The Obama administration’s legal team is split over whether it is permissible to assassinate the thousands of al-Qaeda-affiliated individuals in Yemen or Somalia, or whether lethal force must be reserved for self-defense against individuals known to be plotting against the United States.
The legal basis of targeting groups or individuals with drone strikes, cruise missiles, or commando raids outside official war zones is the crux of the disagreement between the State Department and the Pentagon. The use of these lethal methods is without objection in the administration when it comes to Afghanistan, and over the border into Pakistan.
Some have made the argument that it is perfectly legal under domestic and international law to target low-level foot soldiers of disparate terrorist groups in Yemen and Somalia if they are affiliated with groups that Congress has permitted the President to target in defense of the country. But that determination is dangerous when left only to the Executive branch without checks, balances, or oversight.
The effects of that sort of policy have been borne out in Afghanistan and Pakistan particularly. Commando raids of suspected terrorist homes, for example, occur at least 12-20 times per night in Afghanistan alone (those executed in Pakistan are kept secret). As senior special operations commanders have admitted, these raids target the wrong people 50 percent of the time, often end in civilian deaths, and result in thousands of detentions per year, many of whom are non-combatants. A recent study suggests these raids may create more enemies than they eliminate.
The drone program in Pakistan, which has also operated on the more permissive interpretation of the legal use of force now being considered for Yemen and Somalia, has produced similar results. Sometimes managing to kill the high-level operatives intended, estimates for civilians killed go as high as one militant for every 10 or 15 civilians, while over 160 children have been murdered by the strikes.
Expanding the Executive branch’s legal authority to kill anyone it deems an enemy anywhere in the world has the potential also to extend this grant to those who simply give rhetorical support to terrorist groups, even if that person is a US citizen. Furthermore, like the commando raids, drone programs have the potential to create more enemies than it eliminates, as was admitted by former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair.
Congress is currently considering, as part of a pending defense bill, a new authorization to use military force against al-Qaeda and its associates. One version proposed by the House Armed Forces Committee would establish the more expansive standard for military action, potentially making it easier for the administration to strike and kill anyone they decide, anywhere in the world.
So Osama Bin Laden is dead but apparently not ‘Al Qaeda’ the latter just a deceptive propaganda name for guerrillas or resistance against foreign invasion and occupation.
Osama Bin Laden is dead, but apperenly not 'Al Qaeda' a deceptive propaganda word same as 'terrorists' to hide the fact that these are popular guerrilla wars, wars of resistance against foreign invasion and occupation by the inigenous population.
And here I used to think that in this lovely globalized era, the US got the play the world's police, instead it gets to be the world's sicarius.
States are like serial killers. Once they start killing, they usually don't stop on their own until someone comes in and makes them stop.
Since anyone trying to make the state stop its killing is automatically an enemy of such a killer state, this usually quickly evolves into the murder of anyone trying to stop the killing spree. We are already there in Afghanistan, where anyone who opposes the US occupation and the declared right of the US to kill anyone they want in Afghanistan is automatically regarded as a terrorist and labeled as either 'Taliban' or 'Al-Qaida' when they are killed.
Maybe that's the campaign poster for 2012, Obama and Hillary over the title "Natural Born Killers"
Hatred and killing creates hatred and killing and war brings destruction.
Even winner of wars are later on loosers as the wars are always against weakers and the result is hatred.
Look Afghanistan or Irak or Pakistan they all hate americans, even politicians don,t say but they how they are killing innocent.
In the end how long will america kill them. Peace will pay off but wars will destroy their own country
as the wars are always full of lies.
It's a different world to-day. Congress is debating a US law that would permit the making of war (ie the application of explosive force to do harm in another sovereign state) without the declaration of a war. Adolf Hitler would have sacrificed a henchman ofr six for such 'legitimacy' anfd the Emperor Hirohito could only have assumed such a law as his divine right.
Had any other nation on earth embarked on such a domestic course, the UN would be imposing a 'rogue-ness' upon them and expanding the sanctions. America has gone plumb loco.
Have the lawyers no moral arguments to present? Cannot the major advisors and the President see and appreciate that these targeted people are not a threat to our national security? What legal argument exists for "invading" sovereign nations for the sole purpose of assassinating and murdering? We must remove our troops and drones from these countries if we are to survive as a country.
Ability to kill in combat, like high speed gambling on Wall Street, is in direct proportion to brain speed. Namely, how fast you can rationalize a problem and press your finger against a key or trigger.
Problem is, brain speed shifts from one generation to the next. For there was King Solomon’s Empire that died with him, Emperor Nero who fiddled while the Roman Empire burned, and Ottoman Empire wasted by the fast brain deceitful who controlled the Dark Ages.
They should go over there and do a little hand to hand.
"The Obama administration’s legal team is split over whether it is permissible to assassinate the thousands of al-Qaeda-affiliated individuals in Yemen or Somalia…"
Oh, heavens, so much to say on just those two short lines…
1. The Obama Administration's legal team is trying to figure out how to better butcher human beings. The same Obama that was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize just a short couple of years ago.
2. Just Yemen and Somalia? How about Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya? And the latest reports also include Nigeria and Liberia.
3. They're split over how to assassinate al-CIAduh but don't seem to be at all concerned about the women and children and other innocent civilians they butcher in the process.
And that's as much as I can say for now. I have to throw up!
As Tony Bennett just said "war is the lowest form of human behavior"
The US is engaging in the lowest form of human behavior. The people labeled as "Taliban" and "Alqaeda" have nowhere to go. In their minds, they have to fight back or be murdered.
America is going to oneday face the entire world and be destroyed for there illegal actions.I wonder if Obama and friends actually have talks with the devil supporting every evil he comes up with.I hate the American and Israely government with very few exeptions.One being Ron Paul who is Americas only hope.If he fails to be elected it will not be his fault but the corruption in America and the countrys time is coming to an end fast.