Except I can point to facts and reporting and you can’t.
I’m wondering if you expect to be invited to sit in on CIA or NSA briefings.
What is your position? That there is no relevant difference between an unnamed hypothetical guy in Allied France on an unknown hypothetical train filled with unknown hypothetical Nazi’s and an unknown hypothetical target with an unknown hypothetical amount of intelligence and support and an unknown hypothetical outcome with Al Awlaki after the Hamdi and other decisions? That’s quite an “interesting” position.
The courts in these kinds of cases have been quite clear, the requirements of due process differ depending on the circumstance. I know that can be really ensaddening when you throw silly hypotheticals around, but that’s the way it is.
So, to actually avoid any more of your apple-into-orange-omatic problems, why don’t you tell me your position is on the targeted killing of US citizens in the 21st century. Does Al Awlaki have any rights? Did his killing violate any of those rights? Was he given due process? Is there any limit to targeted killings by the President? Does the Constitution allow the President to kill any US citizen he wants without judicial oversight? Why?
These are the questions that are relevant to this thread. Not questions about how some vague person in France with Nazi’s is different from the same guy in Toronto or from Al Awlaki, or whomever Obama has on his kill list currently. If you don’t want to answer them, fine, but let’s try to get back to something relevant, shall we?
The U.S. government supported elements of Al Qaida in Libya. Does the president (it’s a small “p”) have the authorization to assassinate himself? Members of his cabinet? Senate? House? Taxpayers?
The “facts” as they are known in this case would not convict al-Awlaki. The reporting is fluff.
I’m wondering if you already have considering your apparent blind faith in the unsubstantiated claims of some anonymous bureaucrat.
Just curious, since you seems to be convinced the drone program is working, is al-Qaeda stronger now or when the drone program was expanded? I see reports of increasing al-Qaeda influence in Yemen and across Africa. Seems like they are stronger now than before these “top leaders” started getting offed. Likewise, the surge in Afganistan has been a failure, the Taliban is far from defeated. Anti-U.S. sentiment is higher in Pakistan, which is where a lot of these drone attacks are concentrated.
Seems like an utter failure to me. Now compared to Iraq…eh. It just seems strange to give kudos to Obama for failing less spectacularly than Bush.
Which isn’t relevant since there was no trial. We’re discussing the reasons for believing he was involved in terrorism, and there’s more than enough out there to establish that. Whether those facts would be sufficient to convict in a fictional trial is another story.
No, I’m not in the CIA or NSA. And you’re asking for details you wouldn’t see under any kind of circumstance. Even if the government started disclosing more information about people targeted in drone strikes, you would not see intelligence sources being named. That’s raising the burden of proof to an impossible level as a dodge as opposed to an actual request for evidence.
So one fact would be that al-Awlaki hated the U.S. so much. He hated U.S. citizens and wanted to kill a lot of them. He thought the best place to do this was in Yemen! No he likely went to Yemen to fight the U.S.-backed regime there.
I would settle for any kind of evidence whatsoever. You seem to require a lower burden of proof. When i talk about anonymous sources I’m talking about the reporter’s sources. I’m not asking for the names of operatives in Yemen.
Or Yemen was a safer place for him to be than the U.S. and the U.K. It’s not like he couldn’t oppose the U.S. and Yemeni governments at the same time, and that would be expected since Al Qaeda has always been vocal about opposing both Western governments and Western-backed governments in the Middle East. If you believe he was just opposing the Yemeni government, please tell me what Nidal Hassan was doing about the government in Yemen, why he was in contact with the September 11th hijackers when he lived in the U.S., and why he was linked to Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was also involved in planning the September 11th attacks.
No you wouldn’t, because you’ve already rejected more or less everything that has ever been reported about the guy based on your view that the sourcing is not sufficient.
OK. That wasn’t clear to me. That’s not going to happen either, but for different reasons.
Once more, with feeling, for Hamlet:
No matter how often you assert it to be true, ad hoc distinctions are not relevant to constitutional law (or policymaking) without an explanation for why they matter. If you contend that men wearing blue hats get one kind of due process, it follows that men wearing red hats in otherwise identical circumstances are entitled to the same due process. That’s because the color hat you’re wearing doesn’t matter to how much process you get. (Oh noes, more silly hypotheticals! Stop me before I invent again!)
That’s what it means to have the rule of law. Similar cases are resolved similarly.
Though I’m open to persuasion otherwise, I see only ad hoc distinctions between killing Al Awlaki with a drone in Yemen and other uncontroversial examples from the law of war in which no judicial process is required before a U.S. citizen is killed. By contrast, I think there are obvious and relevant distinctions between killing Al Awlaki and killing Mumia Abu Jamal. So, I think the law of war model applies here, and it does not require judicial review of a killing.
