For those who regularly ask why these stories appear on HN:
The president's underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president - at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as "Terror Tuesday" - then chooses from "baseball cards" and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.
This should be daily news everywhere until it is addressed and we start scaling back the War on Humanity. This is simply not how America is supposed to work.
The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen...The attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was not “specifically targeted,” raising more questions than he answered.
The people killed in this attack were either killed by mistake, or because they were nearby someone considered a target, eating at a restaurant. Because the reasons for killing were secret, if the president decided to include some of his enemies or political enemies of allies in Yemen, made a mistake, or was given false information, it would never be known, because the list is secret. We don't know why or even who was targeted.
In war we accept assassinations, murder without trial, and mass murder, because people are fighting for survival. But even in war only enemy fighters should be targeted, and civilians should not. We have a whole list of rules of war which are being ignored, and this is not even a formal war - war has not been declared, uniforms are not worn, so the rules of war do not apply, but if they did, they are being broken.
We find ourselves in a very murky area where the US is at war with an undefined and secret enemy, who may be anywhere in the world, and lives amongst the civilian population. The reaction of the Obama administration has been to order assassinations from a secret list, also killing any civilians nearby. There is no trial, no charge, and no suspicion, just a decision to kill and an attack, wherever the target may be. This means the president and his advisers have arrogated the power to decide on life or death for anyone on the planet, without limitation in time or space, and without justification or warning, and also killing civilians nearby.
The implications of this are that this war will never end, the targets are everywhere, and the list of enemies will continue to expand in secret. Nobody is safe, because anyone might be standing next to someone on Obama's list at some point, and the general terror and hate instilled by these methods will continually generate new enemies. The Obama administration has adopted terror as a method of war - they have become what they set out to fight.
In the US, laws against assassination and extrajudicial killing make no distinction between American citizens and others: Foreigners have the exact same protections as citizens. This goes for the Bill of Rights as well. (Aside, this explains why the NSA is only "supposed" to spy outside of the US. Wether the target is a citizen or not is technically irrelevant on this particular point)
If you accept that the US is in a war with Al Qaeda, then it is in no way surprising that the US government would then attempt to kill members of that organization. And, again, whether the members are American or not is quite literally irrelevant.
However, if the targeted individual is physically located within the US, then the US government is generally supposed to arrest them instead of assassinate them - and again this protects foreigners and US citizens alike.
> If you accept that the US is in a war with Al Qaeda
Not just Al Quaeda, as the article notes:
> the title itself: "Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida or An Associated Force."
"An Associated Force." Don't forget, we're at war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.”[1] Also,
> At a hearing in May, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked the Defense Department to provide him with a current list of Al Qaeda affiliates.
> The Pentagon responded – but Levin’s office told ProPublica they aren’t allowed to share it.
> “…we have classified the list,” said the spokesman, Lt. Col. Jim Gregory.
> During the May hearing, Michael Sheehan, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, said he was “not sure there is a list per se.” Describing terrorist groups as “murky” and “shifting,” he said, “it would be difficult for the Congress to get involved in trying to track the designation of which are the affiliate forces” of Al Qaeda.
That doesn't line up with the Constitution, which clearly states what the US Government can do (I know, people commonly mistake the Constitution for a list of rights for the people rather than a list of exceptions for the government as to how they may or may not act).
The Constitution grants the right to due process for citizens. It doesn't place a limit on where that citizen is currently resided.
Killing someone in combat is one thing. The same as if you are forced into a firefight with someone as a police officer. Targeting and assassinating someone who is not immediately and directly threatening realistic harm is another - and that is what has happened, so far.
Stating "well, if they're outside the geographical boundaries of the country (or, not at least 100 miles in from the shores and borders of the US, apparently) then they're fair game" is absurd.
> the memo isn't justifying the due-process-free execution of senior al-Qaida leaders who pose an imminent threat to the US. It is justifying the due-process-free execution of people secretly accused by the president and his underlings, with no due process, of being that. The distinction between (a) government accusations and (b) proof of guilt is central to every free society, by definition, yet this memo - and those who defend Obama's assassination power - willfully ignore it.
If you accept that the US is in a war with Al Qaeda, then it is in no way surprising that the US government would then attempt to kill members of that organization. And, again, whether the members are American or not is quite literally irrelevant.
Yeah, this is a powerful argument actually. Much as I'd love to argue the president is over-stepping his bounds here, I can see that if the fiction that a struggle against the entity "terror" is the fundamental equivalent of the real, shooting war with Germany, then everything else does follow. If a few rapscallions hatching plots in Yeman are fundamentally, essentially equivalent to an entire column of tanks engaged in a pitch battle with the army, well then it is logical, in the garbage-in, garbage-out form of logical, for the US army to just blow them away.
