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…
I was wondering what your take would be. I’m still in shock and not sure how I feel about Obama now. I know I’d be more pissed if it were Bush, but Bush (as far as we can tell) didn’t go this far.
I think the president has done something _very_ very wrong. Congress needs to stand up on it’s own two legs, roll up a news paper, and whap him on the nose.
The real problem is that it’s pretty much a direct continuation of powers arrogated by presidents in the recent past. Sadly, congress and the American people have basically yawned and assured themselves (ourselves!) that the president won’t dare use these powers against people who don’t deserve it.
This is arguably a legitimate use of presidential war-making power. But then, we never declared war.
I’m actually more shocked and outraged that the president created a “deficit-reduction commission” over the objections of Congress. The President took over a job that is inarguablely congresses. We’re seeing a melding of the executive and legislative branches– a sure sign that we’re slipping towards an authoritarian system.
[...] buzz feed of my my article on presidential-ordered assassinations contained a couple comments I thought some readers might be interested in. So I’ll just quote [...]