The Presidency and Precedents

What hath Obama wrought?

Conor Friedersdorf:

Despite all these instances of the U.S. accusing innocent people of crimes against America, sometimes torturing them and imprisoning them for years on end, President Obama is sufficiently confident in federal officials, including the CIA -- one of the least accountable, least transparent branches of government, and one with a less than perfect record getting accurate intelligence -- that he regards it as good, prudent policy to pronounce death sentences upon American citizens, in clear violation of the 5th Amendment, without even a safeguard as basic as a classified trial in absentia and a judge to do due diligence on the alleged evidence. And this extraordinary power, with its obvious potential for catastrophic abuses, is vested in one man who'll leave office in one or five years, to be replaced by an as yet undetermined politician -- perhaps Rick Perry, who presided over Texas when it executed the likely innocent Cameron Todd Willingham, despite a trial with forensic testimony and a years long appeal process.

President Obama has perhaps forever changed the relationship between the United States government and its citizens, setting a precedent as damaging as anything a modern president has done, and the appropriate reaction, whatever one's partisan or ideological orientation, is shock and anger at his hubris and imprudence. Depending on the GOP nominee in 2012, I may well decide that I can't vote for him or her in good conscience. But today, as Obama celebrates the extra-legal assassination of an American, and sets the precedent that the president can kill citizens without due process if he or she pronounces them a terrorist, I know that I cannot in good conscience cast a vote to re-elect him. If you're even a little bit of a civil libertarian, and this didn't cost Obama your vote, I'd ask you to ponder this question: What transgression would?

A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

"Cost and schedule over-runs there are."

...I once worked in project management.

Hateful job by the way.

Anyways, as this charming article from an acquisitions officer for the military points out, the first most important rule of project management is and always should be "Thou shalt build no Death Stars".

Chart of the Day

Quite the shocker.

Here's a look at the uses of delayed-notice search warrants issued under the expanded powers of the Patriot Act circa 2006-2009:

Via Radley Balko.

Shopping...FOR TERROR!!!!

Delightful news from the security state: Shopping at Mall of America can now land you on counter-terrorism watch lists:

On Nov. 9, 2008, the Bloomington resident videotaped a short road trip from his home to the Mall of America. Van Asten, now 66, planned to send it to his fiancée's family in Vietnam so they could see life in the United States.

As he headed down an escalator, camera in hand, mall guards caught sight of him.

"Right away, I noticed he had a video camera and was recording the rotunda area," a security guard wrote in a suspicious activity report.

Van Asten, a one-time missile system repairman for the Army, was questioned for approximately two hours, records show. He was asked about traveling to Vietnam and how he came to know people there. The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force was alerted. He was given a pat-down search, and the FBI demanded that his memory card be confiscated "for further analysis."

Authorities were concerned about his footage of an airplane landing at Minnesota's nearby international airport. They also worried Van Asten was conducting surveillance of mall property.

Exhausted and rattled, Van Asten had trouble finding his car after the ordeal was over.

"I sat down in my car and I cried, and I was shaking like a leaf," Van Asten said in an interview at his home. "That kind of sensation doesn't leave you real quickly when you've had an experience like that."

No news as to what Homeland Security is doing about these clear and present dangers.

Your Daily Dose of Pants-Wetting Terror

...Is nicely debunked here.

This truly is an excellent example of profound, unwarranted silliness. It's unbelievable that this sort of over-reaction is still being thrown about. All I can say is that unless all pilots use colostomy bags, the terrorists will win.

Back to the Future

Conor Friedersdorf reports on a bit of political deja vue:

In Barack Obama's rise to national prominence, when he criticized the Bush Administration for its false claims about WMDs in Iraq, its torture of detainees, and its illegal program of spying on American citizens without warrants, he owed a particular debt of gratitude to a New York Times national security reporter. In a series of scoops as impressive as any amassed during the War on Terrorism, James Risen reported in 2004 that the CIA failed to tell President Bush about relatives of Iraqi scientists who swore that the country had abandoned its weapons program; the same year, he was first to reveal that the CIA was waterboarding detainees in Iraq; and in 2005, he broke the Pulitzer Prize winning story about the secret NSA spying program.

These scoops so embarrassed and angered the Bush Administration that some of its senior members wanted Risen to end up in jail. They never managed to make that happen. But President Obama might. He once found obvious value in Risen's investigative journalism. Its work that would've been impossible to produce without confidential sources and an ability to credibly promise that he'd never reveal their identities. But no matter. The Obama Administration is now demanding that Risen reveal his source for a 2006 scoop about CIA missteps in Iran. If he refuses to cooperate, which is his plan, he faces the possibility of jail time.

Somewhere, Dick Cheney is smiling.

The Road To Hell

The road to Hell is certainly paved with good intentions. Unfortunately, it's also paved with good Presidents. Obama has finally consented to explain why the Libyan war is not really a war or hostile action or anything, but really some sort of exotic camping trip that in no way requires him to abide by the rules set forth in the War Powers Act.

