DOJ kill list memo forces many Dems out of the closet as overtly unprincipled hacks
What this DOJ “white paper” did was to force people to confront Obama’s assassination program without emotionally manipulative appeal to some cartoon Bad Guy Terrorist (Awlaki). That document never once mentioned Awlaki. Instead – using the same creepily clinical, sanitized, legalistic language used by the Bush DOJ to justify torture, renditions and warrantless eavesdropping – it set forth the theoretical framework for empowering not just Obama, but any and all presidents, to assassinate not just Anwar Awlaki, but any citizens declared in secret by the president to be worthy of execution. Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee wrote that the DOJ memo “should shake the American people to the core”, while Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman explained “the revolutionary and shocking transformation of the meaning of due process” ushered in by this memo and said it constituted a repudiation of the Magna Carta.
In doing so, this document helpfully underscored the critical point that is otherwise difficult to convey: when you endorse the application of a radical state power because the specific target happens to be someone you dislike and think deserves it, you’re necessarily institutionalizing that power in general. That’s why political leaders, when they want to seize extremist powers or abridge core liberties, always choose in the first instance to target the most marginalized figures: because they know many people will acquiesce not because they support that power in theory but because they hate the person targeted. But if you cheer when that power is first invoked based on that mentality – I’m glad Obama assassinated Awlaki without charges because he was a Bad Man! – then you lose the ability to object when the power is used in the future in ways you dislike (or by leaders you distrust), because you’ve let it become institutionalized.
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They were in the closet?
forest on February 11, 2013 at 3:04 PM
In other words, all of you supporting Obama on this are nothing more than a bunch of weak minded pathetic useful idiot morons. I wholeheartedly agree this is the case with many of you.
When it was Awlaki and just people like him, you are totally for it, but when the rocket is aimed at you and your loved ones, I can rest assured you will moan and complain that you should be given due process that you denied to others!
astonerii on February 11, 2013 at 3:05 PM
Most dems are unashamedly unprincipled hacks. In fact, they’re proud of it.
RoadRunner on February 11, 2013 at 3:05 PM
In fairness to Glenn “Good DAY, sir” Greenwald, he has been one of the lone voices in the leftosphere taking the administration to task over its naked, striking, horrendous hypocrisy on this issue.
Good Lt on February 11, 2013 at 3:06 PM
Greenwals is one of the few leftists to shine dense lights upon the utterly hypocritical left.
Schadenfreude on February 11, 2013 at 3:06 PM
Greenwald
Schadenfreude on February 11, 2013 at 3:06 PM
Charlatanic thugs rule the US and the world.
Schadenfreude on February 11, 2013 at 3:07 PM
And yet, if a conservative were to make that argument about the Second Amendment, Greenwald would be all over it like a cheap suit.
Meryl Yourish on February 11, 2013 at 3:08 PM
Brennan’s a Muslim.
He’s tired of whacking his coreligionists and is drooling to slay for Allah.
“Lo! Allah hath bought from the believers their lives and their wealth because the Garden will be theirs: they shall fight in the way of Allah and shall slay and be slain.” -Koran 9:111
And he ain’t the onliest one neither!
Akzed on February 11, 2013 at 3:11 PM
More like tyrants in waiting at the Court of Barry The Drone On & On & On.
Dusty on February 11, 2013 at 3:14 PM
Not if you have a national media that will conveniently forget how Democrats looked the other way and made excuses for Obama violating due process the next time they need to score a few cheap political points by accusing a Republican of war crimes.
DRayRaven on February 11, 2013 at 3:16 PM
The problem here is ‘available for.’
I’m available for combat against the United States, but I’ve done nothing to lead anyone to believe I am engaged in (or seeking engagement in) hostilities.
Isn’t everyone ‘available for’ hostilities against the government? How long until conservatives are labeled as ‘available for hostilities against the government’ and assassinated?
Washington Nearsider on February 11, 2013 at 3:22 PM
The next time our government declares a War On ______________, Duck!!!
meci on February 11, 2013 at 3:26 PM
Yes, this is correct.
In fact, they have now begin taunting conservatives regarding their ability to get away with it – because the media is so incredibly biased.
blink on February 11, 2013 at 3:32 PM
Eric the Tan has stated that due process and judicial process are not necessarily the same thing.
