Judge: Feds can hide rationale for killing U.S. citizen

A Bay Area federal judge says the Obama administration can keep secret a memo spelling out the legal rationale for a 2011 drone attack in Yemen that killed a U.S. citizen and alleged terrorist mastermind.

The ruling dismissed a suit by the First Amendment Coalition, an open-government advocacy group in San Rafael. The organization sued after a September 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim cleric whom authorities suspected of organizing an attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009. Another U.S. citizen was also killed in the drone attack, and Awlaki's U.S.-born, 16-year-old son was killed by a drone in Yemen the following month.

Limited information, but from what I’ve seen the kid wasn’t involved in 9/11, since he was probably something like 5 years old at the time, although it’s entirely possible he was planning to follow Dad into the family business. However, they weren’t shooting at the kid when he was killed, they were shooting at another guy.

In almost any military attack, there is a good bit of risk of hitting bystanders. Our present methods of attack, such as drone strikes, actually cause a great deal less collateral damage than strikes of the WWII variety, when we’d destroy entire cities. Were the hundreds of thousands or millions of innocents killed by us during WWII murdered, or were they the unintended consequences of a battle that had to be fought?

So the question becomes one of whether legitimate military targets should be able to effectively immunize themselves against attack by surrounding themselves with innocents. Does that strike you as a wise military policy?

Osama was at home with a wife or two when the Seals raided. Should they have aborted the attack because innocents would be put at risk? In actual fact, a woman was killed during the raid, the wife of one of Osama’s associates. Was her death an improper use of force?

As far as drone strikes or other military use of force on US soil, let’s imagine a Mumbai-style or Beslan-style attack here. Multiple heavily armed terrorists, ongoing murder of Americans, etc.

Would it be improper to use military forces to counter a military assault on Americans? Why?

Let’s further assume some or all of the attackers are or may be US citizens. Is there any reason the response to them should be any different than for an attack by a group we know consists solely of non-citizens?

Which is not to say these powers are not dangerous to put into anybody’s hands, and that I’m not nervous with them where they presently are. Only that the purpose of the military is to protect Americans, and if a military-style assault is launched on American soil, it makes perfect sense to use military force in response.

I don't need to read the congressional resolution authorizing force against terrorists, I want to read the "secret" memorandum for using force against this "terrorist". I do not trust this Administration one iota, and I don't accept everything they say uncritically. If they say they blew up a terrorist then I doubt it, just like I doubted who they said was behind the Libyan, Egyptian, and Syrian uprisings.

I think that it's intellectually myopic to argue that this administration has the legitimate authority to pursue and kill those Al-Qaeda terrorists when the administration is at the same time arming Al-Qaeda terrorists.

I think you’re confusing legal authority and moral authority.

Under the 2001 Congressional Authorization to Use Force I think their legal authority is impeccably constitutional.

With regard to their moral authority you may very well be right.

However, it’s also not unreasonable to point out that we are (probably) supporting groups who are fighting Assad in Syria. He and his family’s regime have been undisputed enemies of America and supporters of terrorism for decades.

There are no groups in Syria right now that most Americans would consider to be “the good guys,” with possible exception of groups with little support from any actual Syrians.

So we have the option of just staying completely out of the mess there, or supporting groups that are more or less objectionable. The staying-out option, of course, leaving the territory fully open to Russian, Iranian or Chinese influence.

We allied ourselves with Stalin for 4 years to defeat Hitler, and we supported creeps like Somoza for decades to defeat Communism. It doesn’t seem unreasonable that we might similarly support groups we don’t like in the Middle East.

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