AG Eric Holder attempts to explain a few of the circumstances under which your government might kill you:
“Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack,” Mr. Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school. “In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force…”
“Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,” Mr. Holder said. “This is simply not accurate. ‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”
Well, that’s reassuring. They used “due process“, just like the Constitution called for, and without having to explain themselves to some tedious jurist.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
Why, you old Libertarian you, Lex.
Lex,
I thought of precisely that Humpty-Dumpty quote. “…who is master, and that is all.” Well done.
So, we will see the end of the First, Second, Fourth, Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments very soon. The Bill of Rights just got significantly shorter. But I suppose the environmentalists will be happy, as it saves paper when the NEW Bill of Rights is printed.
The NEW Bill of Rights won’t be printed, that would kill trees. It will only be distributed via podcast but only to devices produced by acceptable companies.
I would have considerably less trouble with this policy, terminating US citizens without trial, if candidate Barack H. Obama had not spent several years telling my how appalling it was to interrogate these very same people using harsh means. So we can kill you without trial but we can’t splash water in your face.
What I find impossible to reconcile, is that the Obama-Holder enterprise pushed hard for public civilian trials for the illegal combatants held in Guantanamo, captured on the battlefields of Iraq and AFG in the act of trying to kill Americans.
In those trials they get the full rights and protections of a US Citizen accused of a capital crime. The Americans? They get a cruise missile. No trial, and in the case of Awliki, are not even formally charged with a crime.
But, precedent is a mighty thing. The overseas situation is serious, but how much more serious when we find those AMCITs in terror groups stateside? We will have to kill them, too, as there isn’t time for charges and evidence and trials.
Lo and behold, who knew that the list of terror groups will eventually come to resemble a list of political opponents…. NRA? Tea Party? Family Research Council? Freedom Watch? Oath Keepers?
Yep, scary how the prognostications of some in 2008/2009 are coming true, but back then, those who typed it/said it sounded sorta out there…hard part is most of America is glued to American Idol finals…Not to forget how the above the fold story in NYT today says The WON! wants Israel to give sanctions, economic and diplomatic, more time to work… Yeah, like 33 years hasn’t been long enough, and they also worked so well after 91 in Iraq….with the UN brokering “food for oil” to built many palaces, while innocents were fed to big cats and acid vats…
The WON! couldn’t see a threat to America, and world peace, if it stepped into the Oval Office, complete with a fully visible timer/cell phone activating device, but he sure can make sure anyone who questions him at home is called out in on the floor of a joint session of Congress.
If Obama decided to audition for that well watched and loved show, would he automatically be declared the winner?
And only to those who “need to know.” Most likely it would be a hard slog to get Flit to forward those emails from the distro list he’s on to us…The rest of us Bible clutching, gun toting, American vets, all with thought processes deemed as threats to the Motherland, shall just have to guess what’s next, after being detained indefinitely by the US Armed Forces under the NDAA law, that he never intends to use (but he insisted it was in there before he would sign to fund the DoD for a time, since there is no budget under the Democrats, unless it’s determined by polling data)….How do you like them (rotten) apples?
Maybe I’ll move to Kansas and try to convince John I can be an ammo carrier, and learn how to be a crew member for crew served weapons.
I am late to the question but I don’t see any problem with doing cold blooded executing of Americans engaged in acts unfriendly and unlawful and there was never anything in our rules that required anything at all like due process. SAT/BAF would instantly blow away anybody that snuck onboard a nuke weapon ship. I wonder if that’s why on the west coast the SEAL wannabees never played their midnight boarding games with us. Remember all those bases we’ve all been too that had the “Deadly Force Authorized Beyond This Point signs every 100 feet on the perimeter fence? Law enforcement wallahs, as is their custom will load up any American with enough Plumbum to make batteries for every car in America given the option.
I don’t think either have given much thought to the consequences of their actions. If it is legal for the American government and its minions to blow away American citizens, what American citizen would hesitate to blow away these government minions and servants? Fair is Fair and turnabout is fair play.
Did it ever enter their head that one day they’d be turfed out of office and left to swing gently in the breeze fanned by the flames of jihadis wanting revenge on the policy makers who are now and forever exposed.
Yoo had it easy!
