Why aren't Progressives questioning the legality & morality of Obama's drone targeting policy?

Great Debates
61

And one path to greater visibility is to pull a stunt like Paul’s.

On other issues, Rand actually seems pretty rancid as compared with the high idealism of his father – for one thing he appears to be compromised by the plutocracy in a way Ron is not, for another he just isn’t that bright. But on this issue he is right, and more power to him for getting the issue up there in lights, and for (for once) actually subverting the false left:right dichotomy that the irritainment industry lives off.

He may have only been a useful idiot on this, BUT in being so he was far more effective than scores of supposedly more principled progressives. He should be applauded.

62

Excellent post.

63

One guy whose motives it IS fair to question would be Ted Cruz.

A few weeks ago, he gave Chuck Hagel a grilling that made it appear Cruz was a standard Republican hawk who thought Obama and Hagel were too soft ofn foreign policy.

But he helped out Rand Paul during the filibuster, and Rand Paul is no hawk.

So, it’s certainly reasonable to wonder what Cruz really believes, and to speculate that all he wants to do is make life miserable for Obama, period, and will reflexively oppose WHATEVER Obama seems to stand for.

64

Don’t overthink it: Cruz appears to be simply an opportunist. Like Tail Gunner Joe, he “believes” that which at any given instant will benefit him personally.

I’d be very careful of him if I was a Republican.

65

Not really. I will fully admit what I said:

[QUOTE=Me]
They recognize that all these Libertarians who were perfectly fine with drone attacks under Bush, but not under Obama, are just playing politics.
[/QUOTE]

Could read as if I were saying ALL libertarians were perfectly fine which drone attacks, but that is not what I said. I suppose I could have been more clear by saying many “libertarians and conservatives”, but what what I initially said when read in context is perfectly true.

Many of them were fine with it. Besides, I don’t see many prominent one in power actually trying to enact laws or policies which prevent drone strikes, Rand Paul included.

We could be overly generous and grant that that is what he is SAYING now, but he is not actually ACTING on any of those beliefs in any meaningful way. I find that a far more appropriate way of knowing what he actually thinks.

You are not paying attention are you? Paul did no such thing. All he did was make Holder reiterate what he has already said a number of times. The only person who didn’t know the government cannot kills via drone strike on American soil solely for your political opinions (or for sitting in a cafe) is apparently Rand Paul.

Need more clarification? Look at the letter Holder sent to Paul that apparently clears up his concerns:

[QUOTE=Eric Holder]
It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: “Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?” The answer to that question is no.
[/QUOTE]

Notice he said, “not engaged in combat”. Holder did not say Americans cannot be attacked on American soil without due process (which you imply was Paul’s concern). Holder didn’t say that because in extraordinary circumstances, an attack on a combatant would be constitution. Everyone, including Paul knows that.

66

Sorry I posted the last comment too soon.

Paul’s concerns are not legitimate, nor did this stunt to anything to address them.

But Holder didn’t actually say that. He said non-combatants. Which makes it clear that the Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration, and like every future administration will reserve the right to defend the country from enemies foreign and domestic regardless of where they may stand, with or without due process. Even Paul acknowledged this during his filibuster. Given that everyone realizes they have that right in limited circumstances, and that they don’t have the right to kill people via drone or any other method for no reason, I am not sure how we got here beyond that Paul wanted to legitimize his paranoid delusions by making Holder answer him.

You are naive if you believe that. Do you honestly think Holder wouldn’t have taken a phone call from Paul if Paul had tried? Do you really think these Paul tried his hardest to get an answer, but was stonewalled by Obama? As someone who as worked in Congress and seen much of this first hand, I can assure you Paul was not filibustering because he was trying to force Obama’s hand, or to get a solid answer to a question. He was doing it for purely personal reasons. Now you may think he is really stupid or paranoid enough to think Obama, or any other sitting president would order a drone strike against anyone in the US just for sitting in a cafe, or having unpopular opinions, but I tend to think he is smarter than that. Even if he did somehow think that, there are several laws, that would already cover those issues- not even speaking of the obvious consequences for any government official who would order such a thing.