Akzed on February 11, 2013 at 3:32 PM
A non-citizen if captured is entitled to protections and so is a citizen. Those protections are different but exist upon capture.
Before capture a non-citizen enemy combatant and a citizen enemy combatant are not entitled to due process. The military can kill them when they are sleeping, in barracks, in the field, or anywhere. That has been true in every war the US has fought. Knowing their name ahead of time doesn’t change that.
sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 3:36 PM
Greenwald has my grudging respect for being one of the few liberals who actually seems to believe in liberalism as it’s presented, rather than using as a cloak to disguise socialism/communism. I don’t agree with any of his political positions, but at least he isn’t like the phony anti-war movement which put down the signs and giant puppets the minute Obama was elected and yawned over Libya.
Doomberg on February 11, 2013 at 3:39 PM
The media isn’t just letting them get away with it. They join the taunting themselves.
Doomberg on February 11, 2013 at 3:40 PM
The military did not do it. It was the CIA. I think you are a bit confused here. We are not talking about people who are out on the battlefield with weapons arrayed towards our men in uniform. If I remember correctly, he was simply driving from one city in a non war nation to another city in the same non war city. We are talking about killing anyone, anywhere, on no evidence of anything, at nothing more than the word of a single partisan hack in the executive branch.
Yes, knowing the name in advance does change things. If this guy was your local school teacher and was not a detested human being who was out forward we would never have been informed of his death.
You are no ally to the constitution.
astonerii on February 11, 2013 at 3:41 PM
Greenwald is a tool. He may be less hypocritical than the average Obama media tool, but he apparently agrees in principle with treating terrorism as crime and not as warfare.
Obama and the Left are determined to treat terrorism as criminal for a number of reasons. But criminal law is not designed to deal with enemy combatants engaged in global warfare in violation of the laws of war.
Obama is eviscerating the crucial foundation of criminal law, due process, in the attempt to misapply it to acts of war. Greenwald agrees with this approach, he just doesn’t agree with gutting due process. He doesn’t understand that applying due process as it is understood in the criminal law would prevent effective engagement with the enemy.
novaculus on February 11, 2013 at 3:43 PM
This wasn’t a firefight. This was a hit.
Washington Nearsider on February 11, 2013 at 3:44 PM
Ambushing a convoy of vehicles is not new to warfare. Yemen is in fact at war with Al-Qaeda.
We are NOT talking about killing anyone, we are talking about killing those covered by the AUMF.
No it doesn’t. His citizenship doesn’t act as a shield for treason or conducting war against the US and citizenship never has meant that.
sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 3:48 PM
The same principle applies (in reverse) to entitlements. Find someone everyone can’t help but love and tell them that without passing the Medical Assistance for Grannies Bill, she’ll surely die.
Matticus Finch on February 11, 2013 at 3:49 PM
So all those A-10 pilots are now assassins? Or are they assassins if they knew John Walker Lindh was in a convoy in Afghanistan and decided to take him out?
sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 3:50 PM
If he’s not inside this country and we can’t reach him procedurally elsewhere, I don’t care what his status is, he is not entitled to 5th Amendment due process. Find some other law or principle to protect him.
Seth Halpern on February 11, 2013 at 3:54 PM
It seems you are intentionally missing the point.
Are you claiming treason is the only crime for which there is no due process?
No one’s arguing al-Awlaki didn’t deserve a Hellfire to the face. There are processes we have to go through to strip an American of life though. In this case, Congress could have stripped him of his citizenship OR the Justice Department could have put out a memo stating the legal justification for killing an American accused – but not convicted – of treason. Either way, due process would have been followed.
The US government can now target a US citizen if they believe a threat to be “imminent” even when no threat of attack is immediately present.
The target must have recently been involved in activities, with no real definition of “activities” or “recently.”
And rather than prove that the US citizen plans to continue these “activities,” it’s up to the citizen to prove to a single US official who no one knows that he’s renounced and/or abandoned such “activities” – activities that the government won’t define, to an official the government won’t name.
Let’s not forget that this is the same Administration that issued a report nearly 4 years ago claiming returning war veterans were potential terrorists. Now that same government claims it can assassinate American citizens because one un-named person deems them a threat.
You’re okay with that?
