Or is the clause a macro now?
Now that you’re back from wiktionary, do some research. Then enlighten your readership with your newfound policy erudition. Specifically, what are the checks upon the President in the exercise of this “deeply troubling” power to “assassinate” American citizens? Go ahead and write them down; it helps.
Once you list them, ponder them. They constitute what many might call reality. Do you see how one might conclude that you were leading with your panties? If you do all this, you might actually say something worthwhile on the subject. I’ll give you a head start with a provable premise: there is no unchecked power to assassinate American citizens, not even close. So stop saying it, yo.
I voted Obama, muthafuckas.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Apr 8, 05:23 PM · #
Conor also needs to read some Constitutional law!
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Apr 8, 05:26 PM · #
KVS—
Since, as you repeatedly assert, Conor’s not up to the task, why don’t you enlighten us?
— Handsome Dan · Apr 8, 07:17 PM · #
KVS,
I am happy to respond to arguments you leave in comments, but having written only things that I understand to be correct, you’d do well to actually assert why I am wrong if you want a response, rather than just saying that it is so.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Apr 8, 08:51 PM · #
I’ll just note that The National Review never seemed to have a problem with any of this when George W. Bush was doing it, and if this was an alternate reality where John McCain won, I’m sure they’d be defending the exact same decision.
There’s plenty of people on the left who are talking about it. Just look at a DailyKos front page/diary list these days.
The “hope and change” thing isn’t working out as well as a lot of us hoped. But we don’t need The National Review to tell us that. Nor is conservatism offering any real alternative.
— Travis Mason-Bushman · Apr 8, 10:29 PM · #
As a liberal, I’m pretty outraged about this. Glad to finally get some right-wing support. Would’ve been nice when their guy was in charge pulling these sorts of shenanigans, but better late than never. Now, if we could all agree that this sort of thing – torture, extrajudicial assassinations, indefinite detention without trial, and other human rights violations – is out of bounds regardless of which party’s on top at the moment, we could get somewhere.
— DavidG · Apr 9, 02:01 AM · #
I’m frankly astonished that “liberals” (whatever that means) haven’t been completely appalled by the Obama administration’s expansion of executive power. People who joined in protest against the Bush administration’s egregious constitutional sophistry now sit on their hands and ignore the issue. It reeks of hypocrisy.
Why, it’s enough to make one cynical about the sincerity of political movements! Extraordinary.
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’m frankly astonished that “liberals” (whatever that means) haven’t been completely appalled by the Obama administration’s expansion of executive power. People who joined in protest against the Bush administration’s egregious constitutional sophistry now sit on their hands and ignore the issue. It reeks of hypocrisy.
I don’t see why anyone is surprised at it. I predicted at the time that it would happen this way. I certainly hope I wasn’t the only one to do so.
BTW, there are no liberals. There are leftwingers, but none of them is liberal any more. Well, maybe one or two who are mostly ignored.
— The Reticulator · Apr 10, 04:26 AM · #
Conor, I share your concern at the murky nature of the situation. At the same time, I still consider Andrew McCarthy’s position radically incoherent, because he misses out on a clear and pervasive distinction.
Consider an example. If in my native Toronto, bandits took (illegal) Uzis into a bank, held the bank up, and ran into the police on the way out, the police would order them to put the guns down. If the bandits refused, the police would use deadly force. The moment a bandit surrenders, the police have an obligation to take them into custody, inform them they have a right to retain and instruct counsel and that the police will use any statement they made against them in court. Then they would receive a fair and public trial. The same thing happens, with minor variations, in any democracy. But the police shoot bandits who refuse to stop firing and surrender, and they shoot to kill. The same rules hold on the battlefield; in military and international law, soldiers have an obligation to give quarter to enemy forces who surrender. But few restraints on action against active hostile forces exist.
The orders given regarding Anwar al-Awlaki do not in principle differ from orders given regarding enemy forces actively engaged in operations or domestic criminals who violently resist the police. They most certainly do not parallel the no-quarter attitudes prevalent in the previous US administration.
The disturbing distinctions lie elsewhere: with the question of whether Awlaki’s activities rise to the level of either hostile military operations or ongoing criminal violence. Alaki runs websites. He well may advocate and coordinate attacks. But does that rise to a level of direct violence which justifies American authorities in using deadly force if he does not stop or surrender? If you set the bar for this low enough, you do indeed arrive at Williamson’s nightmare scenario, in which, for example, the president would have the right to order the authorities to use deadly force against the more extravagantly violent members of the tea party movement. On the other hand, if you set the bar too high, senior al Qaeda members can motivate and dispatch low-level operatives to attempt mayhem from safe havens that will not or cannot restrain them. The current case quite clearly sits in a disturbing middle ground.
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