I am not pissed off at anyone. I am just surprised most people cannot see through this guy. Either way, it may have raised his profile, but there is zero chance he is ever elected as president.

Just like Obama foolishly handed the GOP the birth certificate issue. Or any other of the zillion trumped up issues they try to press him on. Honestly, why didn’t he just say he was a Marxist Muslim Kenyan Closeted Black Liberation Theorist? Good thing we have the GOP to trot out all of these insane theories with the hope they gain enough traction that he has to address them.

Face it, if you really thought Paul was SO against drone strikes, then why wasn’t he focused on all the overseas strikes that have taken place for the last 12 years or so? Why hasn’t he made any effort to introduce legislation to ban drone strikes? Or to ban drone strikes against Americans? Or even to ban drone strikes in the US without conditions? Why was a letter from Holder, which doesn’t even really speak to the issue you say he feels so strongly about, sufficient enough for him to drop many of his objections? I think you need to realize Paul is not some righteous crusader; he is just a slimy politician like most in Congress.

67

To the extent that “progressive” means “leftist” many of them are criticizing Obama on this issue. To the extent that it means “Democrat who wants to be called something nicer when speaking to people who don’t like Democrats” the problem is that Democrats/Obamabots don’t have any fundamental beliefs at all; the idea of disagreeing with something Obama does makes no sense in their paradigm because their compass of what is right and wrong is completely defined by what Obama does. “Progressive” is kind of a catch-all term that can mean anyone from a centrist Republican to Stalin depending on who is using it, so it’s a hard question to just answer without splitting into two components.

68

Does it bother you that you say things that have, literally, zero factual content?

I’m sure this is something a few people on the far right, huddled in the dark, licking their wounds after losing the popular vote 5 of the last 6 times, mutter to themselves, but it has no basis in reality.

BTW, Progressive is not code for Democrats who don’t have the balls to be labeled as such in public. It’s code for Liberals who don’t have the balls to be labeled as such in public.

69

I’m sure you have proof of this, but if you showed it to us you would have to kill us.

Yeah, right.

70

There’s ample proof that drones kill civilians all the time and that the entire concept of “Al-Qaeda” as a comic-book like international army of Bad Guys is and always has been nonsense, but every time it’s shown to you people you just move goalposts or say you’re one of those “mature adults” who understands “difficult realities” like how all Muslims are terrorists, so I don’t know what the point is. At this juncture the facts have been laid out so many times that it’s pretty clear who wants to live in reality and who wants to keep worshipping at the Church of Obama with their ridiculous excuses for not accepting what’s going on.

71

I’d grant you that drone strikes kill civilians, but is it your contention that the targets of the strikes do not fall within the AUMF’s restriction of “those nations, organizations, or persons [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons” ?

In short, could you elaborate on your second point?

72

Congress does not have the power to delegate its power to declare war to the President by statute.

The U.S. cannot morally claim a right to destroy the entire population of Pakistan on the basis that it is “a nation” harboring any type of “person” whatsoever, terrorist or otherwise; no law can change this.

Obama’s explicit definition of the entire adult male population of Pakistan as “militants” satisfies neither legal nor moral requirements for killing them, and is merely a completely abhorrent attempt to generate false statistics on how many civilians are killed in the drone strikes.

In short, your contention that there was a law passed that makes it legal in U.S. courts for Bush and Obama to commit genocide is at best questionable on legal grounds, and completely worthless in determining the moral dimensions of the action.

73

I think we did this one month ago. I bolded part of your quote. I’ll just re-post my same response.

74

No, it’s not “sophisticated stuff.” The whole reason that terrorist groups engage in operations where one to five people with bombs try to kill thousands of people in schemes with a long shot of success is precisely because they are in an assymetric warfare situation–they don’t have the means or the people to wage traditional combat and they need to keep trying spectacular-style bombing attacks so that the 1 in 20 which succeeds gets noticed. These are exactly the sorts of things that tiny extremist cells have been doing for decades–“Al Qaeda” is at best just the modern version of the Red Army Faction, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Weathermen, etc. When you only have 30 people in your “revolutionary movement” and you want to become part of the media dialogue instead of group that is statistically identical to a group that doesn’t exist at all, bombing/terrorist tactics are what you do.