Waiting for the howls of outrage and anguish from The Daily Kos, HuffPo and the NYT in three…two…one…[crickets chirping]
Once more, the “left” shows us who they are, but their sheeple will just go with talking points, and never consider the consequences. Like the whole debacle over which party ended slavery and got civil rights passed, and which party had the die hard southern KKK members…and then let’s not forget how the Patriot Act was so terrible, but now we are so much freer with DoJ getting all these powers to keep us safe…from terrorism, largely defined only as “domestic,” when, time and time again, it’s not who they are pointing fingers at that set up to suicide bomb in places like DC….or shoot their fellow soldiers in a welcome center…
When those who manage to only marginally question their “dear leaders” by quietly speaking out, realize they will be rounded up after those who are already on the White House web crawler of social media, and the blogger’s identity list as the same place, then, we’re heard it before…no one will be around to speak for them.
How Joseph Stalin/Saul Alinsky of him.
George Orwell was precient. How many more decades until “1984″?
More? I think we’re in it, PC speech and all. Never use a word to hurt feelings, or some crowd of agitators will be paid to come literally ond virtually to picket you, if the target is sufficiently distressed…and they may then also exercise their 2nd rights, you know, to come to Wall Street and the Nation’s Capital. I think more likely to Wall Street, and anywhere else their handlers tell them to go to exercise their 1st right to shout down free (read “offensive,” as defined by someone at FCC, DoJ, DoS, the UN, CAIR, NAGs, or law students….). We’re just in the “nice” phase…
Hundreds of years ago, before police forces, there was a problem with criminals fleeing justice by escaping into the forest. The English legal system minimized this by declaring such a person “Caput gerat lupinum”, let his be a wolf’s head. By fleeing the legal system they had abdicated any protections from it. They were, quite literally, outlaws.
The practice fell into disuse as police forces developed the ability to apprehend anyone who posed a threat to civil society, but variations have arisen from time to time. Not many questions were asked if a marshal went to Indian Country to arrest a fugitive and came back with a body.
Today technology allows someone outside the fringes of society to cause real harm to society. Until our law enforcement systems adapt to compensate I have no problem with people like Al Awlaki catching a Hellfire with his face. I do, however, find it odd that we can and must involve the judiciary in eavesdropping but cannot involve them in assassination.
Holder sounds like someone not terribly intelligent attempting to justify a conclusion that has been reached through illogical means. Which is good, because that’s exactly what is going on.
But I think that’s one key point. Awliki (or however he spelt it), AFAIK, was never officially declared “Caput gerat lupinum” (or whatever passes for this in today’s law). I have little doubt that equalizing his body temperature with the room’s was probably the right decission, the process used to reach this decission, and the transparancy of it, is important. If the USG had an open hearing, offered Awliki an opportunity to present counter evidence or, in abstentia, ensured he had competent legal representation, and, as a result, designated him persona non grata or guilty of treason or subversion, or whatever, that’s one thing. Saying “this is a bad guy, so we’ll kill him” is entirely another.
” Out here due process is a bullet.” – John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn
This sounds like more of the double speak we have seen and expected from the OBOTS. Let’s hope he and his minions become irrelevant as of November 2012.
INSHALLA as my friends in AFGHN would say ( translated it means ” If it be God’s will”)
Don’t let us down Lord… We really need you on this one.
“Holder sounds like someone not terribly intelligent attempting to justify a conclusion that has been reached through illogical means. Which is good, because that’s exactly what is going on.”
Pretty much my thoughts on the matter, JG.
In general, trying to find logical consistency in the actions over time of a lawyer is a fool’s game anyway; A lawyer argues in favor of the client’s (current) position regardless of logic or contrary fact; it’s what they are paid for. Holder is a lawyer to his bones, even if not a particularly good one.
In this case, there’s no consistency between the two positions because there was no common logical rationale between them; they are used and discarded based on a determination of CONVENIENCE to the POTUS, not logic or consistency or profound conviction.
Obama is an opportunist, and his AG is dutifully enabling that behavior. When it was politically expedient and satisfying to his supporters that he should push for judicial process, he did so. When it was operationally expedient to forgo judicial (or Constitutional) process, he does so. When it is emotionally satisfactory to him to circumvent tradition, precedent, or law, he does so.
Logic doesn’t enter into it, so logic can’t justify it.
