BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
SO many critics about the Obama administration's plans and actions against daesh, and so few of them offer realistic alternative plans of actions. Anyone of any political party trying to use the terrorist attacks in Paris for their own political gain is disgusting. We should be united in our efforts to defeat and destroy terrorism and if suggestions and opinions are to be expressed they should be realistic and practical, not propaganda, fear-mongering, misinformation and deception. +Senator Tim Kaine has been calling for congress to to pass authorization for the American war on daesh / isis for months to no avail. A dangerous precedence is being set allowing our President to wage war without congressional authorization, and congress should hold a debate and vote on AUMF to be on record on the matter and also to take a stand for the defense of our Republic's constitution. These from Sen Tim Kaine's website, +Mother Jones and +PolitiFact ......
In the wake of the
Paris attacks last week, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) a member of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took to the Senate floor today to
renew his call for Congress to debate and vote on an Authorization for
Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIL. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who
introduced a compromise AUMF with Kaine in June, joined him on the
Senate floor to express his support for a debate on war authorization.
In
the wake of the Paris attacks last week, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) a
member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took to the Senate
floor today to renew his call for Congress to debate and vote on an
Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIL. Sen. Jeff
Flake (R-AZ), who introduced a compromise AUMF with Kaine in June,
joined him on the Senate floor to express his support for a debate on
war authorization.
Yes, Obama Does Have an Anti-ISIS Plan "to Take Out These Bastards"
At
a Monday press conference at the G20 meeting in Turkey, President
Barack Obama was repeatedly asked by American reporters a version of
this question: What are you doing to defeat ISIS? CNN's Jim Acosta put
it in these Twitterish terms:
"Why can't we take out these bastards?" His passionate formulation
seemed to imply that the Obama administration was not doing everything
reasonably possible to vanquish ISIS. And throughout the presser, Obama
explained that there was a strategy in place, asserted that other ideas
(such as sending in ground troops or establishing a no-fly zone in
Syria) were constantly being scrutinized, and expressed frustration that
he was being asked the same question (what's your plan?) repeatedly.
Obama was right. He does have a strategy, and for more than a year
the United States has taken many actions to thwart ISIS. Whether these
steps are the best that can be attempted (weighing all the complicated
costs and benefits) is subject to debate. But Obama's
opponents—particularly those Republicans seeking to succeed him in the
White House—often assail him as if he's a feckless, do-nothing
commander-in-chief who has no understanding of ISIS and has mounted
practically no effort to counter these murderous extremists. But that's
hardly the case.
Ask
the White House what the president has done to combat ISIS—the
president prefers to call the group ISIL—and aides will quickly point
out that Obama has forged a coalition of 65 nations that are supporting
local forces in Iraq fighting against ISIS. This effort has launched
8,100 airstrikes on ISIS targets in a little more than a year. (For
comparison's sake, there have been about 400 drone strikes against targets in Pakistan since 2004.) The White House notes that US military forces recently struck 116 ISIS fuel trucks
and disrupted the group's oil-smuggling and financing capabilities. And
two weeks ago the president announced he would be sending additional special operations forces
to work with Kurds battling ISIS in northern Syria. At the same time,
Obama noted the administration would step up supplying equipment to
anti-ISIS forces in Syria.
For weeks, administration reps have been describing their anti-ISIS efforts. In late October, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter testified
on Capitol Hill and claimed that the US military effort to help
moderate Syrians fighting to gain control of Raqqa, an ISIS stronghold
in Syria, had made gains and that these Syrians were 30 miles from the
strategically important city. He noted the overall air campaign against
ISIS was intensifying, and he said the United States was prepared to
provide more air support and equipment to Iraqi forces battling ISIS,
provided that the Iraqis demonstrate progress and the ability to
preserve recent gains in Anbar province. "We've given the Iraqi
government two battalions' worth of equipment for mobilizing Sunni
tribal forces," Carter said. "As we continue to provide this support,
the Iraqi government must ensure it is distributed effectively."
Carter cited recent successes on the ground: the Kurdish-led hostage rescue mission
in northern Iraq and assorted raids against ISIS leaders: "The raid on
Abu Sayyaf's home, and strikes against Junaid Hussain and most recently
Sanafi al-Nasr, should all serve notice to ISIL and other terrorist
leaders that once we locate them, no target is beyond our reach." He
told the senators that all the ideas touted by Obama's critics—a no-fly
zone, a buffer zone, humanitarian zone—had been reviewed and pose their
own challenges.
