[THS] Nat Hentoff: Can Obama Assassinate Americans?

[Peter Webster]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24888.htm

Can Obama Assassinate Americans?

By Nat Hentoff

March 01, 2010 "cato.org" -- On September 14 in Somalia, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a
long-sought link between al-Qaida and its East African allies, was in a vehicle bombed
by a helicopter flying from an American ship off the Somali coast. As Karen DeYoung
and Joby Warrick reported in a front-page Washington Post story -- "Under Obama,
more targeted killings than captures in counterterrorism efforts" (Feb. 13) -- another
U.S. helicopter "set down long enough for troops to scoop up enough of (Nabhan's)
remains for DNA verification."

That news story offered a telling consequence: "the opportunity to interrogate one of
the most wanted U.S. terrorism targets was gone forever." And a senior military
officer, careful not to give his name, lamented: "We wanted to take a prisoner. It was
not a decision that we made."

That decision came from Obama, our commander in chief, who, as I've previously
reported, has authorized in his first year more such assassinations than Bush and
Cheney in their last years. The result, as the Washington Post noted, "has been
dozens of targeted killings and no reports of high-value detentions."

After all, there can be no fierce arguments about whether a charred corpse should
be tried in a federal civilian court or by a military commission. Some American
citizens, believed to be highly connected to al-Qaida or its affiliates, are also on these
"hit" lists. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, pilotless U.S. drone planes have perpetrated
these assassinations.

Thanks to the First Amendment, an increasing number of these summary executions
have been revealed in the Washington Post and on the Internet. The executive
branch alone decides who shall die instantly. And there are no defense attorneys to
raise objections, even when an American citizen is marked for oblivion.

During a Feb. 3 hearing before the House Intelligence Committee, Director of
National Intelligence Dennis Blair testified that the U.S. intelligence community, when
dealing with direct terrorist threats to the United States, does "take direct action
against terrorists" (Washington Post, Feb. 4).

And "if we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific
permission to do that."

Glenn Greenwald, a former constitutional lawyer turned news analyst, avoids
euphemisms. "Special permissions" without judicial authorization, says Greenwald,
amounts to "basically giving the president the power to impose death sentences on
his own citizens without any charges or trial" (Salon.com, Feb. 4).

Focusing on American targets, Ben Wizner, a staff attorney of the ACLU National
Security Project, in a Feb. 4 press release emphasizes: "It is alarming to hear that the
Obama administration is asserting that the president can authorize the assassination
of Americans abroad, even if they are far from any battlefield and may have never
taken up arms against the U.S., but have only been deemed to constitute an
unspecified 'threat.'"

I would add that if the threat has indeed been specified, the deceased target will
have had no chance to test its accuracy. Is this America?

Wizner explains:

"This is the most recent consequence of a troublingly overbroad interpretation of
Congress's 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. This sweeping
interpretation envisions a war that knows no borders or definable time limits and
targets an enemy that the government has refused to define in public. This policy is
particularly troubling since it targets U.S. citizens, who retain their constitutional right
to due process even when abroad."

Adds Jonathan Manes, legal fellow with the ACLU National Security Project: "While
there is little doubt that a U.S. citizen fighting for an enemy army could lawfully be
killed on the battlefield in the course of fighting, this policy goes far beyond the
ordinary parameters of battlefield combat."

Does President Obama agree with George W. Bush's first attorney general, John
Ashcroft? And the silent Obama avoids any responsibility for the growing number of
innocent civilians killed by the insistently growing number of strikes by our pilotless
drones.

When will members of Congress also ask these questions? And how about we, the
people, getting involved in finding out whether some of these killings committed in
our name are -- by our own laws and international treaties -- actual war crimes?

Where are our chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Eric Holder,
Republican leaders and the Tea Party legions opposed to boundless big government?

Nat Hentoff is a member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and
the Cato Institute, where he is a senior fellow.

This article appeared on cato.org on February 25, 2010.