Friedersdorf: Tyrant proof the White House -- before it's too late

[Winehole23]

An op-ed in Tuesday’s New York Times points out that, thanks to precedents set by President Obama, “whoever prevails in November will inherit a sweeping power to use lethal force against suspected terrorists and militants, including Americans.”


Let me put things more starkly: Under current precedent, the commander in chief can give a secret order to kill an American citizen with a drone strike without charges or trial.
Should Donald Trump have that power?

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...nherit/472743/

[Winehole23]

Back in 2013, I argued that the U.S. has been building “all the infrastructure a tyrant would need, courtesy of Bush and Obama,” adding, “More and more, we're counting on having angels in office and making ourselves vulnerable to devils.” With Trump and Hillary Clinton leading in the primaries, let’s revisit some particulars:

Bush and Obama have built infrastructure any devil would lust after. Behold the items on an aspiring tyrant's checklist that they've provided their successors:

• A precedent that allows the president to kill citizens in secret without prior judicial or legislative review

• The power to detain prisoners indefinitely without charges or trial

• Ongoing warrantless surveillance on millions of Americans accused of no wrongdoing, converted into a permanent database so that data of innocents spied upon in 2007 can be accessed in 2027

• Using ethnic profiling to choose the targets of secret spying, as the NYPD did with John Brennan's blessing

• Normalizing situations in which the law itself is secret -- and whatever mischief is hiding in those secret interpretations

• The permissibility of droning to death people whose iden ies are not even known to those doing the killing

• The ability to collect DNA swabs of people who have been arrested even if they haven't been convicted of anything

• A torture program that could be restarted with an executive order

Even if you think Bush and Obama exercised those extraordinary powers responsibly, what makes you think every president would? How can anyone fail to see the huge potential for abuses?

[Wild Cobra]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...nherit/472743/

Should any president have that power? Why single out Trump?

Should Hillary have that power?

[Winehole23]

Friedersdorf doesn't single out Trump:

Republicans in the House and Senate, it’s your responsibility to act, too. Many of you are horrified by the idea of a Trump Administration or a Clinton Administration. With a high likelihood that one of those two outcomes will be reality in a matter of months, why not begin reining in the power of the executive branch now, when the possibility of bipartisan cooperation on such a project is at its height?


This is a no-brainer.

[Wild Cobra]

A precedent that allows the president to kill citizens in secret without prior judicial or legislative review

That's a pretty sticky one. There would be very few incidents that could happen under. It would have to be in a different country as well.

The power to detain prisoners indefinitely without charges or trial

There has always been that prevision. That's nothing new. It only takes a tribunal by cons ution.

Ongoing warrantless surveillance on millions of Americans accused of no wrongdoing, converted into a permanent database so that data of innocents spied upon in 2007 can be accessed in 2027

Now this is troubling if true. I would like you to find the actual law that allows this. I'll bet it's not as damning as you think, and probably false as you worded it.

Using ethnic profiling to choose the targets of secret spying, as the NYPD did with John Brennan's blessing

Profiling, ethnic or not, shouldn't be a problem.

Normalizing situations in which the law itself is secret -- and whatever mischief is hiding in those secret interpretations

Some internals will be classified. But not the broad strokes supporting it. If it's only secret, you shouldn't much care when it comes to law. Now if it's TS/CSI, then care.

The permissibility of droning to death people whose iden ies are not even known to those doing the killing

Such separation is needed. Need to keep it clinical for those operation the mission.

Do you know what TS/CSI means, why it is needed, and why it's used?

The ability to collect DNA swabs of people who have been arrested even if they haven't been convicted of anything

Really? I doubt that. That would have very quickly been brought to the courts and deemed illegal.

A torture program that could be restarted with an executive order

Maybe, maybe not. It really depends on what the definition of torture amounts to.

[Wild Cobra]

Friedersdorf doesn't single out Trump:

OK...

