[Vision2020] Election Spurred a Move to Codify U.S. Drone Policy

Sunil Ramalingam sunilramalingam at hotmail.com
Tue Nov 27 07:13:30 PST 2012


Greenwald on the new drone story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/26/obama-drones-kill-list-framework

On praise for their leaders when they do this:

'It is, for several reasons, extraordinary that so many citizens have 
been successfully trained to so venerate their Party's leaders that they
 literally believe no checks or transparency are necessary, even as 
those leaders wield the most extremist powers: executing people, bombing
 multiple countries, imprisoning people with no charges, mass monitoring
 and surveilling of entire communities.'

Sunil

Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2012 10:53:29 -0800
From: godshatter at yahoo.com
To: art.deco.studios at gmail.com
CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Election Spurred a Move to Codify U.S. Drone Policy


  
    
  
  
    

      Why didn't they start trying to codify this *before* the first
      drone strike, instead of waiting until Romney was possibly about
      to take over?

      

      There is so much wrong here, I don't know where to begin.  Why
      didn't our constitutional scholar of a president question this
      "signature" assassination thing?  Why didn't he question the idea
      of assassination as a military tool, to begin with?

      

      Oh, and I loved this bit:

      

      "The draft rule book for drone strikes that has been passed among
      agencies over the last several months is so highly classified,
      officials said, that it is hand-carried from office to office
      rather than sent by e-mail."

      

      So much for his promises of an open and transparent government.

      

      Paul

      

      On 11/25/2012 08:12 AM, Art Deco wrote:

    
    
      
          
         
      
      
      
      November 24, 2012
      Election Spurred a Move to Codify U.S. Drone Policy
      By 
          SCOTT
              SHANE
      
        
          WASHINGTON — Facing the possibility that President
            Obama might not win a second term, his administration
          accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop
          explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by
          unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit
          clear standards and procedures, according to two
          administration officials. 
        
          The matter may have lost some urgency after Nov. 6. But with more
            than 300 drone strikes and some 2,500 people killed by
          the Central Intelligence Agency and the military
          since Mr. Obama first took office, the administration is still
          pushing to make the rules formal and resolve internal
          uncertainty and disagreement about exactly when lethal action
          is justified. 
        
          Mr. Obama and his advisers are still debating whether
          remote-control killing should be a measure of last resort
          against imminent threats to the United States, or a more
          flexible tool, available to help allied governments attack
          their enemies or to prevent militants from controlling
          territory. 
        
          Though publicly the administration presents a united front on
          the use of drones, behind the scenes there is longstanding
          tension. The Defense Department and the C.I.A. continue to
          press for greater latitude to carry out strikes; Justice
          Department and State Department officials, and the president’s
          counterterrorism adviser, John
            O. Brennan, have argued for restraint, officials
          involved in the discussions say. 
        
          More broadly, the administration’s legal reasoning has not
          persuaded many other countries that the strikes are acceptable
          under international law. For years before the Sept. 11, 2001,
          attacks, the United States routinely condemned targeted
          killings of suspected terrorists by Israel, and most countries
          still object to such measures. 
        
          But since the first targeted killing by the United States in
          2002, two administrations have taken the position that the
          United States is at war with Al Qaeda and its allies and can
          legally defend itself by striking its enemies wherever they
          are found. 
        
          Partly because United Nations officials know that the United
          States is setting a legal and ethical precedent for other
          countries developing armed drones, the U.N. plans to open a
          unit in Geneva early next year to investigate American drone
          strikes. 
        
          The attempt to write a formal rule book for targeted killing
          began last summer after news
            reports on the drone program, started under President
          George W. Bush and expanded by Mr. Obama, revealed some
          details of the president’s role in the shifting procedures for
          compiling “kill lists” and approving strikes. Though national
          security officials insist that the process is meticulous and
          lawful, the president and top aides believe it should be
          institutionalized, a course of action that seemed particularly
          urgent when it appeared that Mitt Romney might win the
          presidency. 
        
          “There was concern that the levers might no longer be in our
          hands,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
          With a continuing debate about the proper limits of drone
          strikes, Mr. Obama did not want to leave an “amorphous”
          program to his successor, the official said. The effort, which
          would have been rushed to completion by January had Mr. Romney
          won, will now be finished at a more leisurely pace, the
          official said. 
        
          Mr. Obama himself, in little-noticed remarks, has acknowledged
          that the legal governance of drone strikes is still a work in
          progress. 
        
