The ‘Targeted-Killing Memos’

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National Review:

 

Why shouldn’t the public get to read them?

 

‘Think about the mothers!”

That was the anguished cry of one of the protesters from Code Pink, the left-wing women’s group that four times interrupted John Brennan’s confirmation hearing last week. She was apparently referring to the mothers of such al-Qaeda leaders as Anwar al-Awlaki — killed by a drone strike that was ordered by President Obama and counseled by Brennan, Obama’s White House counterterrorism adviser and now his nominee for director of central intelligence.

If we do as the protester demanded, two possibilities occur: (1) Al-Awlaki’s mom shares her son’s ideology and is therefore proud that he died a martyr waging jihad against satanic infidels, or (2) she loves her adopted homeland of America, has a tempered reading of Islam, and is therefore mortified that her sweet little boy grew up to become a terrorist blown to smithereens by his fellow countrymen.

Let me waste no time in putting my drone cards on the table: Al-Qaeda and other self-described jihadist groups have declared war on America, and are waging war against America. Congress has passed an Authorization for the Use of Military Force that gives the president the power to capture and kill members of AQ and allied groups. He should do so aggressively and unapologetically.

Drones are useful because they don’t expose American combatants to danger and they have the potential for pin-point accuracy. Enemy belligerents, including those who hold American passports, should not be mistaken for criminal defendants. Judges should not be confused with generals.

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NAPOLITANO: Obama’s secret court for killing

 

President Barack Obama willingly admits he dispatched CIA agents to kill an American and his teenage son and the son’s American friend while they were in a desert in Yemen in 2011. He says he did so because the adult had encouraged folks to wage war on the United States and the children were just “collateral damage.” He says further that he’ll do this again when he is convinced that killing Americans will keep America safe. He says he knows the adult encouraged evil, and his encouragement caused the deaths of innocents. The adult was never charged with a crime or indicted by a grand jury; he was just targeted for death by the president himself and executed by a CIA drone.

International law and the law of war, to both of which the United States is bound by treaty, as well as federal law and the Judeo-Christian values that underlie the Declaration of Independence (which guarantees the right to live) and the Constitution (which permits governmental interference with that right only after a congressional declaration of war or individual due process) all provide that the certainty of the identity of a human target, the sincerity of the wish for his death, the perception of his guilt and imminent danger are insufficient to justify the government’s use of lethal force against him. The president may only lawfully kill after due process, in self-defense or under a declaration of war.

The reasons for the constitutional requirement of a congressional declaration of war are to provide a check on the president’s lust for war by forcing him to obtain formal congressional approval, to isolate and identify the object of war so the president cannot kill whomever he pleases, to confine the warfare to the places where the object’s military forces are located so the president cannot invade wherever he wishes, and to assure termination of the hostilities when the object of the war surrenders so the president cannot wage war without end.

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/14/obamas-secret-court-for-killing/