In Constitutional Republics, Presidents Don’t Have ‘Kill Lists’ By Doug Bandow
Last edited Sat Jun 9, 2012, 12:37 PM - Edit history (1)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31524.htmWashington routinely criticizes despotic regimes where officials exercise the power of life and death without restraint. President Barack Obama is such an official.
The U.S. has been fighting the “war on terrorism” for more than a decade. Washington has turned targeted killing — or assassination — into routine practice. The military deploys SEALs when the job needs to be close and personal, like killing Osama bin Laden. But drones are the preferred tool of choice. The administration claims to have recently used one to kill al-Qaida’s number two man, Abu Yahya al-Libi, in Pakistan.
This new form of warfare raises fundamental questions for a constitutional republic. International law bars arbitrary killing. Domestic law further restricts the execution of U.S. citizens. Moreover, promiscuous assassinations move foreign policy into the shadows, reducing public debate over basic issues of war and peace.
The issue ended up in federal court in August 2010 when Nasser al-Awlaki filed suit seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the Obama administration from executing his son, Anwar al-Awlaki. The latter had been added to the federal “kill list” for his activities in Yemen with al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The judge dismissed the lawsuit on procedural grounds and Anwar was later killed by a Predator drone...
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SoutherDem
(2,307 posts)I am not approving of a "Kill List" but,
Haven't there always been kill list? Even it is wasn't made so public. Even if it wasn't called a kill list?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)but he was forced out of office....by members of his own party.
That's a hint.
SoutherDem
(2,307 posts)going back to WW2. I wish I could remember which news show I heard it on but I can't.
I will say this. If there is going to be one, I would much more want Obama to make it than Romney. We may all be on Romney's, actually I might be on it 3 times, I am Democrat, Gay and Atheist.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and a public boasting that any future President can use at will. This needs to be nipped in the bud and Constitutionally challenged, so that everybody understands, it's not allowed.
Or, that we are no longer a constitutionally formed, representative democracy.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)RC
(25,592 posts)Just imagine Mitt in that office 
Demeter
(85,373 posts)We don't have to wait for a Republican!
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)Object to this, and you'll hear "So you're supporting Romney?" or "You're suppressing the vote."
According to some, none of us can oppose presidential kill-lists for Americans (and others) and also be Democrats to sufficiently meet their high standards.
RC
(25,592 posts)But Republicans, as a rule, don't have much, if any conscience.
Remember
(32 posts)If a Democratic does this then what will we the 99er's going to do before it might come home to roost.
shcrane71
(1,721 posts)
mahina
(17,649 posts)Welcome to DU.
DavidDvorkin
(19,475 posts)A constitutional republic could have a constitution which includes a clause specifically allowing the president to create and maintain a kill list.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)And I wouldn't want to live anywhere near one that did.
DavidDvorkin
(19,475 posts)
kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)They tend not to because giving the chief executive the legal prerogative to assassinate people including citizens as well as foreigners makes a mockery of the whole idea of a written constitution and the rule of law.
A leader of a government who is given the ability to kill anyone at his own discretion, without public charges, without public proceedings, without publicly disclosed evidence before or after the murder has been given the legal right to put his opposition and critics to death. He can kill them if he chooses and later, even if removed from office because of it, he can stand on his legal right to designate enemies of the state. You can quibble with my judgement that so-and-so the so-called journalist, was a dangerous threat to our nation; but not with my right to make it under the constitution. The only constraint on the exercise of the Presidential prerogative of assassination are then the political considerations, not legal and constitutional limits. In other words, the check on the Presidential usage of assassination becomes "What will other factions and the people in general put up with before overthrowing me? What Reign of Terror is too terrible to last and serve my interests?" Naturally, the existence of a Presidential Prerogative To Bust a Cap In Your Ass doesn't mean that it will automatically be used as a matter of routine from the Year One onward. However, as Murphy's Law tells us, things that can go wrong with a political system invariably, eventually do go wrong. Written constitutions exist in the first place to describe the organs of government and to define what they can and cannot do, what the laws can and cannot do. Laws that are written are laws that cannot be changed at the whims of a monarch or tyrant - that is the civilizational advance that written law represents. It gives the governed a check on the governors. Constitutions are written down, much like statute law, to serve as guidelines - the rules of the game of state - to ensure that things don't wrong right out of the box. Again this is for the protection of the governed not for the convenience of the governors. But a constitution with an Assassination Prerogative reserved to the chief executive makes every citizen's life contingent upon his sufferance and whims. It reverses at one stroke the advance of a written code of law and a written constitution. That one constitutional provision will naturally come to overshadow all the others that might be included in that document. If the Chief Executive, or Emperor, or Fuhrer, or Party Chairman, or Generalissimo or Presidente were violating the laws or constitution in some area, who will rise to criticize him, or oppose him, or call for his prosecution, knowing he could be jeopardizing his own life depending on the daily horoscope, digestion or passing moods of the Assassin In Chief? Few people would - and fewer and fewer will follow their example.