          “One of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture
          in place, and we need Congressional help in order to do that,
          to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president’s
          reined in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making,”
          Mr. Obama told Jon Stewart in an appearance
            on “The Daily Show” on Oct. 18. 
        
          In an interview with Mark Bowden for a new book on the killing
          of Osama bin Laden, “The
            Finish,” Mr. Obama said that “creating a legal
          structure, processes, with oversight checks on how we use
          unmanned weapons, is going to be a challenge for me and my
          successors for some time to come.” 
        
          The president expressed wariness of the powerful temptation
          drones pose to policy makers. “There’s a remoteness to it that
          makes it tempting to think that somehow we can, without any
          mess on our hands, solve vexing security problems,” he said. 
        
          Despite public remarks by Mr. Obama and his aides on the legal
          basis for targeted killing, the program remains officially
          classified. In court, fighting lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union
          and The New York Times seeking secret legal opinions on
          targeted killings, the government has refused even to
          acknowledge the existence of the drone program in Pakistan. 
        
          But by many accounts, there has been a significant shift in
          the nature of the targets. In the early years, most strikes
          were aimed at ranking leaders of Al Qaeda thought to be
          plotting to attack the United States. That is the purpose Mr.
          Obama has emphasized, saying in a CNN
            interview in September that drones were used to prevent
          “an operational plot against the United States” and counter
          “terrorist networks that target the United States.” 
        
          But for at least two years in Pakistan, partly because of the
          C.I.A.’s success in decimating Al Qaeda’s top ranks, most
          strikes have been directed at militants whose main battle is
          with the Pakistani authorities or who fight with the Taliban
          against American troops in Afghanistan. 
        
          In Yemen, some strikes apparently launched by the United
          States killed militants who were preparing to attack Yemeni
          military forces. Some of those killed were wearing suicide
          vests, according to Yemeni news reports. 
        
          “Unless they were about to get on a flight to New York to
          conduct an attack, they were not an imminent threat to the
          United States,” said Micah
            Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who
          is a critic of the strikes. “We don’t say that we’re the
          counterinsurgency air force of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia,
          but we are.” 
        
          Then there is the matter of strikes against people whose
          identities are unknown. In an online
            video chat in January, Mr. Obama spoke of the strikes in
          Pakistan as “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a
          list of active terrorists.” But for several years, first in
          Pakistan and later in Yemen, in addition to “personality
          strikes” against named terrorists, the C.I.A. and the military
          have carried out “signature strikes” against groups of
          suspected, unknown militants. 
        
          Originally that term was used to suggest the specific
          “signature” of a known high-level terrorist, such as his
          vehicle parked at a meeting place. But the word evolved to
          mean the “signature” of militants in general — for instance,
          young men toting arms in an area controlled by extremist
          groups. Such strikes have prompted the greatest conflict
          inside the Obama administration, with some officials
          questioning whether killing unidentified fighters is legally
          justified or worth the local backlash. 
        
          Many people inside and outside the government have argued for
          far greater candor about all of the strikes, saying excessive
          secrecy has prevented public debate in Congress or a full
          explanation of their rationale. Experts say the strikes are
          deeply unpopular both in Pakistan and Yemen, in part because
          of allegations of large numbers of civilian casualties, which
          American officials say are exaggerated. 
        
          Gregory D. Johnsen, author of “The
            Last Refuge: Yemen, Al Qaeda and America’s War in Arabia,”
          argues that the strike strategy is backfiring in Yemen. “In
          Yemen, Al Qaeda is actually expanding,” Mr. Johnsen said in a
          recent
            talk at the Brookings Institution, in part because of
          the backlash against the strikes. 
        
          Shuja Nawaz,
          a Pakistan-born analyst now at the Atlantic Council in
          Washington, said the United States should start making public
          a detailed account of the results of each strike, including
          any collateral deaths, in part to counter propaganda from
          jihadist groups. “This is a grand opportunity for the Obama
          administration to take the drones out of the shadows and to be
          open about their objectives,” he said. 
        
          But the administration appears to be a long way from embracing
          such openness. The draft rule book for drone strikes that has
          been passed among agencies over the last several months is so
          highly classified, officials said, that it is hand-carried
          from office to office rather than sent by e-mail. 
        
        
      
      

      -- 

      Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)

      art.deco.studios at gmail.com

      

      

      

      

      
      

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