Posted on 07/27/2014 11:38:09 AM PDT by OneWingedShark
You can’t get more serious about protecting the people from their government than the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, specifically in its most critical clause: “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” In 2011, the White House ordered the drone-killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without trial. It claimed this was a legal act it is prepared to repeat as necessary. Given the Fifth Amendment, how exactly was this justified? Thanks to a much contested, recently released but significantly redacted—about one-third of the text is missing—Justice Department white paper providing the basis for that extrajudicial killing, we finally know: the president in Post-Constitutional America is now officially judge, jury and executioner.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
Is difficult for me to admit that I agree with anything published by The Nation. But I do.
Hey, if Eric Holder says the government can kill anyone they want at any time, then that’s good enough for me! [/s]
Lincoln did much worse. Now the National Defense Act recently signed, that's NOT an exaggeration. We need it repealed.
“No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
Secondly, he was engaged in a war against the United States. Imagine a German American in 1942 going to Germany and joining the Wehrmacht and shooting at Americans. Do we worry he was killed without "due process?" There is a regular disease in our society where everyone worries about the criminal and not the victim.
Kill them, kill them all.
It must be recognized that this is war. Not a classic set piece kind of thing like 1812, but a completely fluid, invisible enemy, they can be anywhere kind of thing.
To serve the interests of the country, the President and his people need to be able to act.
That being said, it is necessary that those in power have the best interests of the people at heart.
THIS IS CLEARLY NOT THE CASE.
So either the Obamites get us or the others do.
What? Ya wanna live forever?
There appears to be evidence that he was an active Al Qaeda terrorist, not just preaching Islamic terrorism. It is hard to sympathize with him, or consider him a US citizen.
BTW, this placement in Nation magazine alongside all sorts of Israel bashing doesn’t exactly help his case.
I just can’t get all worked up over killing this piece of Shiite. We should be deporting them all (muslims. Including the HMIC himself.
While I agree with the arguments presented in this piece, I disagree with the entire premise. This guy, together with the rest of Al Qaeda are outside the law. They are waging war against the United States and we have every right to take the war to them, killing them whenever and where ever we can. They need not be armed with an AK-47, you can wage war with a laptop just as well.
As combatants, they are entitled to treatment as POWs should they be captured and we can keep them as long as the war continues. They can be tried by military tribunals for crimes that they may have committed during the conflict. For example, we did this to members of Kampfgruppe Peiper for the murder of U.S. POWs during the battle of the bulge. Several were hanged.
Where we have gone astray is by pretending that we can treat acts of war as ordinary criminal behavior and deal with it within our civilian legal system which is patently absurd on its face. The fact that Al Qaeda chose to ignore the laws of land warfare and refuses to wear uniforms and observe the international conventions of warfare does not entitle them to treatment as criminal suspects entitled to presumption of innocence and due process of a jury trial with full disclosure of all lawfully obtained evidence. They are declared enemies and anyone who joins their ranks should receive the same treatment, even it they happen to be American citizens.
While the United States has generally avoided the targeting of enemy leaders, we are certainly entitled to do so. We shot down a Mitsubishi “Betty” bomber carrying Admiral Yamamoto during World War II. We knew he was on board and we knew where the plane was going. We ambushed the plane and shot it down. Admiral Yamamoto never shot an American soldier or sailor, he never planted a bomb. But, he was an enemy combatant and he was killed during the performance of his duties. That’s what happened to this guy.
The result was good, the convoluted rationale put forward by the Obama Administration is not.
What part exactly in the entire defense budget do you object to, or are you calling for the entire defense budget to be repealed?
Section please.
The Obamanites can kill you if they want, for whatever reason, but an illegal invader gets a welcome, a lawyer, a hearing date, bail-free release and a `wink-and-a-nod’ that he won’t see another courtroom ... until he’s arrested for vehicular homicide, at which time he will get a lawyer, a hearing date ...
Obviously true. Even more so when they are illegal enemy combatants and operating in territory outside of US jurisdiction. By extension of the authors argument, all Al Qaeda would have to do is keep one American with each unit and we could never attack them.
What a well thought out and cohesive argument for drone strikes against me. I am the enemy of this government, but not an enemy of the republic. I often use a laptop. Who defines “ordinary crimes “ vs. Acts of war? Why, the government, of course.
I am not defending either the dead terrorist, or the article, but this needs a little more thought before we start granting the regime Constitutional exemptions.
Waging the legal system against our enemies won’t produce very satisfactory results, I’m afraid. If it would, we would require fighter pilots to have law degrees.
You do have a point given the rise of stateless entities for the very purpose of carrying out wars on superpowers. I think that the distinction of who is a combatant and who is just a curmudgeon is something we can handle unless you are doing the mental gymnastics of the Obama Administration by trying to deny that we are at war against radical Islam.
Please do not presume to know with whom I am at war. Islam is a cancer, a festering boil on the arse of humanity; but it is not a legitimate target for war by the United States. 5th century culture, practiced by political Islam may be. Back to my point : this exemption from the fifth amendment does not only cover militant Islam, but covers anyone they decide it covers.
I am not defending the document that the Obama Administration is foisting. It is a travesty for the reasons that you cite. For over one hundred years, The United States has waged war, both declared and undeclared against our enemies. We have a considerable body of law and precedent to rely upon when deciding who is an enemy combatant. Our dead parrot qualified on numerous counts had the idiots in the White House chosen to do what we have done for many years. It’s the Administration that wants to pretend that we are not at war with Islam, otherwise they would not have to craft this pile of nonsense.
The rationale that they have put forward is a danger to ordinary citizens, especially in the hands of a regime so willing to commit illegal acts in pursuit of their political goals.
Understood and agreed. Evil, in all its various forms is the true enemy and there are very few things that approach Islamic terrorism in that regard. Like you, I’m uncomfortable with this kind of power in the wrong hands. I don’t believe the police and the courts are equipped to deal with these vermin either.
Exactly how many traitors did Lincoln have shot without benefit of a trial?
General comment: When one bears arms against the US (not just the government, but the nation) they , regardless of citizenship, become targets, law enforcement and/or military (dependent on location).
Sometimes these targets are caught, sometimes they are destroyed by high order detonations, etc. The ones who are caught, become illegal combatants (not POWS), criminals and otherwise sorry examples of the detritus of humanity.
To disagree with the administration is one thing, to actively undertake the violent overthrow of the nation, the government and our way of life, makes one regardless of citizenship a criminal.
I had great respect for the uniformed enemies of our nation that I met on the field of battle. None whatsoever for “insurgents” and I did not ask prior to targeting them with small arms or standoff systems what their citizenship was. We indeed discovered that many of them carried passports from places like Canada, Great Britain, Norway, Eastern European nations, all of the mid eastern nations and Asia. They ran to the guns in IRQ and AFG, we dealt with them there, thank goodness!
If an American desires to change things, he becomes a voter, an activist, a lobbyist a grassroots organizer to sway opinion, not a person who directs and or participates in the destruction of office buildings or aircraft, or the raising of resources (fiscal, human or material etc) for that cause. Doing so is unacceptable, except when a long train of abuses demonstrating a pattern of tyranny is clearly and obviously apparent. The case must be made out legally, as in our founders’ Declaration of Independence. Indeed, they clearly stated that suffering until the systematic deprivation of representative government was certain and unequivocally proven, that rebellion was necessary and even moral.
The character in this discussion made none of those claims, he rather waged illegal war against the people of the US. I speak solely of the case against him, and no other, as each situation must be examined in its own merits.
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