Then I'm sorry you misunderstood it.

OK I see what I did wrong, and I apologize I was not aware the thread got as heated as it did.


FMP

It is ok.

Well apparently, according to the SCOTUS, it isn't illegal for the president to authorize the use of deadly force against specific members of such terrorist organizations.

Whether that is morally "right" or "wrong" is another issue altogether, however.

First of all, what case is that from? And secondly, do you go by what the Constitution says or do you go by what SCOTUS says?

Did you fall asleep in social studies?

Well the AUMF against terrorists was a joint resolution passed by congress, and as you know, the Constitution (and the SCOTUS) upholds that congress has the exclusive power to declare war via Art. 1, Sect. 8, Clause 11 (War Powers Clause). AFAIK the SCOTUS has not ruled the AUMF against terrorists unconstitutional.

(Though tbh imo the president would have been much smarter simply petitioning Congress to issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal against this guy and others)

When I last visited this thread, I remarked that I could not even tell whether a disagreement existed; that was many pages ago, so I presume that there really is an ongoing disagreement.

Dare I take the lazy way out and ask what is still at issue, or should I just catch up?

I'd note again above that in a question about what was so outrageous about the Bush Admin's conduct in the GWoT, iron cites that once the combatant is in custody, it becomes possible to observe due process. Of course, it's not as if Obama has actually stopped detaining combatants and holding them indefinitely without trial and he's continued this policy from the Bush Admin, so I'll ask the question again about what exactly was so outrageous about Bush's conduct but which causes a bunch of Obama followers to get into apologetic fits to declare whatever he does legally sound.

On that note, Greenwald today ldo:

No, iron and ctyri have explicitly jumped on the bandwagon that Obama can lawfully assassinate whoever he wants, so long as he declares them a terrorist first (and the terrorist leaves America's borders), and they concede no one can review the President's decision.

Basically, iron's position rests on his belief that obviously wrong belief that 14th Amendment rights cease to exist for Americans once they leave America, a fact that is contradicted by a SCOTUS ruling, which iron ostensibly believes has been contradicted by a 4th Circuit ruling (we'll leave the incredible legal notion that the 4th Circuit can overturn a SCOTUS precedent) in Hamdi that was explicitly contradicted by a plurality SCOTUS ruling in the same Hamdi case, which AFAIK still carries weight of precedent and which courts are bound to try to follow.

ctyri's belief rests on the fact that because SCOTUS ruled enemy combatants (a term the Obama admin no longer even uses) have rights to due process if they're being held domestically, it "sort of follows" with 100% confidence that it's much less controversial that SCOTUS is giving the President the right to assassinate Americans overseas without due process because they failed to enumerate a prohibition of that, although he concedes now that there's a debate.

I really don't understand this at all. You know that voting won't do a damn thing.

Montius has some other points worth responding to, but since I don't have 8 hours to spend in this thread today as I did yesterday, I'm going to have to be a lot slower responding here, but this is worth responding too to highlight the awesomeness of American policy:

The US government has already successfully issued an indictment by a Federal Grand Jury against Osama Bin Laden.

Contrast that with Awlaki:

http://www.mainjustice.com/2009/12/0...rrest-warrant/

Awlaki has never been indicted.

So yes, you've read that right, and this isn't just some right wing chain email you'll need to fact-check on Snopes: the US has provided far more formal due process to Osama Bin Laden than an American in Awlaki.

And yeah, it's not a huge logical leap that the US government's interest in assassinating Awlaki without due process, instead of indicting him, is that ldo they could never successfully indict.* Think about that guys.

------

* and yes, I know it's too late now, because he's gone

Idea for movie/book.. president does this and is then linked to terrorism, goes on run Ala Richard kimble

Because just like Greenwald says in that article, leading Dems/Obama supporters (in this case Iron81) refuse to acknowledge what is so plain to see for everyone else who have not invested so much into his campaign. The irony of course being that they now defend what he does no different than what leading Republicans/Bush supporters did for Bush, no different than what a religious zealot would do.

That being said, some credit due to Wynton and Fly and Eric, for while they do not seem as vehemently opposed in the same way they did with Bush's policies, they at least have acknowledged they are against it and disagree with this policy.

