Murder by Government
The President’s Private War
by
Andrew P. Napolitano
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by Andrew P. Napolitano: Rick
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Did you know
that the United States government is using drones to kill innocent
people in Pakistan? Did you know that the Pakistani government has
asked President Obama to stop it and he won’t? Did you know that
Pakistan is a sovereign country that has nuclear weapons and is
an American ally?
Last week,
the Obama administration not only acknowledged the use of the drones;
it also revealed that it has plans to increase the frequency and
ferocity of the attacks. White House counterterrorism adviser John
O. Brennan argued that these attacks are “in full accordance with
the law” and are not likely to be stopped anytime soon.
Brennan declined
to say how many people were killed or just where the killings took
place or who is doing it. But we know that Obama has a morbid fascination
with his plastic killing machines, and we know that these machines
are among the favored tools of the CIA. We also know that if the
president had been using the military to do this, he’d be legally
compelled to reveal it to Congress and eventually to seek permission.
We know about
the need to tell Congress and ask for permission because of the
War Powers Act. This law, enacted in 1973 over President Nixon’s
veto, permits the president to use the military for 90 days before
telling Congress and for 180 days before he needs congressional
authorization. Obama must believe that he can bypass this law by
using civilian CIA agents, rather than uniformed military, to do
his killing.
The Constitution
limits the presidential use of war powers to those necessary for
an immediate defense of the United States or those exercised pursuant
to a valid congressional declaration of war. In this case of Pakistan,
the president has neither. And international law prohibits entering
a sovereign country without its consent. But Brennan argued that
the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which Congress
enacted in 2001 in the aftermath of 9/11 to enable President Bush
to pursue the perpetrators of 9/11, is essentially carte blanche
for any president to kill whomever he wants, and that the use of
drones, rather than the military or rather than arresting those
the government believes have conspired to harm us, is a “surgical”
technique that safeguards the innocent.
Attorney General
Eric Holder made a similar unconstitutional argument a few months
ago when he stated in defense of the president’s using drones to
kill Americans in Yemen that the AUMF, plus the careful consideration
that the White House gives to the dimensions of each killing and
the culpability of each person killed, somehow satisfied the Constitution’s
requirements for due process.
What monstrous
nonsense all this is.
These killings
10,000 miles from here hardly constitute self-defense and are not
in pursuit of a declaration of war. So, what has Congress done about
this? Nothing. And what have the courts done about this? Nothing.
Prior to the
president’s ordering the killing of the New Mexico-born and unindicted
and uncharged Anwar al-Awlaki, al-Awlaki’s American father sued
the president in federal district court and asked a judge to prevent
the president from murdering his son in Yemen. After the judge dismissed
the case, a CIA-fired drone killed al-Awlaki and his American companion
and his 16-year-old American son.
In his three-plus
years in office, Obama has launched 254 drones toward persons in
Pakistan, and they collectively have killed 1,277 persons there.
The New America Foundation, a Washington think tank that monitors
the presidential use of drones in Pakistan, estimates that between
11 and 17 percent of the drone victims are innocent Pakistani civilians.
So much for Brennan’s surgical strikes. So much for Holder’s due
process.
The president
is waging a private war against private persons – even Americans
– whose deaths he obviously believes will keep America safe. But
he is doing so without congressional authorization, in violation
of the Constitution, and in a manner that jeopardizes our freedom.
Who will keep
us safe from a president who wants to use drones here? How long
will it be before local American governments – 313 of which already
possess drones – use them to kill here because they are surgical
and a substitute for due process? Can you imagine the outcry if
Cuba or China launched drones at their dissidents in Florida or
California and used Obama’s behavior in Pakistan as a justification?
How long will
it be before even the semblance of our Constitution is gone?
Reprinted
with the author’s permission.
May 5, 2012
Andrew P.
Napolitano [send
him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey,
is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano
has written six books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent
is It
Is Dangerous To Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case
for Personal Freedom. To find out more about Judge Napolitano
and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists,
visit creators.com.
Copyright
© 2012 Andrew P. Napolitano