The obsession over abusive executive power has mysteriously vanished.
And we were worried about waterboarding?
Now that the Obama administration has upped the ante in the war on terror, the Bush-era policies of detention and so-called “torture” look downright tame by comparison. Anwar al-Awlaki, after all, wasn’t a foreign national apprehended on the field of battle, sent to Guantanamo as an unlawful enemy combatant and roughed up a bit.
No, the radical cleric was, not to put too fine a point on it, assassinated by executive authority, the power of which to target an American citizen is apparently unreviewable by the courts. Can you imagine the howls of outrage had this occurred during the Bush administration?
Yet, the only protests we’ve seen from the left in the past two weeks were against Wall Street.
To be sure, the world is better off without some fanatic hiding behind religion to incite violence from what heretofore was a safe distance in Yemen. But thanks to the Democrat double standard, legitimate concerns over what’s become of due process in a perpetual war on terror may be left to libertarian-minded conservatives.
Though the administration believed the intelligence from both U.S. and Yemeni sources was sufficient enough to unleash a CIA drone equipped with a Hellfire missile on the caravan carrying Al-Awlaki and another Al-Qaida propagandist who happened to be American, we don’t know the details because much of the case remains classified.
What we do know is that Al-Awlaki contacts with Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan as well as with the would-be “underwear bomber” were enough to put him on the administration’s secret hit list. And leaks suggest that Al-Awlaki was “directly involved” in the plots, so there is little doubt that at some point his free-speech lunacy morphed into a larger danger.
The operative question, however, is whether his conduct was an act of war or indeed a conspiracy to commit a crime. If it’s the latter, then it remains entirely incumbent on the administration to justify such an extrajudicial act against any citizen whom officials unilaterally consider a “terrorist.”
Especially so considering the carelessness with which that word is thrown around these days by both sides of the aisle.
Proponents of unrestricted presidential war powers cite a congressional authorization to use force against “terrorism,” an open-ended abdication of legislative responsibility. They also cite historical precedent, including the Civil War. But even Abraham Lincoln’s most ardent admirers have yet to figure out what to make of his use of martial law, including the suspension of habeas corpus and the jailing of Northerners merely sympathetic to the Confederate cause.
In 1942, the Supreme Court did indeed uphold the executions of a select group of unlawful enemy combatants, at least one of whom was an American citizen. But the justices in the Ex parte Quirin case did so only after the captured German saboteurs were granted a modicum of due process in the form of a military tribunal.
It seems more than a bit ironic that not long ago antiwar critics were apoplectic over the gathering of intelligence on an American without a FISA warrant, whereas the killing of Al-Awlaki, however depraved he might have been, results in a bipartisan circling of the wagons around the commander-in-chief.
The best you can say for the neoconservatives who dominate foreign-policy thinking in the GOP is at least they have consistency on their side. The silence from establishment Democrats, including Minnesota’s two U.S. senators, speaks volumes about how sincere they are about not only the war on terror but perhaps their constitutional duties as well.
Who knows, maybe the Obama administration cynically believes that using drone strikes to take out enemy combatants at least relives of it having to debate the thorny issue of detainees and interrogation methods. But at some point the nation must decide when a war ends and criminal prosecution begins, and at that point we’ll all be better served if those who threaten us with violence are apprehended and tried under the rule of law.
Published in the StarTribune, October 16, 2011
As a law enforcement officer for nearly 28 years I can assure you Biden and the White House have no clue of the crime stats. It wasn’t not so long ago they were touting the reduction in crime across the country. This year because they are getting no traction in the jobs bill they want to talk about the failure to provide additional law enforcement officer positions will show crime to go up. The reason we had a national statistics go down last year is because we lost cops due to other priorities by local governments and we did not have the manpower to pursue the offenders across our country. Therefore crime went down because of manpower issues not because of wonderful strategies from the White House or the Vice President.. Now, if we were to add more officers throughout the country we would make more arrests only because we would be able to pursue the violent offenders. Bidens numbers are wrong as well is his leadership. It is a fact that when Obama visits throughout the country he does not want to be seen with law enforcement unless they are his plain clothes detail. It is clear he pushes uniform officers away from view of the cameras he will be visable in. This way he is not seen befriending cops by those who elected him. To hear them tout support for cops is an oxymoron since they typically do not want to be seen with cops. I have worked several Presidential Details from Regan to Obama and he is the first one I have ever seen to push the uniform officers out of view of the cameras in fear of offending their supporters.
Rickey Padgett
Bahama, NC 27503
Mr. Lewis,
I couldn’t agree with you more on the hypocrisy of the Democrats and the Left. However, I would like to set that matter aside and focus on the more important issue of whether the activities by Americans such as al Awlaki and other non-states actors constitute an act of war or crime. This is a critical distinction with significant national security, judicial and law enforcement implications. It also determines the specific courses of action available to national security and military decision makers.
Awlaki (who publicly denounced his U.S. citizenship) and Khan who was the co-editor of the English-language Al Qaeda web magazine called “Inspire” were legitimate targets who committed acts of war. The Internet provided them with an unprecedented capability to effectively communicate with a worldwide audience in near real time at a low cost without government or media “filters.” This on-line Jihadist magazine “Inspire” encouraged and enabled attacks against U.S. troops and civilians in a combat zone and as such they were a legitimate counterterrorism target and an armed response was appropriate.
Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn were not murdered. When you renounce your citizenship, join al Qaeda, and engage in acts of war against the U.S. you can be considered the enemy and are not protected from being the target of an armed response.
As Charles Krauthamer recently stated the U.S. government killed tens of thousands of American citizens in the Confederacy during the Civil War because they were the enemy. In our war (albeit undeclared by Congress) against radical Islam al Awlaki and Kahn were the enemy and deserved their fate.
Regards,
Brenda