The “network” consists of two types of people: disgruntled Muslims who want to blow something up who get funding from four rich Saudi dissidents and are thus linked to “Al-Qaeda” if and when they engage in an overt act, and any group that is both violent and Islamic (like the guys in Mali, for example) which get labeled as “Al-Qaeda in Africa” by American media sources eager to perpetuate the exciting G.I. Joe narrative. The idea that Bush and Obama perpetuate of a hierarchical command of “Al-Qaeda” operating in sync throughout the world a la SPECTRE is what is nonsense.

And dropping bombs on Pakistani schoolchildren isn’t going to change any of it even if your comic-book view of things was correct!

75

From Doe v. Bush, in which the plaintiffs argued that the Congressional authorization for the Iraq War was unconstitution on the grounds that “Congress and the President are in collusion – that Congress has handed over to the President its exclusive power to declare war.”

Bolding mine. So, applying the same reasoning to the 2001 AUMF, it does not represent an unconstitutional delegation of power.

That claim is not being made. The AUMF authorizes only “necessary and appropriate” force; the killing of all Pakistanis fails this test and is not being carried out.

Exactly, it is an attempt to massage unpleasant statistics. It does NOT mean that random adult male Pakistanis are being targeted by drones as “militants”, it means that when random adult male Pakistanis are accidentally killed in a strike on a valid target, the proportion of the fatalities that were civilians is made lower.

If you have evidence that random adult male Pakistanis are intended targets, rather than collateral damage, by all means, present it.

Said law does not make it legal for the President to commit genocide, nor is genocide being carried out.

76

Your implication that only “valid targets” are attacked ascribes a level of competence and moral concern to the CIA that most would not be prepared to attest to. In any case, it is small consolation indeed for the dead and their families to hear these sorts of angels-dancing-on-a-pin distinctions between “everyone in Pakistan is a terrorist so it’s OK to kill them” and “only those who have been killed in Pakistan are terrorists; those who haven’t been killed yet will not be terrorists until such time as they are killed.”

77

This is completely correct.

Saying “Al-Qaeda” is like saying “the White Power Movement.” There are tons of disparate groups, most of them hapless collections of a handful of fools with less knowledge and coordination than a Free Republic forum. From a distance they all spout the same radicalized nonsense but I’m sure from the inside they all view each other with suspicion if not outright hostility.

*Are you the Judean People’s Front?

Fuck off!

What?

Judean People’s Front? We’re The People’s Front of Judea!*

Most of them live in their mother’s basement (because, hey, you get a lot of radicalized idiots when there’s 90% unemployment), which happens to also be the basement of a mosque kindergarten, so when we drone strike Akbar and Jeff we also off 20 or 30 others. After the authorities stack the bodies like cordwood we count up the males over the age of seven and call them “terrorists.”

Oddly enough, this does not appear to be working.

78

Note that I said “targeted”, not attacked. Clearly, some, probably most, who have been attacked (meaning killed or wounded) by a drone strike were not being targeted by it, they are the unintended but forseeable consequences of launching Hellfire missiles at the ground: shrapnel and concussion.

Again, if you have evidence that anyone has been targeted purely on the basis of being a Pakistani adult male, please present it.

I’m sure any such commentary would be small consolation for the family of an innocent person killed, be it by a drone strike in 2013 or Operation Rolling Thunder in 1965. If you accept that there is a military advantage to be gained by the strikes, then some civilian casualties are acceptable under the Geneva Convention:

That’s part of war. I’d rather object to the war entire than specific, legal tactics used to carry out it, myself.

79

But you don’t, do you?

80

Object to the war? I absolutely do. I don’t think the costs, humanitarian, financial, and moral, are worth the benefits, which may well be nil. There’s no way to reduce our risk of terror attacks to zero in any case, no matter how much blood is spilled.

Convincing the world that the U.S. hates and wants to kill all Muslims, while it isn’t true, is probably more damaging in the long run than accepting an increased risk of terror attacks, and that’s being generous by assuming that the war effort has, in fact, reduced that risk.

That said, drone strikes are a legal tactic, and no more or less moral than any comparable tactic of force projection. Singling them out seems odd, and even counter-productive.