Never gonna happen…
Sic Sember Liberators
So. It looks like the US President is in the business of ordering the assassination of US Citizens. You know what? I get this.
In the calculus of war– especially the sort of quasi war we’re fighting against “terror”, this is makes sense. The same pro-assassination arguments apply: we’re killing enemies without the bother of fighting actual battles and risking our soldiers. And the counter argument is equally persuasive: using the awesome power of a national government to mark a specific person for death makes war too personal, and invites reprisals.
A US president ordering the murders of US citizens without benefit of trial is both a natural evolution of this, and a terrifying development. A president has now decided he alone has the power to mark for death American citizens– and that no one has the authority to stop the machinery of death once it starts rolling.
US presidents have, in the past, used their police powers against domestic political opponents. Presidents are smart people. And if they weren’t arrogant, they wouldn’t ever have run for office. The temptation must always be there to use their powers for personal gain, rather than the national interest. More charitably, presidents must in some sense confuse their own personal good with the national interest. I’m unwilling to hand a president this sort of power.
Except. I’m a big boy. I understand that life is messier than the law allows for. I understand that warfare doesn’t really follow straight lines. This sort of thing might well be necessary from time to time.
How do we reconcile these things? I have a suggestion. If a president feels that someone must be murdered, or that there’s information so time critical that someone needs to be tortured, they need to go to jail.
There it is. Presidents who feel so strongly that they must violate the law and human rights that they are willing to order such a thing must pay a personal price. Resignation and jail time. If it turns out they’re right about their actions, we’ll make it a nice prison…