That is great and all, but did you realize that indictment was in 199?. That was years before congress passed the AUMF against terrorists.

You know, I'm not sure I ever really announced my opinion here, so I'll give it a crack.

I am disappointed with Obama's decision, but not to the point of outrage; not yet. And there are a few reasons for my restraint:

1. I'm well-versed in criminal law, but know very little about military law.

2. I believe that much of the precedent being discussed did not contemplate or address the kind of military conflicts we now have. This certainly does not mean that Obama is justified, but it does mean that I'm somewhat cautious about the applicability of pre-1970 caselaw (I picked that date arbitrarily, but you get the idea).

3. Even in the context of traditional criminal law (and particularly when it comes to the Fourth Amendment and Due Process), courts often use a balancing test to evaluate whether constitutional rights have been infringed.

4. Geographic location CAN be (but is not necessarily) a relevant factor (but is not necessarily relevant) in assessing the scope of constitutional rights. It depends on what particular right is at issue.

5. The existence of a declared war matters. Once Congress declares war, the executive has much more authority.

For these reasons, my gut reaction is that people are wrong to suggest that the LEGAL issues are obvious and simple. At the least, we should acknowledge that the law usually requires courts to balance many different factors.

On the other hand, as a matter of policy, I strongly believe that our presidents should not be in the business of authorizing the assassination of people, whether or not they are citizens.

Finally, I'll add that, while I give Obama much more of the benefit of the doubt, I had basically the same views about these particular legal issues when GWB was president.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 07, 2010
Hope, Change, and Murdering American Citizens
I don't think this is what the Obamatrons had in mind. And I'm not sure which is more appalling. The news that Barack Obama has just decided to start killing American citizens without granting them the benefit of an arrest, a trial, or a conviction, or the fact that writers at National Review are actually supporting his dictate:
The Obama administration has authorized operations to capture or kill a U.S.-born Muslim cleric based in Yemen, who is described by a key lawmaker as Americas's top terrorist threat, officials said on Tuesday. The decision to add Anwar al-Awlaki, of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to the target list followed a National Security Council review prompted by his status as a U.S. citizen.

Officials said Awlaki directly threatened the United States. "Awlaki is a proven threat," said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He's being targeted."

Rep. Jane Harman, chairwoman of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, described Awlaki as "probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us. He is very much in the sights of the Yemenis, with us helping them," said Harman, who recently visited Yemen to meet with U.S. and Yemeni officials. She told Reuters that Awlaki's U.S. citizenship made going after him "certainly complicated."
To his credit, Kevin D. Williamson is among the sane "conservatives" left at NRO:
I hate to play the squish, but am I the only one who is just a little bit queasy over the fact that the president of the United States is authorizing the assassination of American citizens? Andy writes that this is "obviously the right call." I might be persuaded that this is, in fact, the right call. But obviously? No hesitation there? It seems to me that the fact of U.S. citizenship ought to be a bright line on the political map.

Surely there has to be some operational constraint on the executive when it comes to the killing of U.S. citizens. It is not impossible to imagine a president who, for instance, sincerely believes that Andy McCarthy is undermining the Justice Department's ability to prosecute the war on terror on the legal front. A government that can kill its citizens can shut them up, no? I ask this not as a legal question, but as a moral and political question: How is it that a government that can assassinate Citizen Awlaki is unable to censor Citizen McCarthy, or drop him in an oubliette? Practically every journalist of any consequence in Washington has illegally handled a piece of classified information. Can the president have them assassinated in the name of national security? Under the Awlaki standard, why not?

Odious as Awlaki is, this seems to me to be setting an awful and reckless precedent. Consider how "interstate commerce" has been redefined over time to cover that which is neither interstate nor commerce, for the sake of political expediency. It is easy to imagine "national security" being treated the same way, particularly in an open-ended conflict against a loosely defined enemy.
No, this is not the right call. This is madness. And it is another step in the descent to open and unmitigated evil. There is no other way to describe it. The sickening thing is that without the ludicrous decision to grant citizenship to so many third worlders possessing zero loyalty to the nation, there would be no excuse for legally painting federal crosshairs on each and every U.S. citizen. This isn't merely a direct assault on the Constitution, it is far more impeachment-worthy than anything Bill Clinton ever did.