Assassination as a matter of policy and executive prerogative is inimical to the spirit of law, written or otherwise. Why bother having a written constitution or written laws at all in a republic in which the law says anyone can be cut down by the secret orders of the Lord Protector, and no one can even demand to know IF the order was given and on what charge and on what evidence? Whoever becomes the Dear Leader and wields that power will be the Law himself.
And how stands it with other civil liberties when the first liberty -life- can be annihilated with an offstage whisper? Can you speak of any meaningful right to privacy in such a republic? The right to assassinate without question or oversight is an awesome responsibility - how can El Presidente brook any limits to his ability to sniff out treason and danger? How can he carry out his constitutional responsibility to protect, which has no bounds once he has determined the existence of a threat. No, clearly he must be able to know everything about his subjects, intimately, exactly and without reservations. It would be fatally inconsistent for the republic to maintain otherwise. You cannot place an axe in the President's hands to chop off everyone's head but then bind his eyes and stop up his ears. He has to see all and hear all to be careful when swinging his axe, or else no one is safe. Limits on surveillance, if any existed in statute law or the constitution, won't stand for long. How can there be no limit on the Leader's discretion to preempt and to punish threats, but severe limits placed on his ability merely to determine threats? It makes no sense.
Can there likewise be any permanent bar to "uncivilized" methods of police interrogation? Not for long. Not likely. What is waterboarding compared to having your life snuffed out at the snap of someone's fingers? It's nothing at all. Thirty seconds of the "sensation of drowning" -according to its fanboys and PR people- versus an eternity of silence and never seeing your loved ones ever again. It would be illogical for civil libertarians to maintain that the executive cannot break limbs but only chop off heads! Besides, the kinds of "enhanced interrogation methods" that leave twisted joints, ugly burns and scar tissue are completely old-fashioned and ineffective compared to current ways of making people talk. We moderns have learned from the old despotisms of Europe and Asia, winnowing their successful methods from their overly enthusiastic mistakes, and we now have the perfect surgical instruments to defend Freedom against stubborn tongues. Even here you cannot stop Progress and Pragmatists will not wish to. Criminology, pharmacology and psychological research are coming together to shine Light of science upon every dark secret. In the name of Freedom, therefore, and in the name of "what works," and in the name of constitutional, logical consistency, this purely hypothetical republic will overcome its repugnance for torture and embrace it as "despotism - but only toward our enemies!"
In short, a republic COULD have a constitution in which the chief executive is granted a prerogative to assassinate anyone he deems an enemy of the state. But in practice that republic isn't likely to be found consulting its constitution or laws very often or very meaningfully.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)It's just so obvious to me, I cannot understand why it isn't to everyone.
DavidDvorkin
(19,475 posts)Namely, that such a restriction, no matter how desirable, is not inherent to the notion of a republic with a constitution.
Zorro
(15,740 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)These killings would be criminal acts if they occurred inside the US. Does it make legal sense that these killings would be legal outside the US? (ARE WE CERTAIN THAT THEY WOULD BE ILLEGAL INSIDE THE US, EVEN?)
...Here are five reasons why these drone assassinations are illegal.
One. Assassination by the US government has been illegal since 1976
Drone killings are acts of premeditated murder. Premeditated murder is a crime in all fifty states and under federal criminal law. These murders are also the textbook definition of assassination, which is murder by sudden or secret attack for political reasons.
In 1976 U.S. President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11905, Section 5(g), which states "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination." President Reagan followed up to make the ban clearer in Executive Order 12333. Section 2.11 of that Order states "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination." Section 2.12 further says "Indirect participation. No agency of the Intelligence Community shall participate in or request any person to undertake activities forbidden by this Order." This ban on assassination still stands.
The reason for the ban on assassinations was that the CIA was involved in attempts to assassinate national leaders opposed by the US. Among others, US forces sought to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam.
Two. United Nations report directly questions the legality of US drone killings...
Three. International law experts condemn US drone killings...
Four. Military law of war does not authorize widespread drone killing of civilians...
Five. Retired high-ranking military and CIA veterans challenge the legality and efficacy of drone killings...