It was just you with your selective quotes, right?

[boutons_deux]

Nobody Knows the Iden y of the 150 People Killed by U.S. in Somalia, but Most Are Certain They Deserved It

The U.S. used drones and manned aircraft yesterday to drop bombs and missiles on Somalia, ending the lives of at least 150 people. As it virtually always does, the Obama administration instantly claimed that the people killed were “terrorists” and militants — members of the Somali group al Shabaab — but provided no evidence to support that assertion.

Nonetheless, most U.S. media reports contained nothing more than quotes from U.S. officials about what happened, conveyed uncritically
and with no skepticism of their accuracy: The dead “fighters … were assembled for what American officials believe was a graduation ceremony and prelude to an imminent attack against American troops,” pronounced the New York Times. So, the official story goes, The Terrorists were that very moment “graduating” — receiving their Terrorist degrees — and about to attack U.S. troops when the U.S. killed them.

With that boilerplate set of claims in place, huge numbers of people today who have absolutely no idea who was killed are certain that they all deserved it. As my colleague Murtaza Hussain said of the 150 dead people: “We don’t know who they are, but luckily they were all bad.” For mindless authoritarians, the words “terrorist” and “militant” have no meaning other than: anyone who dies when my government drops bombs, or, at best, a “terrorist” is anyone my government tells me is a terrorist. Watch how many people today are defending this strike by claiming “terrorists” and “militants” were killed using those definitions even though they have literally no idea who was killed.

Other than the higher-than-normal death toll, this mass killing is an incredibly common event under the presidency of the 2009 Nobel Peace laureate, who has so far bombed seven predominantly Muslim countries. As Nick Turse has reported in The Intercept, Obama has aggressively expanded the stealth drone program and secret war in Africa.

This particular mass killing is unlikely to get much attention in the U.S. due to

(1) the election-season obsession with horse-race analysis and pressing matters such as the size of Donald Trump’s hands;

(2) widespread Democratic indifference to the killing of foreigners where there’s no partisan advantage to be had against the GOP from pretending to care;

(3) the invisibility of places like Somalia and the implicit devaluing of lives there; and

(4) the complete normalization of the model whereby the U.S. president kills whomever he wants, wherever he wants, without regard for any semblance of law, process, accountability, or evidence.
The lack of attention notwithstanding, there are several important points highlighted by yesterday’s bombing and the reaction to it:

1) The U.S. is not at war in Somalia. Congress has never declared war on Somalia, nor has it authorized the use of military force there. Morality and ethics to the side for the moment: What legal authority does Obama even possess to bomb this country?

I assume we can all agree that presidents shouldn’t be permitted to just go around killing people they suspect are “bad”: they need some type of legal authority to do the killing.

Since 2001, the U.S. government has legally justified its we-bomb-wherever-we-want approach by pointing to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), enacted by Congress in the wake of 9/11 to authorize the targeting of al Qaeda and “affiliated” forces. But al Shabaab did not exist in 2001 and had nothing to do with 9/11. Indeed, the group has not tried to attack the U.S. but instead, as the New York Times’ Charlie Savage noted in 2011, “is focused on a parochial insurgency in Somalia.” As a result, reported Savage, even “the [Obama] administration does not consider the United States to be at war with every member of the Shabaab.”

Instead, in the Obama administration’s view, specific senior members of al Shabaab can be treated as enemy combatants under the AUMF only if they adhere to al Qaeda’s ideology, are “integrated” into its command structure, and could conduct operations outside of Somalia. That’s why the U.S. government yesterday claimed that all the people it killed were about to launch attacks on U.S. soldiers: because, even under its own incredibly expansive view of the AUMF, it would be illegal to kill them merely on the ground that they were all members of al Shabaab, and the government thus needs a claim of “self-defense” to legally justify this.