In a November 12 speech,
Secretary of State John Kerry also outlined details of the
administration's anti-ISIS campaign. He said that the number of
airstrikes was rising: "There were more than 40 just last night." He
added that "the coalition and its allies on the ground have defended
Mosul Dam and other vital facilities in Iraq while also preventing a
terrorist assault on Baghdad. We have driven [ISIS] from the critical
border town of Kobani…We've seen the city of Tikrit liberated." He
pointed out that "thousands of American advisers" were training and
assisting Iraqi security forces. "We have significantly degraded
[ISIS's] top leadership, including Haji Mutazz, the organization's
second in command," Kerry added, "and we continue to eliminate
commanders and other personnel from the battlefield."
And there's more: helping Iraqi forces aiming to take back Ramadi and
boosting the shipment of supplies and ammo to Syrians fighting ISIS.
Also, Kerry remarked, the Obama administration was trying to bolster the
efforts of its European allies and those allies in the region: "Not
long ago, [ISIS] controlled more than half of Syria's 500-mile-long
border with Turkey. Today, it has a grip on only about 15 percent, and
we have a plan with our partners to pry open and secure the rest." And,
Kerry noted, the administration had been pushing a diplomatic initiative
in Syria aimed at deescalating the conflict within that country, which,
if successful, would allow for a more concentrated multilateral assault
on ISIS.
"Remember, this [anti-ISIS] coalition has only been together for 14
months," Kerry said. And administration officials like to toss out this
particular stat: ISIS has lost between 20 and 25 percent of the
populated territory it used to control in Iraq.
So Obama and his team can recite a long list of actions and a short—but significant—list of accomplishments. Still, the Paris attacks (as well as attacks in Beirut and the downing of a Russian airliner, which have been attributed to ISIS) and
the ability of ISIS to maintain its quasi-state within not one but two
countries can be cited as a sign that ISIS, to some extent, is
prevailing, even if it has lost ground.
Obama's anti-ISIS plan is nuanced, multifaceted, tethered to the
vexing realities of the region, and focused on long-term success—and it
avoids the risks and unforeseen consequences of deploying American
ground troops to directly engage with ISIS on Syrian or Iraqi territory.
It does not involve grand or sweeping actions. It does not promise
complete and immediate success by a date certain. Consequently, Obama is
vulnerable to criticism from those who claim bolder (if sometimes
unspecified) action would yield better and quicker results. Perhaps
additional steps could produce more progress. For example, Brian
Katulis, an expert on the Middle East and terrorism at the Center for
American Progress, faults Obama for not leaning hard enough on partners
in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to make busting ISIS a
top priority. But with the national discourse so thoroughly shaped by
politics and ideology, it will be hard to have a cool and reasonable
debate over alternatives or add-ons to Obama's approach.
The Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq in 2003 unleashed forces and
challenges that might require decades to counter, and Obama has been
trying to implement a series of actions to end the danger that war
generated. Yet any decent plan could take a long time to take out the
bastards.
When President Barack
Obama said ISIS, or ISIL, was contained, he "was responding very
specifically to the geographic expansion of ISIL in Iraq and Syria."
— Ben Rhodes on Sunday, November 15th, 2015 in comments on ABC's "This Week"
By Lauren Carroll on Sunday, November 15th, 2015 at 4:18 p.m.
President Barack Obama discussing ISIS. (Screengrab)
Last week, President Barack Obama said
the Islamic State is "contained" -- a comment that has been scrutinized
in the wake of the deadly attacks in Paris that have been attributed to
the terrorist group.
But has Obama’s comment been taken out of context?
ABC This Week host George Stephanopoulos presented White
House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes with a list of
politicians criticizing Obama for his Nov. 12 remarks. Republican
presidential candidate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, for example, said Obama sees the world "as a fantasy."
Rhodes said Obama was talking about a particular aspect of
containment that in no way dismissed the possibility of terrorist
attacks in the West.