True, but who deems and verifies if someone is a member of an enemy force? In traditional war, a soldier would have a uniform, and there are laws against killing non-uniformed peeps. In asymmetrical warfare, it's obviously much harder to ID legitimate targets. The problem isn't whether or not the government should be killing known enemies of the state, it's that the executive branch is unilaterally deciding and confirming who is an enemy of the state.
The worst case scenario message being sent is that if I or a fellow American steps outside our land, the executive can decide to blow us away, based on evidence they provide. Judge, jury, and executioner. Literally. But it doesn't really matter if the executive provides a photo of an American holding an AK-47, a court needs to decide if the citizen is a traitor or not (and i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that they'd provide at least that much evidence, which ,actually, legally, I would think still isn't much).
well, tax laws make distinction between non-Americans and Americans outside of the US. One can see how following the similar reasoning criminal law (or whatever law is the basis for extrajudicial killings (sorry for the oxymoron)) can make similar distinction.
The other day several american muslims strapped a bomb onto themselves and killed themselves and many innocent people in a suicide attack in Kenya.
If there were actual legal mechanisms built into the US constitution or laws created that dealt with fighting an asymmetrical war with people like this then I really doubt the President would go through this process, but that's not the case.
I'm not really sure how we should handle this but this isn't some evil plan to grab more power by the Obama administration, it's an ad hoc solution to a really difficult problem.
In yearly global death count, terrorism accounts for around 10,000. That would not be a big deal even if all those deaths were in the US (and not scattered over the globe, and mostly in places of high civil unrest). I'm not saying 10,000 deaths isn't sad, but in 2011 a whopping 597,689 Americans died of heart disease. Yet, there aren't secret government enforced exercise camps, are there? There aren't secret courts that shut down McDonalds restaurants without trial, are there? It doesn't matter whether this is an evil plan to grab power by Obama or not. It gives a huge amount of power to the President. If you don't fight it now, that power will never be given back. Each successful president will enjoy the ability to kill of anyone they feel like in secret. Add to that the complicit news organisations, sweeping domestic spying programs and the secret prisons, and you have everything in place for a coup. All it takes now is for the wrong guy to get elected.
It's not really a solution of any kind if it creates problems vastly bigger and more terrifying that the ones it purports to solve. It's kind of like killing a fly on a window by throwing a hand grenade at it.
Congrats on being a voice of reason. Like anything, this has upsides & downsides, and it doesn't help anyone to completely ignore one side.
Upsides: At least for the moment, they appear to be targeting people who are genuine threats to many other people.
Downsides: It can be a slippery slope, and how can people be sure such power isn't being abused?
Perhaps one way to mitigate the downsides might be for the agencies involved to be extremely transparent about each case, releasing everything that led them to the decision that they took.
What bothers me most about what the government has been doing lately (for the past decade or so), is that they seem to have total disregard for the spirit of the law. All they do nowadays is try to find legal loopholes and mind-bending justifications for doing anything they want and pretending that anything is fair game and in the "legal limits".
I'm not sure what even the Courts can do against this, because this trend from the government and authorities is so overwhelming and they're doing it so much, that the Courts would really be fighting a very tough uphill battle, while the government gets away with so many things they pretend are "legal" for many years.
What can a non-US citizen do? What can a US citizen do?
I don't mean this in a sarcastic or confrontational manner at all, but it is a genuine enquiry - other than raising awareness of such issues to the voting public and donating to foundations such as the EFF - what more can an average Joe do to prevent / reel back these reaches and abuses of power?
How to respond to this kind of argument: We don't need to give "due process" to enemy soldiers before we kill them. How are al-Qaeda members different?
Actual soldiers are acknowledging their participation by wearing uniforms. Al-Quaeda members are not doing this, so they more or less force the US to use equally shoddy tactics. I think that this is very dangerous, the terrorists are winning in the sense that they are dragging the US down to their level and thereby subverting democratic principles. The question is how you can do anything about it.
I think the difference is that these targets aren't Al-Qaeda members. They are people accused, with no oversight, of being Al-Qaeda members. So you have to trust the targeting decisions of just the president and his aides, rather than those people plus judges in the judicial branch. Whereas in a normal war, it is easier to justify who the enemy soldiers are, since they are in uniform or shooting at you.
Your question itself falls victim to one of the biggest fallacies highlighted by this article: that is, you accept that government accusation (e.g. that someone is an al-Qaeda member) is tantamount to guilt.
Establishing the truth of such an accusation is the very objective of due process. Thus, your question is internally inconsistent and circular. It literally cannot be answered.
We don't need to give "due process" to enemy soldiers before we kill them. How are al-Qaeda members different?
If you're at war, you should only target enemy fighters in uniform, not civilians, and try to minimise civilian casualties at all times.
If you're not at war, people should be tried in open court and found guilty of crimes if they have committed them, not assassinated on suspicion, along with civilians nearby.