But even under the “self-defense” theory that the U.S. government invoked, it is allowed — under its own policies promulgated in 2013 — to use lethal force away from an active war zone (e.g., Afghanistan) “only against a target that poses a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” Perhaps these Terrorists were about to imminently attack U.S. troops stationed in the region — immediately after the tassel on their graduation cap was turned at the “graduation ceremony,” they were going on the attack — but again, there is literally no evidence that any of that is true.

Given what’s at stake — namely, the conclusion that Obama’s killing of 150 people yesterday was illegal — shouldn’t we be demanding to see evidencethat the assertions of his government are actually true? Were these really all al Shabaab fighters and terrorists who were killed? Were they really about to carry out some sort of imminent, dangerous attack on U.S. personnel? Why would anyone be content to blindly believe the self-serving assertions of the U.S. government on these questions without seeing evidence? If you are willing to make excuses for why you don’t want to see any evidence, why would you possibly think you know what happened here — who was killed and under what cir stances — if all you have are conclusory, evidence-free assertions from those who carried out the killings?

2) There are numerous compelling reasons demanding skepticism of U.S. government claims about who it kills in airstrikes. To begin with, the Obama administration has formally re-defined the term “militant” to mean: “all military-age males in a strike zone” unless “there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”

In other words, the U.S. government presumptively regards all adult males it kills as “militants” unless evidence emerges that they were not. It’s an empty, manipulative term of propaganda and nothing else.

Beyond that, the U.S. government’s own do ents prove that in the vast majority of cases — 9 out of 10 in fact — it is killing people other than its intended targets.

Last April, the New York Times published an articleunder the headline “Drone Strikes Reveal Uncomfortable Truth: U.S. Is Often Unsure About Who Will Die.” It quoted the scholar Micah Zenko saying, “Most individuals killed are not on a kill list, and the government does not know their names.”

Moreover, the U.S. government has repeatedly been caught lying about the iden ies of its bombings victims. As that April NYT article put it, “Every independent investigation of the strikes has found far more civilian casualties than administration officials admit.”

Given that clear record of deliberate deceit, why would any rational person blindly swallow evidence-free assertions from the U.S. government about who it is killing? To put it mildly, extreme skepticism is warranted (after being criticized for its stenography, the final New York Times story yesterday at least included this phrase about the Pentagon’s claims about who it killed: “There was no independent way to verify the claim”).

3) Why does the U.S. have troops stationed in this part of Africa? Remember, even the Obama administration says it is not at war with al Shabaab.

Consider how circular this entire rationale is: The U.S., like all countries, obviously has a legitimate interest in protecting its troops from attack. But why does it have troops there at all in need of protection? The answer: The troops are there to operate drone bases and attack people they regard as a threat to them. But if they weren’t there in the first place, these groups could not pose a threat to them.

In sum: We need U.S. troops in Africa to launch drone strikes at groups that are trying to attack U.S. troops in Africa. It’s the ultimate self-perpetuating circle of imperialism: We need to deploy troops to other countries in order to attack those who are trying to kill U.S. troops who are deployed there.

4) If you’re an American who has lived under the war on terror, it’s easy to forget how extreme this behavior is. Most countries on the planet don’t routinely run around dropping bombs and killing dozens of people in multiple other countries at once, let alone do so in countries where they’re not at war.

But for Americans, this is now all perfectly normalized.

We just view our president as vested with the intrinsic, divine right, grounded in American exceptionalism, to deem whomever he wants “Bad Guys” and then — with no trial, no process, no accountability — order them killed. He’s the roving, Global Judge, Jury, and Executioner. And we see nothing disturbing or dangerous or even odd about that. We’ve been inculcated to view the world the way a 6-year-old watches cartoons: Bad Guys should be killed, and that’s the end of the story.

So yesterday the president killed roughly 150 people in a country where the U.S. is not at war.

The Pentagon issued a five-sentence boilerplate statement declaring them all “terrorists.”

And that’s pretty much the end of that.