"The president was responding very specifically to the geographic
expansion of ISIL in Iraq and Syria," Rhodes said, using another acronym
for the group. "A year ago, we saw them on the march in Iraq and Syria,
taking more and more population centers. The fact is that we have been
able to stop that geographic advance and take back significant amounts
of territory in both northern Iraq and northern Syria. At the same time,
that does not diminish the fact that there is a threat posed by ISIL,
not just in those countries but in their aspirations to project power
overseas."
This reminded us of a prior fact-check, when Obama said he didn’t
specifically describe ISIS as a "JV team" -- a statement we rated False
because he was clearly talking about the Islamic State at the time. We
decided to look back at Obama’s comments on containing ISIS to see his
comments in their complete context. Rewind
In the context of Obama’s Nov. 12 interview with Stephanopoulos
-- the day before the Paris attacks -- it’s actually quite clear that
when he says ISIS is contained, he is talking about ISIS’s territorial
expansion in Syria and Iraq. Here are the relevant parts of the
interview:
Stephanopoulos: "Some of
your critics say, even your friendly critics say, like Fareed Zakaria,
that what you have on the ground now is not going to be enough. Every
couple of months you're going to be faced with the same choice of back
down or double down."
Obama: "I think what is
true is that this has always been a multiyear project precisely because
the governance structures in the Sunni areas of Iraq are weak, and there
are none in Syria. And we don't have ground forces there in sufficient
numbers to simply march into Al-Raqqah in Syria and clean the whole
place out. And as a consequence, we've always understood that our goal
has to be militarily constraining ISIL's capabilities, cutting off their
supply lines, cutting off their financing at the same time as we're
putting a political track together in Syria and fortifying the best
impulses in Baghdad so that we can, not just win militarily, but also
win by improving governance."
Stephanopoulos: "And that's the strategy you've been following. But ISIS is gaining strength, aren't they?"
Obama: "Well, no, I don't think they're gaining strength. What
is true is that from the start, our goal has been first to contain, and
we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in
Syria they'll come in, they'll leave. But you don't see this systematic
march by ISIL across the terrain. What we have not yet
been able to do is to completely decapitate their command and control
structures. We've made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of
foreign fighters."
When Obama said "we have contained them," it’s within a plainly
defined scope: ISIS’s territorial ambitions in Iraq and Syria. This
context is bolstered by the fact that Stephanopoulos asks Obama about
the ground efforts in those two countries.
He wasn’t saying, as critics have shorthanded, that ISIS no longer
presents a threat -- an assertion that the Paris attacks would have
negated. In fact, in the same interview, Obama acknowledged that ISIS
might have surpassed al-Qaida as the greatest terror threat in the
world, adding that they are constantly looking for "a crack in the
system" to exploit to carry out attacks. "I think that one of the
challenges of these international terrorist organizations is that they
don't have to have a huge amount of personnel," Obama said. Is ISIS contained in Iraq and Syria?
The region Obama refers to is significant because it’s the epicenter
of ISIS’s caliphate. We surveyed a number of experts, and they all said
Obama is accurate when he says ISIS hasn’t gained territory in Iraq and
Syria in recent months, though it does not give a full picture of ISIS’s
global reach.
"It’s a choice of words that isn’t great, but what he is referring to
-- as opposed to the way people have interpreted it -- is correct,"
said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, senior fellow at the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies.
While ISIS has captured a couple towns in the past few months, it has
ultimately lost roughly a quarter of its Iraq and Syria territory
overall. A good portion of the losses resulted from United States
airstrikes but also from fighting with Iraqi forces and regional groups, Gartenstein-Ross said. This is a far cry from a year ago, when there was serious concern that ISIS would capture Baghdad.
But even though they haven’t expanded territorially recently, ISIS
continues to counterattack anti-ISIS forces in the region, noted
Frederick Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the
American Enterprise Institute. He added that ISIS has actually expanded
globally -- with strongholds and cells in Libya, Yemen, the Sinai
region, and Bangladesh, as well as establishing ties with other
terrorist organizations in Africa.
This November map from the Institute for the Study of War shows where ISIS has ties. The stars indicate where ISIS has a remote "governorate."
And, as we know from the Paris attacks, ISIS is able to flex their muscle in the West, too.
"They are being contained geographically by traditional military but
they are leapfrogging over it using terrorism," said Joshua Landis,
director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of
Oklahoma. He added that Obama used "your grandfather’s notion of
containment." Our ruling
Rhodes said that when Obama said ISIS was contained, he "was
responding very specifically to the geographic expansion of ISIL in Iraq
and Syria."