If you're proclaiming total war against anyone who is on a secret list, and leaving the power to decide in the hands of Obama, you are proclaiming the US a dictatorship where life and death rests in the hands of one man, and there is no recourse to justice before or after the killing. In the wrong hands and combined with total information awareness this would be a terrible power.
Yes, this is bad, as everybody has a right to a fair trial.
However, I think it is _far_ worse that it is EVER, in any way, shape or form, deemed acceptable that innocent bystanders get killed in order to get rid of a single individual, no matter how horrible their acts may have been.
It is frankly appalling that people get all upset about the fact that the target in question was a US citizen, and blatantly ignore the addition that "at least five other civilians" were killed in the same attack.
I am not sure how they can even justify how any capture can be infeasible. Since, the US clearly found capturing Osama Bin Laden to be feasible even within an allied country.
[+] [-] miles|12 years ago|reply
The president's underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president - at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as "Terror Tuesday" - then chooses from "baseball cards" and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.
This should be daily news everywhere until it is addressed and we start scaling back the War on Humanity. This is simply not how America is supposed to work.
[+] [-] rhizome|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shin_lao|12 years ago|reply
This doesn't make it any less chilling, but we shouldn't be too naive about it.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|12 years ago|reply
Its not hard to understand why it does not change. Its sad that criticism can be blunted by the fear of being labeled.
[+] [-] grey-area|12 years ago|reply
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-kil...
The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen...The attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was not “specifically targeted,” raising more questions than he answered.
The people killed in this attack were either killed by mistake, or because they were nearby someone considered a target, eating at a restaurant. Because the reasons for killing were secret, if the president decided to include some of his enemies or political enemies of allies in Yemen, made a mistake, or was given false information, it would never be known, because the list is secret. We don't know why or even who was targeted.
In war we accept assassinations, murder without trial, and mass murder, because people are fighting for survival. But even in war only enemy fighters should be targeted, and civilians should not. We have a whole list of rules of war which are being ignored, and this is not even a formal war - war has not been declared, uniforms are not worn, so the rules of war do not apply, but if they did, they are being broken.
We find ourselves in a very murky area where the US is at war with an undefined and secret enemy, who may be anywhere in the world, and lives amongst the civilian population. The reaction of the Obama administration has been to order assassinations from a secret list, also killing any civilians nearby. There is no trial, no charge, and no suspicion, just a decision to kill and an attack, wherever the target may be. This means the president and his advisers have arrogated the power to decide on life or death for anyone on the planet, without limitation in time or space, and without justification or warning, and also killing civilians nearby.
The implications of this are that this war will never end, the targets are everywhere, and the list of enemies will continue to expand in secret. Nobody is safe, because anyone might be standing next to someone on Obama's list at some point, and the general terror and hate instilled by these methods will continually generate new enemies. The Obama administration has adopted terror as a method of war - they have become what they set out to fight.
[+] [-] dkersten|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yapcguy|12 years ago|reply
> an undefined and secret enemy
Just this month alone...
- Islamic terrorists gun down over 60 people in a shopping mall in Kenya.
- Islamic terrorists blow up over 70 people in a church in Pakistan.
- Islamic terrorists massacre over 160 travelers in Nigeria.
- Islamic terrorists take hundreds hostage in a coastal city in the Philippines.
[+] [-] FatalBaboon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexeisadeski3|12 years ago|reply
If you accept that the US is in a war with Al Qaeda, then it is in no way surprising that the US government would then attempt to kill members of that organization. And, again, whether the members are American or not is quite literally irrelevant.
However, if the targeted individual is physically located within the US, then the US government is generally supposed to arrest them instead of assassinate them - and again this protects foreigners and US citizens alike.
[+] [-] deathanatos|12 years ago|reply
Not just Al Quaeda, as the article notes:
> the title itself: "Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida or An Associated Force."
"An Associated Force." Don't forget, we're at war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.”[1] Also,
> At a hearing in May, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked the Defense Department to provide him with a current list of Al Qaeda affiliates.
> The Pentagon responded – but Levin’s office told ProPublica they aren’t allowed to share it.
> “…we have classified the list,” said the spokesman, Lt. Col. Jim Gregory.
> During the May hearing, Michael Sheehan, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, said he was “not sure there is a list per se.” Describing terrorist groups as “murky” and “shifting,” he said, “it would be difficult for the Congress to get involved in trying to track the designation of which are the affiliate forces” of Al Qaeda.
[1]: http://www.propublica.org/article/who-are-we-at-war-with-tha... (This was on HN about two months ago, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6117846 )
[+] [-] pstack|12 years ago|reply
The Constitution grants the right to due process for citizens. It doesn't place a limit on where that citizen is currently resided.
Killing someone in combat is one thing. The same as if you are forced into a firefight with someone as a police officer. Targeting and assassinating someone who is not immediately and directly threatening realistic harm is another - and that is what has happened, so far.