If Citizen Awlaki is deemed worthy of government assassination today, you can be assured that other American citizens will deemed "a proven threat" in the future.
Labels: politics, trainwreck

link:

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2010/04/h...-american.html

Anywho, I just realized that there are a couple restraints on the President's war power.

1. The War Powers Act (kind of a joke, but it's there)
2. The ballot box. While it's unlikely that the voters would vote a President out for killing one person, they can and have voted people out for killing lots of people (a war). See 1952, 1968, 2006.

Dvaut, you're getting worse and worse in this thread with the mischaracterizations. I am not arguing that citizens can be targeted because it follows from the court ruling they have due process in custody on US soil, I am arguing against your use (and savman's) of this ruling to suggest that Awlaki has these rights now while joined forces with enemy overseas. This is ridiculous and you have yet to explain how being designated an enemy combatant affects one's legal protections overseas while working in concert with the enemy. Presumably, you are arguing it changes nothing, which makes the designation completely meaningless, which begs the question why did the court rule the Pres would have such power. I admitted I am no legal scholar, but the court's legal designation "combatant" has a meaning to me as a military officer trained in the law of armed conflict, and you have provided NOTHING to suggest that the court afforded these enemy combatants any protections while actively joined forces with the enemy.

IOW, it's like arguing that foreign enemy combatants have rights as POWs and can't be killed after capture or surrender. While this is true, it has absolutely no relevance on the legal question of whether they can be killed while at large and engaged in actions against US -- to which the question is a resounding yes by the fact that they are enemy combatants, as that's exactly what the designation "combatant" signifies. This switch is exactly analogous to what you are doing as a legal argument ITT.

So please just quit this bait and switch using a court ruling that applies to due process while in custody on US soil. That is not relevant as that isn't the case here. Your legal arguments ITT continue to be full of gaping holes. You keep pretending that this is a slam dunk illegal act but then have to misuse court decisions to prove it -- doesn't look so slam dunk when you do so.

Redonning the horns...

1. We should draw the distinction between "enemy combatant" the legal term and "enemy combatant" the lay term. The former is something invented by Bush to justify holding people, the latter has existed since Ug clubbed Nog over the head. I support use of the latter but not the former. To the extent that Obama has elected to hold people without trial, I oppose that as well.

2. There is no recent SCOTUS precedent on point. The closest is WWII era cases concerning captured Germans.

The Law of Armed Conflict (derived from Geneva Conventions) and use of "combatants" (lawful and unlawful) as a legal term predates Bush:

IIRC, Bush invented the idea that such unlawful combatants once detained are a special group, rather than must be determined by tribunal to be prisoners of war (and afforded POW status) or criminals (and tried by international or domestic courts). IOW, he invented the special term "detainee", not "combatant".

If that's truly the case, then maybe this guy has forfeited his rights, just as murderers forfeit their rights when they kill people. However, if the only way we can know that this is the case is by Presidential declaration, no need to present any evidence to any third party, then it sure seems like Obama could declare that YOU were engaged with terrorists while you were on vacation in France (there are terrorists operating in France, after all) and fire off the missiles. Totally justified.

Obama might have to say that you're operating using a Muslim-sounding alias, though. That's necessary to ensure that the populace buys his declaration.

Yeah, and he could also declare some Yemeni dude in Yemen is a terrorist and kill him, too, without 3rd party review. As we have been doing for decades. But that isn't relevant to my criticism as your highlight of my bold statement followed by the comments above is a non-sequitur -- invoking the same fallacy as Dvaut and savman did. Even if you think Obama shouldn't be able to do what you describe, a ruling about treatment of combatants detained on US soil is still irrelevant in the matter. Just like we must afford POW rights to Yemeni combatants in custody on US soil, but that says nothing in itself about whether we can blow away Yemenis on the loose in Yemen that we deem terrorists.

You don't forfeit your right to due process by committing a crime.

DUCY

The above is irrelevant when discussing legal rights of combatants engaging in military or paramilitary operations during an international armed conflict. The whole point of deeming someone a combatant is to separate their legal status from a criminal. This distinction may be just temporarily as they engage in hostilities.

Law of Armed Conflict: "[Combatants] may be killed or wounded and, if captured, may be tried as war criminals for their LOAC violations."