Looking back at Obama’s interview where he made this comment, it is
quite clear that it’s within a narrowly defined scope: ISIS’s
territorial expansion in Iraq and Syria. He did not rule out the
potential for a terrorist attack, and he also made it clear that the
United States’ anti-ISIS efforts are a work in progress.
References or suggestions that Obama claimed ISIS no longer presents an active threat are incorrect.
Further, experts told us that Obama is right that ISIS hasn’t
expanded in the region in recent months, though this doesn’t give a full
picture of ISIS’s global reach.
Rhodes’ statement rates True.
ABC News, This Week, Nov. 15, 2015
ABC News, "Full Interview Transcript: President Barack Obama," Nov. 12, 2015
Institute for the Study of War, "ISIS’ Global Strategy: A Wargame," July 2015
ISW, "ISIS Global Strategy," November 2015
Phone interview, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Nov. 15, 2015
Phone interview, Joshua Landis, University of Oklahoma, Nov. 15, 2015
Email interview, Frederick Kagan, American Enterprise Institute, Nov. 15, 2015
Email interview, David Schanzer, Duke University, Nov. 15, 2015
Email interview, Bruce Riedel, Brookings Institution, Nov. 15, 2015
Email interview, National Security Council spokespersons Ned Price and Emily Horne, Nov. 15, 2015
WE THE PEOPLE have a right to know who we are at war with. If our troops are going to be sacrificed, if our national wealth is going to be expended, we have the right to know who we are at war with and why and to what end. This is just another example of what a disappointment the Obama administration has become. From Propublica...
President Obama has repeatedly said the U.S. is targeting Al Qaeda and
“associated forces.” But the government won’t say who those forces are.
(STAFF/AFP/Getty Images)
by Cora Currier ProPublica, July 26, 2013, 10:13 a.m
In a major national security speech
this spring, President Obama said again and again that the U.S. is at
war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.”
So who exactly are those associated forces? It’s a secret.
At a hearing in May, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked the Defense Department to provide him with a current list of Al Qaeda affiliates.
The Pentagon responded – but Levin’s office told ProPublica they
aren’t allowed to share it. Kathleen Long, a spokeswoman for Levin,
would say only that the department’s “answer included the information
requested.”
A Pentagon spokesman told ProPublica that revealing such a list could cause “serious damage to national security.”
“Because elements that might be considered ‘associated forces’ can
build credibility by being listed as such by the United States, we have
classified the list,” said the spokesman, Lt. Col. Jim Gregory. “We
cannot afford to inflate these organizations that rely on violent
extremist ideology to strengthen their ranks.”
It’s not an abstract question: U.S. drone strikes and other actions frequently target “associated forces,” as has been the case with dozens of strikes against an Al Qaeda offshoot in Yemen.
During the May hearing, Michael Sheehan, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, said
he was “not sure there is a list per se.” Describing terrorist groups
as “murky” and “shifting,” he said, “it would be difficult for the
Congress to get involved in trying to track the designation of which are
the affiliate forces” of Al Qaeda.
Sheehan said that by the Pentagon’s standard, “sympathy is not
enough…. it has to be an organized group and that group has to be in
co-belligerent status with Al Qaeda operating against the United
States.”
The White House tied Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and “elements” of Al Shabaab in Somalia to Al Qaeda in a recent report to Congress on military actions. But the report also included a classified annex.
Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law who served as a legal counsel during the Bush administration and has writtenon this question
at length, told ProPublica that the Pentagon’s reasoning for keeping
the affiliates secret seems weak. “If the organizations are ‘inflated’
enough to be targeted with military force, why cannot they be mentioned
publicly?” Goldsmith said. He added that there is “a countervailing very
important interest in the public knowing who the government is fighting
against in its name."
The law underpinning the U.S. war against Al Qaeda is known as the
Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, and it was passed one week after the 9/11 attacks. It doesn’t actually include the words “associated forces,” though courts and Congress have endorsed the phrase.
As we explained earlier this year, the emergence of new or more loosely-aligned terrorist groups has legal scholars wondering how effectively the U.S. will be able to “shoehorn” them into the AUMF. During the May hearing, many lawmakers expressed concern about the Pentagon’s capacious reading of the law. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., described it as a “carte blanche.”