Personally, my feeling is that any American citizen who takes up arms against his country & joins with foreign enemies on a battlefield is legitimate cannon fodder… but that there should be, when there is time (and there was here, years of it), some legal, that is to say, duly processed, determination of this change in status.
Sarge, such arbitrary actions of convenience, contorted logic and post-hoc self-justification that would do the original Sophists proud, are exactly what Thomas Sowell is talking about in his 2002 work, “The Quest For Cosmic Justice.”
Due process was exercised with Awlaki. Someone gave the order. Another pushed the button. The fires lit and the missile flew IAW the laws of Physics, and the deflagrating explosive worked near perfectly.
Wonderful process, that.
The clean & neat answer, of course, is not to give these enemy leaders citizenship in the FFP.
Then they’re just targets.
What amazes me is the convolutions they go thru to avoid saying, “traitor”, giving aid and comfort to the enemy may be striking too close to home for the Alinsky crowd.
The only lapse in due process was that they forgot to tape his revocation of citizenship form onto the Hellfire that served the decision.
As loathe as I am to defend either Obama or Holder, what would you have them do? As Jeff G notes above, there ARE people, American citizens, who have placed themselves beyond the reach of law. And they are actively planning death and destruction to our forces in the field, and if possible, citizens at home.
We rail against stupid Rules of Engagement that handicap our troops, but now we cry foul about lifting restrictions on engagements? As others noted above, the idiocy of involving the judiciary in the prosecution of war was a hot point for many of us on the political right. Why now do we bemoan that which we supported half a decade ago?
I’m fully aware of the slippery slope argument. And I suppose the current administrations ex post facto justification may not be the best legal argument ever. But as a practical matter, the Commander in Chief needs wide latitude to prosecute a war. And there’s a big difference between the occasional “he needed killin’” of an Alwaki, and suddenly deciding that Oathkeepers needs be shot.
Do we REALLY want to come up with some convoluted process with Congressional oversight, judicial review, and the partisan posing to address US citizens taking up arms against us in this war, or do we want to go ahead and kill them, and trust that the political price paid will encourage elected officials to only use that hammer when there really is a nail?
That’s the thing that bothers me the most about this issue. There seems to be a fairly straightforward system to solve the problem. Have the government petition the court to declare someone an outlaw. The FISC already has procedures in place to deal with classified information. We could either expand their mandate or set up another court on the same model. The declaration would, of course, be public. The government would have to demonstrate that the individual has willfully placed themselves outside the reach of law enforcement, and the declaration would be voided the moment the subject surrendered to the authorities.
I’m no lawyer, but this doesn’t seem to be that complicated. There is precedent, it protects the rights of the individual, and protects classified information.
Jeff, never underestimate the ability of determined ideologically-driven lawyers to muck up the process in what should be otherwise a fairly straightforward exercise. I remember watching a panel on problems of Federal Courts administration on C-Span years ago and a female judge from the 6th Circuit complaining that the Federal Courts are clogged/bogged down with cases that NEVER should have reached the Federal system because “…unfortunately these days there is no side-walk zoning dispute in the smallest township in the land that cannot be gotten into Federal Court if only the attorneys involved are both energetic and creative enough.”
Couldn’t we try and convict someone in absentia, with the defendant represented by a public defender, and done in a way as to admit classified evidence? If convicted, wouldn’t that satisfy due process? After that, allow assassination if there is no reasonable way of bringing that person in.
I’ll let one of the smart lawyer types address the technicalities, but as a practical matter, you can only try someone in absentia AFTER they’ve been arraigned.
I’d rather the Executive treat them as any other combatant than suddenly conducting show trial.
And don’t forget, there’s a LONG history of the US killing US citizens in the service of other armies.
For instance, did we insist that Lincoln provide a trail for every member of the Confederacy?
Citizens of the CSA were no longer US citizens. That’s why the Yankees couldn’t get anyone to prosecute Jeff Davis for treason. Richard Dana (author of Two Years Before The Mast) was the second attorney asked to handle the prosecution, but he refused as only a citizen of the US could commit treason. When the Southern States seceded, the citizens of those states ceased to be US citizens.
This is quite true. However, the Lincoln administration argued that the Confederate States never actually left the Union, argiung that they were US States “in rebellion.” At the same time, they argued that Confederate States had to meet certain requirements to be “readmitted” to the Union they never left. Obama is not the first President to try to have things both ways.
