[THS] Reason: Jacob Sullum: Why not just kill them?

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25679.htm


License to Kill
Obama Blurs the Line Between Warfare and Summary Execution

By Jacob Sullum

June 10, 2010 "Reason" - - Nearly a decade after the September 11 attacks, we still
have not settled the question of how to deal with terrorism suspects. Should they be
in military or civilian custody? Should they receive trials, and if so what kind? After
years of acrimonious debate, President Obama is offering a way to settle this
argument once and for all: Why not just kill them?

Last week U.N. investigator Philip Alston delivered a report on "targeted killings" in
which the U.S. government plays a starring role. Under a policy secretly initiated by
George W. Bush and expanded by Obama, the CIA and the Joint Special Operations
Command track and kill people, including U.S. citizens, based on their alleged ties to
Al Qaeda or its allies. The killings, typically carried out by missiles fired from drone
aircraft, dangerously blur the line between warfare and summary execution.

As Alston noted, targeted killings "are permitted in armed conflict situations when
used against combatants
or civilians who directly engage in combat-like activities."
But "they are increasingly being used far from any battle zone"—in places such as
Yemen, where the U.S. fires missiles at "high-value targets" such as the American-
born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

Harold Koh, the State Department's legal adviser, says such attacks are justified by
international law and by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that Congress
passed after the September 11 attacks. "The United States is in an armed conflict
with Al Qaeda, as well as the Taliban and associated forces," Koh says. "Individuals
who are part of such an armed group are belligerents and, therefore, lawful targets."

But unlike a conventional war, this "armed conflict" is fought on a "battlefield" that
spans the globe by "belligerents" who do not wear uniforms and are not readily
identified. Hence Koh's reasonable-sounding law-of-war argument amounts to
claiming that the executive branch has the unreviewable authority to kill enemies that
it unilaterally identifies anywhere in the world.

The geographic reach of this license to kill exceeds even that of an old-fashioned
tyrant accustomed to shouting, "Off with his head!" Imagine how the U.S. would
react if a foreign government claimed it had the right to kill people on the streets of
New York because it considered them "belligerents."

Given the breathtaking scope of the authority claimed by the president, the
reassurances of his underlings ring hollow. "Whether a particular individual will be
targeted in a particular location," says Koh, "will depend upon considerations specific
to each case, including those related to the imminence of the threat, the sovereignty
of the other states involved, and the willingness and ability of those states to suppress
the threat the target poses." This is a long way of saying "trust us."

Last February, Dennis Blair, then the director of national intelligence, assured
members of Congress that "we don't target people for free speech." Rather, "we
target them for taking action that threatens Americans or has resulted in it."

Awlaki, for example, is known mainly for his inflammatory yet constitutionally
protected sermons. But according to an unidentified "American official" quoted by
The New York Times in April, "The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer
confined to words. He's gotten involved in plots."

Before you take the government's word that Awlaki has been marked for death based
on something more than his anti-American tirades, consider its track record in
justifying the detention of alleged "belligerents." Even though the burden of proof is
much lighter than it would be in a criminal trial, the American Civil Liberties Union
notes, "the government has failed to prove the lawfulness of imprisoning individual
Guantanamo detainees in 34 of the 48 cases that have been reviewed by the federal
courts thus far."

Luckily for the government, it does not need to present any evidence against Awlaki
or other "high-value targets," because it does not want to detain them. It only wants
to kill them.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason and a nationally syndicated columnist.

© Copyright 2010 by Creators Syndicate Inc.