Washington Nearsider on February 11, 2013 at 3:54 PM
Actually you are talking about anyone, anyone at all outside the nation, because there is no check or balance on the use of this power. You seem to an easily led idiot, but you can only be led to the stupid and not the reasonable.
Treason is a crime which is something where you are put on trial and have a process by which you are deprived of your life. Again, you are an idiot, a very useful for those who wish to turn this nation into something our founders never envisioned.
Here again though, as a citizen who was not in fact on a battlefield for which the USA was conducting a declared war, it is moot to argue the military aspect, it was not even the military that took him out. It was the CIA.
astonerii on February 11, 2013 at 3:55 PM
No there aren’t. You walk up behind a sentry and shoot him in the back of the head. You drop a cluster bomb and kill that group of hostiles and they don’t even know what hit them.
They don’t get due process or a chance to surrender. It doesn’t matter what your passport says. It’s war and it’s ugly.
AFTER they are captured is when they get due process and that applies to BOTH citizens and non-citizens.
You are suggesting that Obama isn’t trustworthy and I agree.
That doesn’t change history or warfare. You cannot force the military to act as a police force. It doesn’t, and cannot work.
If citizenship means they have to arrest the guy or go through some elaborate court procedure before engaging a target then that citizenship can and will be used by terror groups as a shield to prevent US military action.
sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 4:02 PM
[sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 3:36 PM]
How do you know he was a citizen enemy?
Dusty on February 11, 2013 at 4:03 PM
He trusts OBAMA’S politically appointed hack.
astonerii on February 11, 2013 at 4:07 PM
Useful moron, all the dictators through history have loved having people like you be their servants.
astonerii on February 11, 2013 at 4:08 PM
Congress is the check on the executive power, as are the courts and they have stated time and time again that their writ does not extend to the battlefield.
GFY
Only if you are alive to be tried for it and in the jurisdiction of the court.
GFY
The battlefield does not just mean a firefight. It means the theater of operations where military action is taking place. That can be at sea doing escort duty, in a dogfight, or in an attack on a military headquarters or transport unit. The AUMF is legal and does allow military operations.
sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 4:09 PM
No. I’m suggesting THE GOVERNMENT isn’t trustworthy. Also, stop saying ‘the military’ while talking about this. The military didn’t kill al-Awlaki, civilians did.
Additionally, he wasn’t killed in a firefight, when expecting any oversight is asinine and will get us killed. An individual – unnamed, so we can not assume Obama – decided he needed to die, and he was killed an undetermined length of time after that decision was made.
Now, let’s move on to his 16 year-old son who was killed in a drone strike weeks later, and was also an American. There is no evidence that he was involved in terror other than the fact that his father took him (by force?) when he left the States. Again, no due process.
Even after-the-fact FISA warrants are acceptable today. Where is the AAR report stating there was judicial oversight?
Washington Nearsider on February 11, 2013 at 4:10 PM
Awlaki said so.
If you are asking how do we identify terrorists then obviously that isn’t as easy as uniformed personnel but it isn’t impossible either.
sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 4:11 PM
He was not in the theater of war MORON. He was in a nation we were not at war with. So, again, USEFUL IDIOT Sharrukin steps in it trying to defend tyranny! You used to seem more reasonable. You been hacked or something? Do not care one way or another, your argument is in favor of tyranny, not freedom.
astonerii on February 11, 2013 at 4:13 PM
Which is the real issue. Someone is making that decision in secret and the criteria aren’t apparently written in stone. Bad, bad, precedent.
a capella on February 11, 2013 at 4:14 PM
The military, ‘contractors’, the CIA, allied forces, etc. It amounts to the same thing…military action.
The battlefield encompasses much more than a firefight. If it didn’t then air force pilots, or CIA drone operators would be guilty of murder for attacks on truck convoys.
He was killed in the company of a known Al-Qaeda terrorist who was the target. They weren’t targeting the kid. He should have chosen not to hang out with terrorists. I don’t know if he was a member of Al-Qaeda or just a friend, but that is what happens when you stand in the line of fire. I have some sympathy for innocents who are killed having nothing to do with the terror networks, but that wasn’t this kid. His father was a terrorist and he went to join his father. After his father was killed he still hung out with the terrorists for weeks until his own death.
sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 4:19 PM
Can you prove he wasn’t a hostage, held against his will? If that were the case, he’d be mourned as a tragic side-note in all of this, but would still be just as dead.
