Obama on drones and extrajudicial killing

[MadHound]

"I think there's no doubt that when an American has made the decision to affiliate himself with al Qaeda and target fellow Americans, that there is a legal justification for us to try and stop them from carrying out plots. What is also true though is that as an American citizen, they are subject to the protections of the constitution and due process.

Understand that when Obama says "due process," he is referring not to courts, but to an internal executive branch review. Following Attorney General Eric Holder's speech in March explaining how "due process" here means that nationals security officials evaluate the evidence against an individual before asking higher-ups for permission to vaporize them, comedian Stephen Colbert quipped that "due process just means there's a process that you do."
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/09/obama-talks-drone-strikes

It is amazing how accepting the public has become of the notion that we as a country can violate a nation's sovereignty anytime we want in order to kill its citizens, but also how accepting we are as a country to our fellow citizens being killed on the say-so of one man who ultimately acts as judge, jury and executioner.

[CrispyQ]

1. I agree completely & totally.

But until we get that genie back in the bottle, I'd rather have Obama making those decisions than any repub.

This country is so off course.

[MadHound]

2. And with whom do we have a better chance of putting that genie back in the bottle?

A 'Pug or a Democrat? A Democrat, certainly, which is why we need to be putting the pressure on Obama to stop this abhorrent practice now.

[CrispyQ]

4. I don't believe we'll ever get that genie back in the bottle.

At least not in my lifetime.


The corporate behemoth is another one. Sheesh.

[MadHound]

5. Well, we'd better,

Otherwise what is going on in Yemen and Sudan will start happening here. Each abuse by a Democratic president insures another abuse ten times worse by the next Republican president.

And if we don't bring corporations under control, well, we can kiss our country goodbye. I fear it is already too late.

[DerekG]

13. Why assume that Obama would be more benevolent?

All but one of our major 20th century wars were waged by Democratic administrations, and several of the chief executives were fairly progressive.

I doesn't make a bit of difference whether our pseudo tyrant is a donkey or elephant.

[woo me with science]

3. K&R Wake the hell up, America.

[Le Taz Hot]

6. I think "the public"

knows nothing of these matters because only policy wonks like us are paying attention and, let's face it, we're the minority.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. It's America's new Wonder Weapon designed to make us look like we didn't lose another war.

But....we did.

[ProSense]

8. This statement

It is amazing how accepting the public has become of the notion that we as a country can violate a nation's sovereignty anytime we want in order to kill its citizens, but also how accepting we are as a country to our fellow citizens being killed on the say-so of one man who ultimately acts as judge, jury and executioner.

...is ridiculous. Most of these countries cooperate with the U.S. There is also the AUMF, similiarly a law dating back to Clinton's Presidency. And the President has always had the authority to act in defense of the country's national security, even with a Constitutional lead time to justify committing troops to war.

[MadHound]

9. Just because a law dates to Clinton doesn't make it right,

Furthermore, Yemen, Pakistan and other countries have launched protest after protest about drone attacks, all for naught, we keep violating their sovereignty.

And yes, the President himself admits that he is ultimately acting as judge, jury and executioner. That is truth, whether you like it or not.

[ProSense]

11. Naive much?

"Furthermore, Yemen, Pakistan and other countries have launched protest after protest about drone attacks, all for naught, we keep violating their sovereignty."

That's like Karzai objecting to a strike. These countries cooperate, and they largely protest when civilians casualties are involved, and look for the U.S. to apologize.

The notion that America is carrying out these policies like some rogue nation is beyond naive.

[MadHound]

12. No, these countries file formal protests,

And well they should, we are launching military missions over their countries without their permission.
http://dawn.com/2012/08/24/us-confirms-protests-against-drone-strikes/
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/08/23/pakistan-summons-us-envoy-to-protest-drone-strikes/

What do you call a nation which violates another nation's sovereignty? Oh, yeah, a rogue nation. What would you think if China started sending drones over the US targeting Chinese dissidents here, and the surrounding innocents as well?

[hifiguy]

10. I agree, but this horse has been out of the barn for almost five decades.

There are aspects of foreign policy that have been, since 11/22/63, and will seemingly always remain, in the hands of the Military-Intelligence complex. The last president who stood up to the MilInt complex was John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who after the Bay of Pigs fiasco famously stated that he wanted to "break the CIA into a thousand pieces."

JFK defused the Cuban Missile Crisis largely by standing up to the military brass, who wanted full scale war up to and including a nuclear exchange, and went on to open back channel diplomacy with Premier Krushchev of the USSR and even Cuba's Fidel Castro. On several occasions shortly before his death JFK told close associates (who have been quoted in numerous books - too numerous to mention here) that following his re-election in 1964 he intended to remove all US military advisers from South Vietnam.

His famous American University speech of June 10, 1963, titled "A Strategy For Peace" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_University_speech) was almost certainly the final nail in his coffin. Kennedy proposed, in effect, his intention to radically de-escalate, if not end, the Cold War. There was no way on earth that the MilInt complex could allow JFK to live given the policies outlined in that speech and his intention to disengage from Vietnam. Far too much money and power was on the line for JFK to be allowed to go on, President of the United States or not.

To this day I suspect two things, the first being that the Vietnam War was extracted from Lyndon Johnson as the price for allowing LBJ to pursue his Great Society dreams, and secondly, that it has been "explained" to every Democrat elected to the presidency since that there are sharply circumscribed limits on his power to affect certain aspects of the foreign policy that the MilInt complex and other Powers That Be wish to pursue. And the example of what became of John Kennedy is used, whether obliquely or explicitly, to explain the price of defying those power centers. Unsurprisingly, Democratic presidents have caved in rather than be rubbed out as Kennedy was. Republicans don't need to be threatened. They've been in bed with these powers since the days of Nixon.

There are simply things even Presidents are not permitted by TPTB to do. Read James Douglass' "JFK and the Unspeakable" and your questions about the whys and wherefores will be answered.