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But even if you’re someone who does want the President to have the power to order American citizens killed without a trial by decreeing that they are Terrorists (and it’s worth remembering that if you advocate that power, it’s going to be vested in all Presidents, not just the ones who are as Nice, Good, Kind-Hearted and Trustworthy as Barack Obama), shouldn’t there at least be some judicial approval required? Do we really want the President to be able to make this decision unilaterally and without outside checks? Remember when many Democrats were horrified (or at least when they purported to be) at the idea that Bush was merely eavesdropping on American citizens without judicial approval? Shouldn’t we be at least as concerned about the President’s being able to assassinate Americans without judicial oversight? That seems much more Draconian to me.
Well, yeah! I missed the Constitutional amendment where there’s this due-process opt-out.
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it might be somewhere in the fine commander-in-chief print.
Okay, I hate to get into a debate like this, but…
Suppose that I, an American citizen, were to convert to Salafism and then move to Helmand province and join the Taliban to fight the Great Satan. Although I’m still a citizen, it’s perfectly reasonable for the U.S. government to try and kill me even when I’m not directly holding an AK-47 on the battlefield.
Greenwald is a paragon example of the Executive Derangement Syndrome that’s creeping through the contemporary American liberal population. He, like many others, has been so traumatized by Bush’s abuses that he can no longer trust or respect any executive officeholder of any stripe.
It’s a viral behavior meme that I expect to subside quickly, as the Chronic Eeyorism that defined post-Carter liberals revives; specific objections to executive power will be washed away by the all-consuming convictions that Democrats can’t help but lose and Republicans are unbeatable anyway.
It’s a harder case, though, isn’t it? There’s an intuitive sense that if you join a foreign military or quasi-military for the purposes of waging war on Americans, you’re a fair target to get got. But there’s also an intuitive sense that this can get taken way too far, and the standards for tying al-Awlaki (cause he’s who we’re really talking about) to al-Qaeda before he can “legitimately” be assassinated ought to be rather high. Otherwise we’re opening the door to killing American citizens who advocate noxious and dangerous views.
if we start letting the executive decide that it’s acceptable to kill Americans simply because they think there to exist sufficient evidence that the citizen is acting for and with an organization with which we are at war, it’s pretty much not at all opening the door to killing obnoxious people and I’m not afraid.
Yeah, someone serving as a preacher for AQ is a bit murkier than a cut-and-dried case of someone running around the hills of Afghanistan or Waziristan with an AK-47.
Is there any precedent for this sort of thing with the fanatical Jew-haters/anti-Communists who were American citizens and fought for the Third Reich? I know it’s trickier since AQ isn’t really a state (although they have sort of a de facto authority in North Waziristan and parts of Somalia), but that seems like it would be a good place for the Obama administration to start over with this sort of thing after the judicial goat-f*ck that was the Bush Administration.