Obama, in his May speech, said he looked forward “to engaging
Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately
repeal, the AUMF’s mandate.” But he didn’t give a timeframe. On
Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., introduced an amendment that would sunset the law at the end of 2014, to coincide with the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. It was voted down the same day, 185 to 236.
The AUMF isn’t the only thing the government relies on to take
military action. In speeches and interviews Obama administration
officials also bring up the president’s constitutional power to defend the country, even without congressional authorization. http://www.propublica.org/article/who-are-we-at-war-with-thats-classified
I, for one, do not trust our government on their drone policy, and am glad this is now a matter of legislative and public discussion as there are issues concerning civil liberties and human rights to be considered. Those calling for control and regulation of local, state and federal government use of drones in the U.S. are not helped by people like Glenn Greenwald. From HuffPost.....
When I began the day, I promised myself I wasn't going to write about drones or anti-drone crusader and Guardian blogger Glenn Greenwald or the war on terrorism again, mainly because I covered the topic here last week and several more times elsewhere. But the drone topic continues to be fueled by misinformation and a considerable dose of hysteria.
Now, once again, it's important and increasingly mandatory that I reiterate my position on the administration's use of drones because of the degree of kneejerkery circulating through the tubes. For what it's worth, the president should be stripped of his war powers via a repeal of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, the war on terrorism should end and the use of drones by the military and CIA should be regulated by Congress. Simple and direct.
That said, there's also a lot of nonsense floating around out there which goes far beyond rational, reasonable activism on the problem. For example, Greenwald tweeted the following note the other day, and I can't help but respond:
The link takes you to a story out of Monroe, North Carolina, where the local police department has ordered -- stop the presses and alert Code Pink! -- a drone to augment its law enforcement efforts.
Based on Greenwald's tweet, you might be thinking, Holy crap on a stick! Drones patrolling the skies of Monroe, North Carolina (wherever that is) -- launching Hellfire missiles at moonshiners and big city carpetbaggers! It's the rise of the machines! Damn you, Skynet! Run away! Run away! DRONES!
But of course this tweet was a stellar example of the hyperbole that Greenwald markets to his followers on the drones issue. The sensationalism works especially well on Twitter with people who merely read the screaming slug-line and frantically retweet it without clicking the link. If we merely read the text, we're led to believe that local police departments are evolving into huckleberry-sized drone franchisees of the Obama administration's counterterrorism weapon of choice. And, worse, it appears as if terrifying drones have been "married" to the (admittedly worthless) drug war. Drones and the drug war: an incendiary Venn Diagram guaranteed to spark a geyser of outraged megadittoes from Greenwald's acolytes. What ho?! Local Gomers pursuing harmless, giggly pot smokers with drones?! Due process is truly dead! IEEEEE!
If we click on the article itself, however, we quickly discover what's really going on.
1) The drone is a Maveric UAV, designed and marketed by a local Monroe outfit called Condor Aerial. Maverics don't carry weaponry of any kind and can't provide long-term surveillance due to its maximum 90-minute flight time.
2) Based on the news story, the police department intends to use the drone essentially as they would a helicopter for the stated purposes of "rescue, natural disasters, pursuits and other aerial needs," including situations like "a bank robbery, or any incident where the officers are pursuing someone on foot." Though, at $44,000, the drone is considerably less expensive to purchase and maintain than a chopper. Unless the drone develops artificial intelligence and begins to think for itself, I'm having a difficult time distinguishing it from any other law enforcement aircraft beyond the fact that its pilot is on the ground. And, hell, they can put a deadly police sniper on a helicopter. Not so with the Maveric.
3) The word "drugs" or the phrase "drug war" don't appear anywhere in the article. It's possible that Greenwald interpreted "asset forfeiture" as being specifically about drug dealers (the government uses this admittedly dubious process on all sorts of criminals), but there's not a single mention to that effect. Though I suppose it's possible, it's definitely not a fact pulled from the article he linked.
4) The Maveric has been available since 2003 and 160 law enforcement agencies nationwide are already using similar tools.
5) And finally, here's a photo of the Maveric drone:
Scary, huh. It looks like a stubbier, steampunkish B52 or maybe the dropship from the Aliensmovie, capable of totally blasting you into vapor. Now imagine Barney Fife in Bungledick, North Carolina with this behemoth war machine at his disposal.