In a 32 page report, his administration generously devotes an entire paragraph to explaining why they're not blatantly breaking the law. A White House official sums up:

“We’re not engaged in sustained fighting. There’s been no exchange of fire with hostile forces. We don’t have troops on the ground. We don’t risk casualties to those troops,” said one senior administration official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity during a conference call arranged by the White House. “None of the factors, frankly, speaking more broadly, has risked the sort of escalation that Congress was concerned would impinge on its war-making power.”

This pablum deserves to be attacked.

First of all, we most certainly are engaged in sustained fighting by virtue of the fact that we're providing enormous amounts of support and materiel to our NATO allies (at a predicted cost of $1.1 billion assuming hostilities end by September). Though I may not be a lawyer, my understanding is that there are myriad laws on the book covering this sort of thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that when you willingly provide support to others, you're known as an accomplice and just as responsible as anyone physically involved in actions. Saying that we're "not engaged" ignores this principle.

Granted we have no troops on the ground as yet (we'll see how long that lasts once Libya becomes a power vacuum). However, this is no longer the Napoleonic era. War cannot and must not be defined merely by the presence of soldiers on the ground. It's inarguable that war has gained a few more dimensions since an Italian airman first thought to drop grenades on Turkish soldiers from his biplane back in 1911 (coincidentally enough, in Libya). This official would have us accept a definition that is at loggerheads with the past hundred years of violence. Was Pearl Harbor somehow not an act of war because there were no Japanese soldiers on the ground in Hawaii?

The second problem with this formulation is that it's based solely on physical risk. On the one hand this ignores the enormous actual costs of the adventure in terms of treasure. Just as significantly however, it ignores moral culpability. Like most countries, America's foreign policy is (very broadly, I admit), represented abroad by the carrots offered up by our diplomatic corps and the sticks wielded by our military. In either case though, these are the representatives of our country. Whether it's Clinton offering aid to post-tsunami Japan or a drone being piloted by a CIA operative, these are the things that people look to as the face of America. There is a solemn duty and responsibility to consider what face we put forth regardless of whether or not there is any actual physical risk. If Congress has the right to approve or reject a potential ambassador to Burkina Faso, it most absolutely has the right to approve a bombing campaign regardless of whether or not any American lives are at risk.

I started this post by noting that "the road to hell is paved with good Presidents". Let me expand on that by saying that I believe that Qaddafi should go. I believe that the people of the world have a right to live without fear of autocratic madmen and that the United States can and should have (an albeit limited), role in bringing about that happy day. The campaign in Libya is in fact a just one, meant to remove a tyrant from power. I will give Obama the benefit of the doubt. But what of the next campaign and what of the next President? If you're willing to entrust Obama with the great and terrible power to wage war carte blanche, will you grant the same authority to his successor? To return to the Pearl Harbor analogy; don't you think that in retrospect, the Japanese would have really preferred to have a parliament that was capable of reigning in the imperialistic fantasies of their prime minister?

Our New Post-Modern World

You know things are getting surreal when life imitates the Onion.

Bullshit.

Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit!!!

I was planning on working on a longer post today about the erosion of 4th Amendment protections anyways. I'll be getting to it shortly.

Reality Check

Along with everyone else in the civilized world, I engaged in much needed (and I believe appropriate), celebrations regarding the death of Bin Laden.

Because let's face it: If anyone needed a killing, it was him.

That said, the success of the killing (both operationally and politically), provided the administration with the necessary excuse to launch another assassination attempt over the past few days. This time against (noted bad guy but unarguably...), American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Glenn Greenwald provides some necessary rain on the national parade:

There are certain civil liberties debates where, even though I hold strong opinions, I can at least understand the reasoning and impulses of those who disagree; the killing of bin Laden was one such instance.  But the notion that the President has the power to order American citizens assassinated without an iota of due process -- far from any battlefield, not during combat -- is an idea so utterly foreign to me, so far beyond the bounds of what is reasonable, that it's hard to convey in words or treat with civility.

How do you even engage someone in rational discussion who is willing to assume that their fellow citizen is guilty of being a Terrorist without seeing evidence for it, without having that evidence tested, without giving that citizen a chance to defend himself -- all because the President declares it to be so?  "I know Awlaki, my fellow citizen, is a Terrorist and he deserves to die.  Why?  Because the President decreed that, and that's good enough for me.  Trials are so pre-9/11."  If someone is willing to dutifully click their heels and spout definitively authoritarian anthems like that, imagine how impervious to reason they are on these issues.

And if someone is willing to vest in the President the power to assassinate American citizens without a trial far from any battlefield -- if someone believes that the President has that power:  the power of unilaterally imposing the death penalty and literally acting as judge, jury and executioner -- what possible limits would they ever impose on the President's power?  There cannot be any.  Or if someone is willing to declare a citizen to be a "traitor" and demand they be treated as such -- even though the Constitution expressly assigns the power to declare treason to the Judicial Branch and requires what we call "a trial" with stringent evidence requirements before someone is guilty of treason -- how can any appeals to law or the Constitution be made to a person who obviously believes in neither?

