Targeted killing: "What Would the Godfather Say"
A classic scene from "The Godfather" has Michael Corleone describing his mafia don father as “no different from other powerful man, any man who’s responsible for other people, like a senator, or a president.” Michael’s girlfriend Kay tells Michael that he is naïve – “senators and presidents don’t have men killed.”
Kay is wrong, of course, but that doesn’t mean Michael is right. We’d like to believe that an execution ordered by the president is very different from one ordered by a mafia don. The president occupies a unique position of public authority, and his decisions are governed by law. What’s unsettling, though, is seeing those laws up close and in operation.
Laws that govern the use of lethal force come from several sources, but they typically emphasize similar terms, such as necessity, proportionality and imminence. Additionally, the Constitution promises that citizens will not be deprived of life without due process of law.
The more we learn about the Obama administration’s internal justifications for its targeted killing program, the more obvious it is that words like “imminence” or “due process” can and will be stretched beyond normal usage to accommodate whatever uses of force the president chooses. For example, the Justice Department memo appears to suggest that if an executive official “cannot be confident” that a suspected terrorist is not about to attack, the requirement of an “imminent” threat may be satisfied. And while due process had previously been interpreted to require judicial hearings and other mechanisms to address the risk of government error, the Justice Department’s discussion subordinates concerns about erroneous killing with a vague invocation of “the realities of combat.” In other words, in this memo uncertainty is grounds for violence rather than a reason for deliberation or caution. At worst, this memo evinces the same embrace of executive power that characterized the infamous Bush administration “torture memos.” At best, it reveals a different kind of naiveté – a view of a world in which the great responsibilities of a president necessitate unlimited discretion to do violence.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/02/05/what-standards-must-be-met-for-the-us-to-kill-an-american-citizen/the-justice-department-thinks-uncertainty-is-grounds-for-violence
More opinion here:
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/02/05/what-standards-must-be-met-for-the-us-to-kill-an-american-citizen