But wait. Before you lapse into an oh-so-sweet outrage coma because it's a big scary drone, here's the Maveric shown to scale:
I hasten to note that I pulled this directly from the Condor Aerial website and I absolutely didn't Photoshop anything. Yeah, so, it's tiny. When I saw this pic, I actually said out loud to no one, "It's a radio-controlled toy airplane with a fancy camera!" I mean, if the police began to chase you with this thing, you could feasibly thwack it out of the sky with a tennis racquet or a well-aimed dodgeball.
Conclusion: it's not the kind of "drone" Greenwald wanted you to think it was.
Seriously, though, I absolutely agree that it's always a good idea to keep a tenacious eye on government authority. Anyone who's read my posts against the (formerly) naked body scannersand the perpetual fearmongering of the previous administration knows I'm hardly a fan of government overreach on this front. But if we, as citizens and activists, want to be taken as grown-ups, it seems to me as if we need to pick our battles wisely, and this stupid little toy (albeit anexpensive stupid little toy) probably shouldn't be one of those battles.
As for Greenwald, the misleading nature of his tweet speaks volumes about how not every screed he blurts into the tubes should be taken as gospel. Rather, he's an activist who's clearly willing to grab any miniscule dollop of nothing and, using his obvious talent for writing, expand it intosomething that you should be outraged about -- or else you're an apologist for sinister personality cults and power-drunk authoritarian zealots. It's a compelling yet deceptive rhetorical cocktail: Here's an obvious trespass you should be viscerally offended by, and, if you don't mash the panic-button because, say, you realize that this big bad drone is really a radio-controlled toy, here's a hearty pile of shame-on-you to suck on. I don't know for sure, but it seems as if Greenwald believes that by issuing hyperbolic missives peppered with this-other-smart-person-agrees-with-me-so-I'm-right-and-you're-not-one-of-us shaming, he'll be seen as a steadfastly vigilant activist even if not everything he writes passes the sniff test. It's all a means to an end. If he can make his disciples poop their big boy pants about the Monroe PD's "drone," he's scored a crucial push-back in his ongoing struggle against the forces of evil. Evil toys.
I do not like Sen rand paul R KY. I do not like his politics and I think he is both ignorant and hypocritical in his personal and political life. HOWEVER, I do appreciate his filibuster on drones in the Senate this week, both for the subject and because he was on the floor of the Senate publicly conducting his filibuster and not hiding behind a cowardly, anonymous hold. Considering the Obama administration's lack of respect for civil liberties and human rights (rivaling that of the previous bush administration) Sen paul did us all a favor by forcing the government to state publicly they will not use drones to attack and kill Americans on American soil. What a sad commentary that a people actually had to ask this of their own government. From Mother Jones....
Yes, the president does have the authority to use military force against American citizens on US soil—but only in "an extraordinary circumstance," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday.
"The US Attorney General's refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening," Paul said Tuesday. "It is an affront the constitutional due process rights of all Americans."
Last month, Paul threatened to filibuster the nomination of John Brennan, Obama's pick to head the CIA, "until he answers the question of whether or not the president can kill American citizens through the drone strike program on US soil." Tuesday, Brennan told Paulthat "the agency I have been nominated to lead does not conduct lethal operations inside the United States—nor does it have any authority to do so." Brennan said that the Justice Department would answer Paul's question about whether Americans could be targeted for lethal strikes on US soil.
Holder's answer was more detailed, however, stating that under certain circumstances, the president would have the authority to order lethal attacks on American citizens. The two possible examples of such "extraordinary" circumstances were the attack on Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. An American president ordering the use of lethal military force inside the United States is "entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront," Holder wrote. Here's the bulk of the letter:
As members of this administration have previously indicated, the US government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so. As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat. We have a long history of using the criminal justice system to incapacitate individuals located in our country who pose a threat to the United States and its interests abroad. Hundreds of individuals have been arrested and convicted of terrorism-related offenses in our federal courts.
The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States. For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.
The letter concludes, "were such an emergency to arise, I would examine the particular facts and circumstances before advising the president of the scope of his authority."