Within literally hours, virtually everyone was ready to forget about the whole thing and move on, content in the knowledge — even without a shred of evidence or information about the people killed — that their government and president did the right thing.

Now that is a pacified public and malleable media.

https://theintercept.com/2016/03/08/...y-deserved-it/

[hater]

Should any president have that power? Why single out Trump?

Should Hillary have that power?

She got our ambassador killed. She's more dangerous than any human being

[boutons_deux]

"Let me put things more starkly: Under current precedent, the commander in chief can give a secret order to kill an American citizen with a drone strike without charges or trial."

So this typical American is only worried about a US President killing American citizens, not about untermenschen of non-Americans, esp. non-Christian, non-Euro-white untermenschen?

[Winehole23]

OK...

It was just you with your selective quotes, right?

all quotation is selective. I provided the link for anyone who cares to read, not sure what your beef is.

do you feel misled?

[Winehole23]

That's a pretty sticky one. There would be very few incidents that could happen under. It would have to be in a different country as well.


There has always been that prevision. That's nothing new. It only takes a tribunal by cons ution.


Now this is troubling if true. I would like you to find the actual law that allows this. I'll bet it's not as damning as you think, and probably false as you worded it.


Profiling, ethnic or not, shouldn't be a problem.



Some internals will be classified. But not the broad strokes supporting it. If it's only secret, you shouldn't much care when it comes to law. Now if it's TS/CSI, then care.


Such separation is needed. Need to keep it clinical for those operation the mission.

Do you know what TS/CSI means, why it is needed, and why it's used?


Really? I doubt that. That would have very quickly been brought to the courts and deemed illegal.


Maybe, maybe not. It really depends on what the definition of torture amounts to.

Put down WC as not worried. In the best of all possible worlds, nothing bad would happen.

[Wild Cobra]

all quotation is selective. I provided the link for anyone who cares to read, not sure what your beef is.

do you feel misled?

Not really. I know your MO.

I'm just a master of pointing out the obvious.

You support Hillary, so you didn't volunteer it.

[Wild Cobra]

Put down WC as not worried. In the best of all possible worlds, nothing bad would happen.

No, I don't like what I see. I'm just one that gets pissed of at ignoramuses like you who repeat lies along with the truth. When someone dismisses a single lie in the mix, they can readily dismiss the whole. If you want to make a valid point, then seek the truth, and only present the real points.

[Winehole23]

I'm unsure who I'll vote for this time around, but it won't be HRC. One should never say never, but I wouldn't vote for HRC, pretty much regardless.

[Wild Cobra]

I'm unsure who I'll vote for this time around, but it won't be HRC. One should never say never, but I wouldn't vote for HRC, pretty much regardless.

Leaves you hoping Sanders gets the nomination.

God... I hate elections.

I would even vote for Sanders if he runs against an idiot republican.

[SnakeBoy]

I'm unsure who I'll vote for this time around, but it won't be HRC. One should never say never, but I wouldn't vote for HRC, pretty much regardless.

I'm sure you'll find some obscure 3rd party candidate as always.

[Winehole23]

Leaves you hoping Sanders gets the nomination.

God... I hate elections.

I would even vote for Sanders if he runs against an idiot republican.

I might too.

[Winehole23]

I'm sure you'll find some obscure 3rd party candidate as always.

It'd be nice to vote to vote for someone I agree with halfway. Not sure if that's there for me this time.

[SpursforSix]

Friedersdorf doesn't single out Trump:

Should Donald Trump have that power?

and the picture to go along with the story

[Winehole23]

Trump leads, but Hilary was mentioned too.

Friedersdorf's point isn't hard to grasp: it were wise to be wary of giving the President too much power.

Even if it seems a good idea at the time, you never know who might be elected in the future.

Are you comfy with Bush/Obama's power resting in HRC's hands?

[Winehole23]

(fwiw, Friedersdorf is the Atlantic's token man of the right)