Actually I believed that there was an argument that postulated that the states did not succeed, they just happened to be filled with lots of people in open rebellion against their government….
Which opens up a different line of arguments and conclusions if you follow this line of reasoning….
I don’t think you’d even need to try them in absentia…
Have Congress prefer charges of Treason, serve them public notice via worldwide media that they have 30 days to surrender or die, place a bounty on their head dead or alive, and possibly issue a few Letters of M&R. The remainder solves itself.
I like Jeff G’s concept of outlawry, but I don’t think US law specifically supports it. ECL probably does. Possibly there’s legal precedent from the 1800′s unrepentant-rebel-chasing days, but I’m not strong enough on legal history to say for sure.
A lot of noise here and bashing about CINC & hs AG making right decisions. Anwar al-Awlaki is gone and justice was served. Good however to see Warriors doing that nuance thing…..Ron Paul is proud of you all.
I detest the Obummer and his evil minions, but on this he was right.
What could be done for the future is regularize it by legislation so Jeff’s idea is placed into substantive law. Personally, I think it’s an excellent idea. If not, we may find ourselves on that slippery slope. Such things do exist, as we have seen from the last 80 years of US political history.
Was AG Holder selected by Obama for his allegiance AND arrogance?
How well has AG Holder upheld his oath of office and due process? Why has “prosecutorial discretion” been necessary to desrcibe AG Holder’s conformance with the notion that U.S. justice “justice is blind”?
Due process in a socialist directed regime is, like everything else, subject to government favoritism. Bank on it!
Kfir down in Fallon. Pilot killed. Pray to your God(s), cross your fingers, sacrifice a goat.
been doing that…prayers for the pilot and their family…
Details on the streamer thread.
Bad news at Fallon.
LAS VEGAS — Authorities say a pilot for a defense contractor is dead after an Israeli-made military fighter jet crashed at Fallon Naval Air Station in northern Nevada.
Base and company officials say the F-21 Kfir aircraft crashed just after 9:15 a.m. Tuesday inside the west gate of the military airfield, about 60 miles east of Reno.
Petty Officer 1st Class Doug Harvey says it was snowy and foggy at the time.
Airborne Tactical Advantage Co. official Matt Bannon in Newport News, Va., says it’s too early to say what caused the crash of the single-seat, single-engine aircraft.
Bannon says the name of the pilot won’t be made public until his family is notified.
The aircraft is one of several types that ATAC provides under contract to the U.S. military.
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/03/ap-contract-pilot-killed-fallon-nas-crash-030612/
“Due Process” You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Yes, it’s misquoted. But applies none the less. Anyone else think they are watching a horror film instead of a comedy?
OT – close to Midnight on the east coast, and I’m seeing some cryptic tweets about a loss to the milblog community and Galrahn mentioning a Kfir.
Hope it’s my overactive imagination.
CHECK COMMENTS ON “STREAMER” POST BELOW.
SOUNDS LIKE THE WORST IS POSSIBLE!
Let’s keep in mind that no names have been released. Until then, out of respect for the family of the pilot, let’s just wait. And pray (if that’s your bent).
Strong hope and prayers for all. Xo
Just home from my local watering hole where I saw an article posted about him on my Facebook news feed. In my excitement I emailed to congratulate him without reading the article, not knowing what had transpired. Stunned and in disbelief…
USNI blog has confirmed. Damnit, damnit, damnit to hell.
Second in my mind right now is how to stay focused, and on mission, tomorrow.
First in my mind right now is James 1:27; what, if anything, can we do to bear the yoke that remains? For the dead are dead, and it is to the living that we are obligated.
Just heard the news. Shocked – and saddened. To Lex’s family: Thank you for sharing him with us. He was among the first I met in the Milblogging community, and he always had a kind word to share – a mentor in many ways.
I had never seen your blog before, but just a cursory glance shows you were one of those who got it and had the courage to share it. Thanks for your example, and thoughts & prayers to your family. RIP bro.
Lex (Carroll),
This is your last post, so I just wanted to say goodbye. You were a great man. Thank you for everything you’ve done in your life. I’ll be praying for your family.
Thoughts and prayers to Lex and his family. And to all of his friends in the wardroom.