In a Google+ Hangout last month, President Obama refused to say directly if he had the authority to use lethal force against US citizens. As Mother Jones reported at the time, the reason the president was being so coy is that the answer was likely yes. Now we know that's exactly what was happening. "Any use of drone strikes or other premeditated lethal force inside the United States would raise grave legal and ethical concerns," says Raha Wala, an attorney with Human Rights First. "There should be equal concern about using force overseas."
This post has been edited to include Paul's statement and the final line of Holder's letter.
Reporter
Adam Serwer is a reporter at the Washington, DC, bureau of Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. You can also follow him on Twitter. Email tips and insights to aserwer [at] motherjones [dot] com. RSS | TWITTER
Attorney General Eric Holder testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee.C-Span
It took Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) filibustering for 13 straight hours, but the White House has finally clarified that President Barack Obama cannot order a drone strike on an American citizen on American soil. In a curt, 43-word letter, Attorney General Eric Holder clarified the administration's stance.
"It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: "Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?" Holder wrote. "The answer to that question is no."
Holder had previously stated in a letter to Paul that he believed it would be appropriate to use deadly military force on American soil in two "catastrophic" scenarios—namely another Pearl Harbor or 9/11.
"Nobody questions if planes are flying towards the Twin Towers whether they can be repulsed by the military," Paul said during his filibuster Wednesday. "Nobody questions whether a terrorist with a rocket launcher or a grenade launcher is attacking us, whether they can be repelled."
Paul had also asked during his filibuster whether an Arab American "sitting in a cafeteria in Dearborn, Michigan," and suspected of ties to terror could be targeted with lethal force by a drone. "As for Paul and Holder, I suspect they're in complete agreement on the 'café' hypothetical—but who isn't?" says Steve Vladeck, a professor at American University School of Law. "This isn't about cafés—it's about dirt roads in northern Yemen."
If we dig beyond the headlines and read the actual letter Holder wrote, we'd realize that Holder absolutely did not write what those headlines would lead us to believe.
Before we continue, I'd like to make my position on all of this perfectly clear because it's becoming increasingly difficult to carry on a rational discussion about the use of lethal force against enemy combatants born in the U.S., as well as the use of drones as a military weapon. The president is on shaky ground when it comes to these related issues, given the endless nature of the war on terrorism and the war powers provided by the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force (endless war equals endless war powers, and such a prospect is unacceptable). The AUMF should be repealed, the president's war powers rescinded and the use of drones regulated and defined, otherwise we're allowing the president to retain war powers in perpetuity, making them ostensibly permanent.
But however much I disagree with the policy and the potential abuse of the technology, I can easily understand the administration's position. Congress granted it the wartime authority, both in terms of war powers and in terms of funding for drone technology. Under the current status of the executive branch (which I believe ought to be repealed) the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon has the power to fight the enemy as they see it, as has every administration that's operated under congressionally approved war powers.
Got it? I'm opposed the administration retaining its war powers. Against it.
So back to it. Nearly half of Holder's one-page letter discussed how it's not the administration's policy to use drones on American soil. In fact, Holder says the administration has no intention of ever doing so. Though if you read the headlines and leads in each of the above items, you'd think the White House was launching drones off the White House lawn and deploying them to your back yard. Holder continued:
As a policy matter, moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat. We have a long history of using the criminal justice system to incapacitate individuals located in our country who pose a threat to the United States and its interests abroad. Hundreds of individuals have been arrested and convicted of terrorism-related offenses in our federal courts.
This is an explicit rejection of drone strikes against citizens inside the borders of the United States in lieu of a fairly straightforward embrace of traditional law enforcement mechanisms. And it's not a surprise. Since the outset, the administration has attempted to migrate the counter-terrorism process into line with something more closely resembling a traditional legal and judicial process. If you recall, the administration attempted to close Guantanamo and move its detainees to maximum security prisons on the mainland, but nearly every member of Congress, including very liberal members by the way, blocked funding for the move while simultaneously screaming the familiar "not in my back yard" refrain. Furthermore, Holder attempted to bring suspected terrorists to trial in American courts -- another move that was almost universally rejected.