I recognize, however, that this represents a potential expansion of that model insofar as in the past there was less need for difficult and discretionary executive determinations of what constitutes a battlefield. I am therefore happy that Holder, Koh, Preston, Brennan, and other administration folks have been willing to discuss the problem at least in the abstract, without binding the government to any particular theory yet or addressing any particular case. Quite appropriately, in my view, they have sought to cabin the expansion of application of the law of war by applying principles to targeted killing that do not exist in the law of war, including not killing a target if he can be captured, giving a target the opportunity to surrender, and taking action only when there is an imminent threat (though expanding that term to also include a limited window of opportunity to attack a national security threat). That kind of modification of the 20th Century version of the law of war is precisely what we’re supposed to do as we adapt the law to social changes.
It is an odd sort of fascism that is happy to give you a full criminal trial if you turn yourself in.
If there are ways to ensure that those principles are faithfully applied that do not unduly interfere with the President’s foreign affairs powers and the powers of the Executive when it acts in alignment with Congressional will, then I’d entertain them. Simply citing Hamdi and Youngstown Steel doesn’t do much for me.
Richard. In my last post, I asked a serious of questions about the actual topic of the thread. You, however, seem hellbent on not dealing with that, or explaining your position on the actual issue, opting rather to dwell on a vague, irrelevant hypothetical that has fuckall to do with anything. I understand that you would apparently love to have me spend the next four hours explaining exactly how Nazi held France is different than Yemen which is different than Toront (how combatbattlefieldy they are), how an unnamed US citizen who may or may not be a target (the governmental interest involved), the amount, nature, and veracity of the intelligence (the risk of erroneous deprivation of rights), the cases that have been decided since WWII (Reid v. Covert, Hamdi), other available procedures (the burdens placed on the government in adding more process) and a plethora of other details that are relevant to the determination of how much, if any, due process is due. I’m not going to do that. I see absolutely no benefit to any discussion of spending any more time on those issues.
So, are you going to share your opinion on the relevant issues I asked you about in my previous post, or try to spend more time pretending that the numerous court rulings saying that the due process analysis isn’t a one size fit all proposition don’t really exist.
I see my effort at good faith discussion will not be met in kind. Good luck with whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish, Hamlet.
How cute, trying to take the high road. You’re absolutely adorable.
I do apologize that I won’t play your “here’s an obscure, irrelevant, undetailed hypothetical that you actually answered and included the wording from court cases, but I’ll not notice that and instead pretend you didn’t answer and then storm off when confronted with questions about my view” game.
If you do ever feel like bucking up, c’mon back and give your opinion on, oh I don’t know, the actual case in the thread, I’ll try to give you another shot.
Forget it, Jake. It’s Hamlettown.
There is no equivalency on both sides. Here’s how I justify it: I trust Obama.
I would not trust a Republican president to do this because Republicans have shown themselves incapable of exercising restraint and conducting themselves fairly with power.
I trust that Obama or someone in his administration is looking at things with a clear, unbiased eye. I trust they weigh carefully every life that must be taken, both against the legal framework upon with their decision rides, and the morality of allowing a dangerous person to escape in order to do more harm. Given that, they come to a fair but sometimes still unpleasant consensus
I fully believe the likes of Dick Cheney started a war because he wanted to enrich his friends, then leaked out information on an American undercover agent because he was vindictive and wanted to punish critics and silence future whistleblowers
That is why I have little issue with what Obama is doing. For the conservative perspective, please replace “Obama” with “god”. Why would anyone willingly glorify and give all their support to “god”? How can you trust “god” with so much power? Anyone who has that much power is bound to abuse it, right? But conservatives trust “god” to do the right thing, and I trust Obama to do the right thing
I, too, do trust Obama. But I don’t want institutions of trust to replace the institutions of suspicion that the constitution embodies. I’m uncomfortable when either party gets a very large majority in Congress, because I believe very firmly in the sanitizing effect of a strong opposition.
Yes, Obama is a damn sight better than Bush. But even Saint Francis, in the White House, would need to be watched closely. The focus of power and money is just too damnably tempting.
If anyone is still interested in the killing of US citizens without judicial oversight, apparently NBC has obtained a copy of the white paper that the administration used to justify their drone strike program against US citizens, and which was one of the things sought in this lawsuit.
I haven’t had much time at all to go over it, but I thought I’d post it when I found out.
From here:
:smack: Haven’t finished the whole thing yet, but I’m looking forward to reading more of these gems.
This is one of the most honest self-appraisals of how Democrats see Obama to ever make it onto this board!
Don’t generalize. YogSothoth no more speaks for me than Starving Artist speaks for you.
What? He definitely does not speak for me, and I’ve mostly voted for Democrats since the late '80’s. I don’t at all understand where he’s coming from – I voted for Obama in the general election twice (but for Hilary in the primary), but he’s just a president. He’s been good about some things, bad about other things, especially this issue, IMO.