Did you know that the President has authorized the killing of an American citizen based on secret evidence without any judicial oversight? How could this possibly be legally justified?
In the fullest administration statement to date, Harold Koh, the State Department’s legal adviser, said in a March 24 speech the drone strikes against Al Qaeda and its allies were lawful as part of the military action authorized by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as well as under the general principle of self-defense. By those rules, he said, such targeted killing was not assassination, which is banned by executive order.
That is to say, wherever there sits a suspected terrorist (suspected based on secret evidence, remember), there is a war zone. In these sorts of places we send unmanned drones, drones that have killed about 14 terrorists for every 687 civilians. Given that we tend to trumpet this whole rule of law thing (ya’know, pillar of our government and all) we ought to probably ask how it is we know this terrorist is a terrorist if he hasn’t been convicted of any terrorism related charges. But that would be a silly question, al-Awlaki is a terrorist because the President says so. That’s the authoritarian mindset. At least somebody is mad about that:
But I’ll be god damned if I’m going to pretend it is ok to start ordering the assassination of American citizens, even if it is done “legally” and ordered by politicians I generally like. This really is not a tough call at all. This is not because I am some crazy civil liberties absolutist. This is just basic common sense, and this kind of thing would set an absolutely horrible precedent. It is beyond me how anyone could get upset about Gitmo and Abu Gharaib and then think assassination of citizens is ok. Personally, I’ll take terrorized by guard dogs and waterboarded over a bullet to the brain pan.
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