In the third paragraph of his memo, Holder responded to Rand Paul's "hypothetical" scenario with speculation about an impending Pearl Harbor or 9/11 attack. But the paragraph contains no mentions of drones. None. Instead, Holder wrote that the president has the power to "authorize the military to use lethal force" against armed attackers. Granted, it's conceivable Holder was implying the use of drones, but he didn't explicitly write about the use of drones. Then again, what difference does the weapon make? If a hijacked plane is hurtling toward a skyscraper, does it really matter whether it's potentially shot down by a fighter jet (as were deployed on 9/11) or with a surface to air missile or with a predator drone?
As big a conundrum as this presents, he president absolutely has the authority to shoot down a hijacked airplane in a 9/11 scenario. Likewise with a Pearl Harbor attack -- even more so given the presence of foreign attackers. Or what if a Secret Service agent or an armed military escort spots a man in a window overlooking the presidential motorcade and the man is aiming a rifle at the president? Naturally the Secret Service agent is within the boundaries of the law to shoot that man in the head. These are the kinds of situations the Holder letter described, and the president has always held these powers long before the war on terror and long before Barack Obama.
Thus, this week's array of headlines weren't entirely inaccurate -- jumping to the conclusion that Holder believes the president reserves the right to use drones against American citizens on our soil, full stop. It's much easier, more dramatic and there's more potential for web traffic to hyper-jump to the conclusion that the attorney general put into writing that the president can wantonly deploy drones to patrol our skies with the authority to kill you if you're somehow suspected of being a threat to national security. He did nothing of the sort.
Fast forward to yesterday when Holder wrote a second letter to Rand Paul further clarifying the issue.
Dear Senator Paul:
It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: "Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?" The answer to that question is no.
Sincerely,
Eric H. Holder, Jr.
So the question should be more or less settled. The administration confirms that it doesn't have the authority to kill you while you're sitting at a cafe drinking coffee, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) described this week. Furthermore, there's no authority granted to the president to deploy lethal force against an American citizen on American soil unless they're engaged in an attack against Americans.
Now tell me, I wonder how Rand Paul -- who, by the way, recently grilled Hillary Clinton in a senate hearing over the president's alleged failure in Benghazi -- would react if President Obama had refused to thwart such attacks and allowed them to happen. It's not a stretch to assume that Paul and his Republican Party would launch an inquisition leading to an impeachment trial if Obama had the opportunity but failed to shoot down a hijacked airliner and it crashed into, say, the U.S. Capitol building or a civilian facility like the Georgetown University Hospital. Imagine the Benghazi screeching times a gazillion.
But not once has any Republican, including Cruz and Rand Paul, mentioned anything about ending the war on terrorism or repealing the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The lack of nuance, as well as the lack of a sense of history on both the far-right (and the far-left for that matter) is eerily coincidental. Again, it's important to have oversight on drones, but let's get real here. Too many players seem to have hastily constructed a bridge of paranoia and hyperbole between "a guy having a coffee" and "hijacked planes careening towards skyscrapers."
Why?
Other than the addition of a new weapon in the arsenal, what exactly has changed in terms of the president's military powers and policies inside the borders of the United States? Based on Holder's letter, nothing -- traditional law enforcement in nearly every circumstance and lethal military force if another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor happens to be in progress.
There's no harm in having an ongoing conversation about presidential powers and military authority. Such an endeavor requires perpetual diligence from both citizens and the press. But there's currently so much hysteria circulating around the topic of drones it's nearly impossible to see beyond the apoplexy. Historical precedent and heretofore commonly acknowledged presidential powers are forgotten, and too many people become instantly outraged whenever those powers are brought up in a 2013 context. Yes, throughout American history, the military and law enforcement has reserved the right to use lethal force to thwart crimes inside the United States. But when the word "drones" gets shoehorned into the context, everyone flips out and the truth gets lost. That's most certainly the case with the Holder letter.
At
a Monday press conference at the G20 meeting in Turkey, President
Barack Obama was repeatedly asked by American reporters a version of
this question: What are you doing to defeat ISIS? CNN's Jim Acosta put
it in these Twitterish terms:
"Why can't we take out these bastards?" His passionate formulation
seemed to imply that the Obama administration was not doing everything
reasonably possible to vanquish ISIS. And throughout the presser, Obama
explained that there was a strategy in place, asserted that other ideas
(such as sending in ground troops or establishing a no-fly zone in
Syria) were constantly being scrutinized, and expressed frustration that
he was being asked the same question (what's your plan?) repeatedly.
