The other day a persistent commenter kept asserting that the administration thinks it can kill Americans at will and asserted I agree. Of course they don't think that and I certainly don't think that and never made any claim like that.
This post by Nob Akimoto (containing the title quote) does an excellent job laying out all the twisting of reality that's going on around this issue.
He also brings up a real due process violation that I mentioned the other day - the LAPD shootings - that we don't hear nearly as much about as the drone issue.
In the article you link to I read:
ReplyDelete"Jack Goldsmith summarized the actual “debate” quite well when he said:
In general Senator Paul and others falsely maintained that the Obama administration has implied that it has authority to use a drone to kill a U.S. citizen inside the United States who is not engaged in combat and does not present an imminent threat"
OMG, this just shows how naive you guys are and how great it is that others are much more cynical. For example, you guys know how Obama and his thugs plan to use the concept of 'imminent threat'? You think they're going to interpret it in the narrow way that you and I would interpret it or that they'll let their lawyers make a case to interpret it in an insanely broad way so that it applies to situations that aren;t remotely like 9-11 or Pearl Harbour?
And would you like to bet some money on this?
(hint: if you listened to parts of Rand Paul's filibuster you'd know the answer)
Not sure why you bring up 9-11. I don't think the planes necessarily have to be on their way. Granted your "aren't remotely like" is pretty vague so I'm not sure what you have in mind.
DeleteCertainly this can be interpreted and applied too broadly, just like police use of force can be.
Should we confiscate police guns and not let them use force because they quite obviously did violate due process in the very recent past?
I don't think so.
If we made decisions about the authority that people - in either public or private spheres - have to do things based on whether they can abuse that authority then we wouldn't let anyone anywhere do anything.
That is a factor to be weighed but it is not the end of the discussion. We all recognize that these things could be applied inappropriately. That is PRECISELY why we have constitutional restraints on government.
Also:
ReplyDelete"Second, let’s look at where the most common cause of due-process less lethal force tends to be used on American soil. It’s not the CIA. It’s not even the FBI or ATF. It’s the dozens and dozens of instances where law enforcement decides to use lethal force in lieu of arrest. Just recently we had the LAPD essentially burn a cornered suspect to death rather than arrest him. Yes, Dorner was a villain. But he was “killed without being convicted of a crime.” Did Rand Paul filibuster for him? Has the issue of everything from no-knock searches and what amounts to SWAT raids ever been brought up by the honorable junior senator from Kentucky? Nope."
How is this possibly an argument against the legitimacy or sensibility or reasonableness of what Rand is doing re Brennan?
I'm not sure it's a comment on the Brennan stand specifically so much as it is a point that drones drive people into a frenzy where very clear due process violations don't seem to get nearly as much notice.
DeleteIt leads some of us to be skeptical of who is really standing up for due process.
"In general Senator Paul and others falsely maintained that the Obama administration has implied that it has authority to use a drone to kill a U.S. citizen inside the United States who is not engaged in combat and does not present an imminent threat and who is simply (a hypo they keep using) “sitting quietly in a café peaceably enjoying breakfast.”"
ReplyDeleteHey, actually sounds a lot like what happened to "Abdulrahman Anwar al-Aulaqi [who] was a 16-year-old American citizen [and non-combatant, mind you] who was killed while eating dinner at an outdoor restaurant[2][3][4][5] in an airstrike by an armed C.I.A. drone in Yemen on October 14, 2011"
Crazy crazy Rand Paul for thinking that Obama would ever do such a thing inside the US...
In the U.S. don't you think we would have arrested Ibrahim al-Banna and taken al-Awlaki in for questioning (not sure what al Awlaki's role was - maybe we would have arrested him too)?
DeleteIn Yemen, of course, we don't have that option so when you come across an enemy combatant meeting with other al Qaeda members a strike is on the table for consideration.
Anyway, if there is abuse in the U.S. (and certainly that's a possibility - there's always that possibility) - I'd be speaking out against it.
Delete