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Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

theguardian.com

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Re: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

#41

Post by strictfp »

hrasyid wrote: post #30

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.

Re: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

#42

Post by stoolpigeon »

ma2rten wrote: post #37
tikhonj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he is not missing the main point. Rather, he is addressing part of the issue. All his post says is that it does not--and should not--matter whether the person in question is an American citizen. This is a fact which stands regardless of your opinion on the rest of the problem, and so it makes sense not to address that. In more explicit terms: if you believe this sort of extrajudicial killing is illegal (which man…

> Having citizenship does not protect you if you are an enemy combatant. Actually in that case you loose your citizenship: Although a person's enlistment in the armed forces of a foreign country may not constitute a violation of U.S. law, it [may cause] loss of U.S. nationality if an American voluntarily and with the intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship enters or serves in foreign armed forces engaged in hosti…

lose

Re: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

#43

Post by Osiris »

rob05c wrote: post #34
rhizome wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if it is simply how it does work, maybe that means it should be changed to something where the President doesn't have as much power.

IMO the real problem is America's Electoral system. Because there is no rank voting, the choices are the warmongering party, the slightly-less-warmongering party, or wasting your vote. Even if the President had more power than it does now, it couldn't get away with these things if citizens had the ability to relevantly vote for another person/party. They would simply vote for whoever else was closest to their beliefs…

Every voting system has its pros and cons. The nature of the voting system influences how candidates campaign but it's not the only mechanism that affects how government operates. It's a far to simplistic suggestion to say that "rank voting" would solve the problem. For that matter, why not any of the other dozen different types of voting systems?

In short, the voting system is ingrained into the constitution and will not change in the foreseeable future.

Re: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

#44

Post by alexqgb »

shitlord wrote: post #28
alexqgb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the majority of people think it's an acceptable solution for the time being . If they weren't, then there would be a political shitstorm. And there really isn't - because nobody can give a better solution than letting those people just go free and do as they please. From my experience, the majority of people actually terrified of this are people on the internet. A lot of people are uneasy with it, but only on the…

Maybe, maybe not. But murdering people isn't the only awful thing a government can do. If it feels it can get away with this it'll think it can get away with anything.

Re: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

#45

Post by eru »

Osiris wrote: post #43
rob05c wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the real problem is America's Electoral system. Because there is no rank voting, the choices are the warmongering party, the slightly-less-warmongering party, or wasting your vote. Even if the President had more power than it does now, it couldn't get away with these things if citizens had the ability to relevantly vote for another person/party. They would simply vote for whoever else was closest to their beliefs…

Every voting system has its pros and cons. The nature of the voting system influences how candidates campaign but it's not the only mechanism that affects how government operates. It's a far to simplistic suggestion to say that "rank voting" would solve the problem. For that matter, why not any of the other dozen different types of voting systems? In short, the voting system is ingrained into the constitution and wil…

Approval voting, for example. Rank voting is ripe for tactical voting, too.

Re: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

#46

Post by r0h1n »

tikhonj wrote: post #14
r0h1n wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the main point: > 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,…

No, he is not missing the main point. Rather, he is addressing part of the issue. All his post says is that it does not--and should not--matter whether the person in question is an American citizen. This is a fact which stands regardless of your opinion on the rest of the problem, and so it makes sense not to address that. In more explicit terms: if you believe this sort of extrajudicial killing is illegal (which man…

As I see it, there are two issues here:

(a) an person is declared a terrorist in secret by a bunch of secret govt folks, basis which he or she is 'approved' for assassination by the US state,

(b) the person may or may not be a US citizen, though the former confers significantly better chances of not being assassinated.

While not disagreeing with the import of your argument, namely that "citizens and non-citizens" ought to be treated alike (it is a welcome change to hear that, because in the post Snowden era we are witnessing a clear difference in the rights of US citizens and maybe those of their 'Five Eyes' allies versus the rest of the world), I don't think its something that can ever be expected in any country. Compared to their own citizens, most countries will always place lower value on the lives of foreigners. By extension there will be a lower bar on their assassinations too.

So instead, its better to challenge the secrecy that surrounds how a person is classified as a terrorist, instead of hoping the US govt starts treating everyone in the world with the same consideration.

Re: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

#47

Post by grey-area »

Let's consider a specific example:

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.

Re: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

#48

Post by pyre »

phy6 wrote: post #13
thaumasiotes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in full agreement, but I have to ask, why now? This hasn't been news for years.

Why now? Because we elected Change, and we're waiting for it. The question should be "Why NOT now?". Of all times, when the most vocal of Americans enjoy a popular President, why wait until the tide changes to press for the change we all see is needed?

> Because we elected Change

A little off-topic, but I'm always reminded of this: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/248462/attack-of-the-c...

Re: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

#49

Post by rurounijones »

jfoster wrote: post #40
rurounijones wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It can be a slippery slope". (A) Killing your own citizens with (B) secret laws / justifications using (C) zero / secret "evidence" and (D) No oversight by a group outside of those who are ordering the killings can be a slippery slope? That is not the slippery slope, that is the ditch at the bottom once you have slid all the way down.

If those people were plotting to kill hundreds/thousands of your more innocent citizens, then you could do a lot worse. The problem is where you draw the line.

In legal terms (and I use that loosely) they have already decided that they have that right, so in that sense we have already reached the bottom.

Now, implementation wise you are correct in that things could be worse. However in the "We are the government and we can do this" sense...ditch.

(It must be said that the nice thing about the large-scale implementation problem is that the US population would rise up against that, but that is small comfort for the victims in the "small enough that 'Joe Average' doesn't care about it" death-list.)

Re: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

#50

Post by joe_the_user »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #2

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…

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.

Shows just how pernicious these metaphors can be.

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