Stating "well, if they're outside the geographical boundaries of the country (or, not at least 100 miles in from the shores and borders of the US, apparently) then they're fair game" is absurd.
[+] [-] r0h1n|12 years ago|reply
> the memo isn't justifying the due-process-free execution of senior al-Qaida leaders who pose an imminent threat to the US. It is justifying the due-process-free execution of people secretly accused by the president and his underlings, with no due process, of being that. The distinction between (a) government accusations and (b) proof of guilt is central to every free society, by definition, yet this memo - and those who defend Obama's assassination power - willfully ignore it.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|12 years ago|reply
Yeah, this is a powerful argument actually. Much as I'd love to argue the president is over-stepping his bounds here, I can see that if the fiction that a struggle against the entity "terror" is the fundamental equivalent of the real, shooting war with Germany, then everything else does follow. If a few rapscallions hatching plots in Yeman are fundamentally, essentially equivalent to an entire column of tanks engaged in a pitch battle with the army, well then it is logical, in the garbage-in, garbage-out form of logical, for the US army to just blow them away.
Shows just how pernicious these metaphors can be.
[+] [-] scrabble|12 years ago|reply
And if you no longer accept this as a valid justification for all of the actions that have followed the 9/11 attack?
[+] [-] moogleii|12 years ago|reply
The worst case scenario message being sent is that if I or a fellow American steps outside our land, the executive can decide to blow us away, based on evidence they provide. Judge, jury, and executioner. Literally. But it doesn't really matter if the executive provides a photo of an American holding an AK-47, a court needs to decide if the citizen is a traitor or not (and i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that they'd provide at least that much evidence, which ,actually, legally, I would think still isn't much).
[+] [-] VladRussian2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aurelius83|12 years ago|reply
If there were actual legal mechanisms built into the US constitution or laws created that dealt with fighting an asymmetrical war with people like this then I really doubt the President would go through this process, but that's not the case.
I'm not really sure how we should handle this but this isn't some evil plan to grab more power by the Obama administration, it's an ad hoc solution to a really difficult problem.
[+] [-] flumbaps|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexqgb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfoster|12 years ago|reply
Upsides: At least for the moment, they appear to be targeting people who are genuine threats to many other people.
Downsides: It can be a slippery slope, and how can people be sure such power isn't being abused?
Perhaps one way to mitigate the downsides might be for the agencies involved to be extremely transparent about each case, releasing everything that led them to the decision that they took.
[+] [-] devx|12 years ago|reply
I'm not sure what even the Courts can do against this, because this trend from the government and authorities is so overwhelming and they're doing it so much, that the Courts would really be fighting a very tough uphill battle, while the government gets away with so many things they pretend are "legal" for many years.
[+] [-] adamnemecek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shortcj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _s|12 years ago|reply
I don't mean this in a sarcastic or confrontational manner at all, but it is a genuine enquiry - other than raising awareness of such issues to the voting public and donating to foundations such as the EFF - what more can an average Joe do to prevent / reel back these reaches and abuses of power?
[+] [-] ck2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pstack|12 years ago|reply
"When the president does something -- that means it is not illegal." -- Richard M. Nixon
[+] [-] hrasyid|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strictfp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roryokane|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unclebucknasty|12 years ago|reply
Establishing the truth of such an accusation is the very objective of due process. Thus, your question is internally inconsistent and circular. It literally cannot be answered.
[+] [-] grey-area|12 years ago|reply
If you're at war, you should only target enemy fighters in uniform, not civilians, and try to minimise civilian casualties at all times.
If you're not at war, people should be tried in open court and found guilty of crimes if they have committed them, not assassinated on suspicion, along with civilians nearby.
If you're proclaiming total war against anyone who is on a secret list, and leaving the power to decide in the hands of Obama, you are proclaiming the US a dictatorship where life and death rests in the hands of one man, and there is no recourse to justice before or after the killing. In the wrong hands and combined with total information awareness this would be a terrible power.
[+] [-] jeroen94704|12 years ago|reply
However, I think it is _far_ worse that it is EVER, in any way, shape or form, deemed acceptable that innocent bystanders get killed in order to get rid of a single individual, no matter how horrible their acts may have been.
It is frankly appalling that people get all upset about the fact that the target in question was a US citizen, and blatantly ignore the addition that "at least five other civilians" were killed in the same attack.
[+] [-] Mordor|12 years ago|reply
What does Obama fear?
[+] [-] CmonDev|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MysticFear|12 years ago|reply
I am not sure how they can even justify how any capture can be infeasible. Since, the US clearly found capturing Osama Bin Laden to be feasible even within an allied country.
[+] [-] ad80|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shortcj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxcan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] gtirloni|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fuxy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aurelius83|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aurelius83|12 years ago|reply
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