You’re an American citizen. Should the President have the power to accuse you — in secret and without your knowledge — of a grave offense against the United States, find you guilty as charged, sentence you to death, and authorize a secret government entity to kill you, secretly of course, when it finds you, possibly in a way that kills those with you when you are killed?
I think you would answer “No,” and just not a simple “No” but a “Hell, No!” fortississimo, followed by an equally emphatic “Secret trials and executions are unconstitutional!”.
Yet, a President Obama approved secret trial and execution (some would say assassination), recently resulted in the death of an American citizen born in New Mexico. Anwar Awlaki, a Muslim cleric and Islamic radical living in Yemen and thought to be responsible for initiating and abetting anti-American terrorist was blown to kingdom come by a CIA missile launched by a drone while he was motoring along a road in Yemen. According to Charles Savage’s report in the New York Times, a 50-page secret memorandum from the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel (OLC) provided the legal justification for why and how Awlaki was killed:
The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis.
…the Justice Department concluded that Mr. Awlaki was covered by the authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda that Congress enacted shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — meaning that he was a lawful target in the armed conflict unless some other legal prohibition trumped that authority.
During the Bush 43 administration, the OLC prepared secret memoranda to cover the southern exposures of the CIA and other federal agencies that were torturing captives, throwing people they didn’t like, including Americans seized in the United States (Padilla), into secret slammers for as long as they damned well pleased, and violating the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners. Remember John Yoo?
That was supposed to change when Barack Obama became President. When he was running for the office, Obama took a dim view of Bush 43’s abuse of civil liberties. But now that he is President, Obama is beginning to make Bush 43 look like a bleeding heart civil libertarian. He’s presiding over a secret government that grows and grows, that exercises secret powers of dubious constitutionality, and removes government policy and action from public accountability. We’re well on the way to converting a democratic nation into a giant police state that subordinates freedom to security, and that makes decisions based not on fact and reasoned, open debate, but on the secret fears, mostly imagined, of an increasingly paranoid and out-of-control constabulary. It’s frightening.
It’s not an issue on which candidates for the U.S. Senate and House should be silent — but so far I’ve not been able to locate a single public statement of disapproval from Montana’s major candidates for the Senate, incumbent Democrat Jon Tester and Republican challenger Rep. Denny Rehberg, or the House, Republican Steve Daines and Democrats Kim Gillan and Franke Wilmer (both state representatives), Missoula city councilman Dave Strohmaier, and Helena attorney Rob Stutz.
No Democrat wants to get crosswise with the President on killing terrorists. Many Democrats consider any public criticism of Obama as disloyalty that should be punished. Taking Obama to task for arrogating to himself the power to secretly decide which Americans are protected by the Constitution, and which are not, could anger Democratic funders and activists, costing contributions and campaign volunteers. Moreover, Awlaki’s demise is probably an agreeable outcome for most Americans, an outcome that justified the means. Why get crosswise with voters over whether a bad man met an unconstitutional end? Why stand on principle when political safety recommends silent acquiescence?