The point is, you actively support – directly – a single unnamed individual deciding which Americans die. The criteria upon which that decision is based is undefined and fluid.
As long as you’re okay with ‘trust us, we’re the government,’ I guess we’ll just agree to disagree.
Cheers.
Washington Nearsider on February 11, 2013 at 4:22 PM
I’ll skip past inquiring how you know he said that, since it’s not a serious answer considering the gravity of the case and the consequences of accepting that as all the evidence one needs in order for our government to kill an American citizen.
Do you have any evidence he committed treason?
Dusty on February 11, 2013 at 4:22 PM
Yes he was.
GFY
He was in a nation we are allied to involved in a war with a terrorist group.
Belonging to a terror group doesn’t mean you get a free waiver from military action because of course you will never be in a nation we are at war with. A terror group is a non-state actor, hence we can never be at war with the Al-Qaeda nation because there isn’t one.
GFY
Of course you don’t care that would require thinking.
sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 4:24 PM
He used his first amendment rights. Isn’t that enough? It will be soon enough, thanks in large part to Sharrukin and his useful idiot allies. Chavez has lots of people like Sharrukin, that is why he can send around his death squads to kill those who speak out against his government.
astonerii on February 11, 2013 at 4:26 PM
I think the reason most people are afraid of this is not because they’re worried about it being used on Americans who have gone to join terrorist groups, it’s because they’re afraid it will be used against ordinary political dissidents.
Doomberg on February 11, 2013 at 4:26 PM
Do you really believe that to be the case?
So would many others who have been killed in war that had nothing to do it. Innocents die in war and that hasn’t changed either. He wasn’t an innocent.
I have already said that the Congress should be overlooking what the president does. They have abdicated their responsibility which is not a small problem.
You cannot fight a war the way you are suggesting and irregular warfare is becoming increasingly common. The attempt to force police procedures onto the military will cripple any effort to prosecute a war against the terrorists.
Perhaps the AUMF should be rescinded, or narrowed in focus but that is for Congress to do.
sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 4:31 PM
That is a real concern, but what difference will the courts make at that point? If the Democrats start a cibil war then it isn’t going to be decided in any FISA court. Neither side is going to care about what the supremes think if that happens.
sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 4:33 PM
So you support the Obama doctrine? “Congress won’t do what I want, so I’m going to do it unilaterally, no matter how unconstitutional.”
Washington Nearsider on February 11, 2013 at 4:34 PM
TERRORFRAID of it. It will be used against political dissidents. Once you set a new floor for government encroachment on personal liberty, it just makes the next floor that much quicker to happen.
astonerii on February 11, 2013 at 4:35 PM
That is the thing. What you are talking about is slow cooking the frog. Kill Awlaki with a drone strike. Then someone a little less detestable, I mean, why not? Then a little later, someone like that cop turned cop killer in California will be the target of a CIA or FBI drone strike. A little later we will be hearing about the traitors in Pennsylvania, Ruby Ridge, and many other places where it was not feasible to take them into custody, so we just hell fired them out of existence. All the while it will be just a tiny step at a time to get there.
Sorry, but the constitution does not grant the President with the power to revoke the life of a citizen. There was no direct threat that taking him out solved. In fact the threat materialized as he was taken out. The threat now is an emboldened government with slaves rather than citizens.
astonerii on February 11, 2013 at 4:40 PM
Nope.
I just don’t think that citizenship makes any difference regarding military targets. It never has. I supported Reagan when he attacked Libya and the terror camps in Lebanon, I supported Bush when he went after them as well. I am not going to turn around and say that because it’s a Democratic president that it’s outrageous.
These guys are traitors. They are supporting a terrorist group that murdered 3,000 Americans on 911 and I don’t have any sympathy for them. Their passports mean as much to me as they obviously do to them, which is nothing. They are Jihadists first and last and unless we deal with them they will win.
sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 4:43 PM
President Washington ordered troops in to fight the Whiskey Rebellion. Those were citizens and their lives were revoked.
sharrukin on February 11, 2013 at 4:52 PM
‘Toon of the Day: Hello! You’ve Been Targeted For A United States Drone A.s.s.a.s.sination
Resist We Much on February 11, 2013 at 5:04 PM
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