Dogs of War

Fantastic photo essay at Foreign Policy showing military dogs in action.

For example...

For crying out loud...Out of a helicopter!

When All's Said and Done

Besides the Archbishop of Canterbury, there's been a notable lack of protest from critics of targeted killings in the wake of the death of Bin Laden. Because...well, honestly, it's Bin Laden for crying out loud! Not exactly a figure commanding great compassion, to say the least. It's easy to argue against the assassination of someone unless it happens to be a really, really terrible someone.

Democracy in America lays out the bottom line:

The silence of the usual critics of "illegal", "extrajudicial", targeted killing in the wake of America's killing of Osama bin Laden might reflect hypocrisy, sure. But this can be tough to distinguish from resignation to the fact that Mr Obama didn't submit his case for executing Mr bin Laden to some global civil authority because there isn't one and he didn't have to—because America's the biggest kid on the block and, ultimately, what America says goes. And, if it comes down to it, Britain, France, Italy, Russia and other powerful governments hope America will indulge their own kill-squad adventures with similar approving silences. Of course, if some aggrieved faction in the future seeks retribution through the targeted killing of one of these countries' leaders,

that will be raw vengeance, that will be terrorism, that will be an international crime, because, like it or not, that's how it works.

Or We Could Keep Giving Them Billions of Dollars

Strong words from Salman Rushdie:

There is not very much evidence that the Pakistani power elite is likely to come to its senses any time soon. Osama bin Laden’s compound provides further proof of Pakistan’s dangerous folly.

As the world braces for the terrorists’ response to the death of their leader, it should also demand that Pakistan give satisfactory answers to the very tough questions it must now be asked. If it does not provide those answers, perhaps the time has come to declare it a terrorist state and expel it from the comity of nations.

My emphasis.

Considering their cache of nuclear weapons, that's perhaps not the wisest option to pursue. However, when considering the amount of aid evidently squandered on them to fight terrorists (who they're quick to point out have killed thousands of Pakistanis), it's impossible to not consider.

Pakistan, You Got Some 'Splainin' To Do!

Pictured: 'Splainin'

Foreign Policy has a minor concern over the death of Osama Bin Laden:

Second, the news that bin Laden was found in a lavish mansion just outside Islamabad -- in a suburb that is the richest of the entire country of Pakistan -- and guarded by dozens if not hundreds of minions, shows that Pakistan has been at least partially assimilated by the global jihadist movement. There is no way in God's green earth that some part of official Pakistan -- the military, the intelligence agencies, or the political class -- was not somehow involved in protecting bin Laden from detection and capture. Punishing Pakistan is not the point, but rather that the country is much further along in its slide toward extremism and perhaps even civil war and needs more, not less, assistance from us. 

Let the 'splainin' commence!

Good Night

Osama bin Laden is dead.

If you're not watching the news, there's a crowd of people gathered outside of the White House cheering this. As they should. Everybody should celebrate the death of one of history's greatest mass murderers. That said, though this is an event well worth celebration and praise, things should be kept in perspective:

All Americans celebrate the news that we have been waiting to hear for over nine and a half years: Osama Bin Laden is dead. The operation that resulted in his demise is a credit to the prowess and professionalism of the men and women in our military, and our intelligence and law enforcement agencies. All Americans — and the world — owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

Bin Laden’s death does not end the threat posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates, but it goes a long way toward delivering justice for the victims of the 9/11 attacks, and al Qaeda’s other acts of terrorism. Importantly, the operation appears to bear resemblance to earlier operations that captured the 9/11 plotters Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh. The details should remind us that some of the most effective counterterrorism techniques do not rely on tens of thousands of troops stationed indefinitely in distant lands.

It is now clear that unrelenting pressure has severely weakened al Qaeda. Its capacity to harm Americans has been degraded for years, and yet we continue to dedicate tens of billions of dollars to combating terrorism in all forms. Here’s hoping that this evening’s welcome news contributes to an evolution of U.S. counterterrorism strategy that avoids costly and counterproductive policies, and that, going forward, we will always balance our efforts to advance American security with the need to preserve our essential rights and liberties.

Somehow It Works

Somehow, this just works to mark that shit-heels death.

Have fun with the fucking virgins Bin Laden!!!!!

The Dead

Bin Laden? Holy fucking shit. Not much more to say than that. The President is supposed to make a statement regarding it shortly. They've just said on CBS that his body will be "disposed of" rather than buried in order to prevent terrorists from having some sort of site to revere.

Good.

We Must! We Must! We Must!

Christopher Hitchens lays out some compelling arguments for a truly active military role for NATO (by which he means the US),  in Libya:

Now to Libya: Quite obviously Col. Muammar Qaddafi has joined the list of deranged dictators whose acceptability is at an end, and it is unimaginable that he should emerge from the current confrontation with control over any part of the country. Equally obviously, we shall have to go to Tripoli to remove him. But we will not be doing so in the rearguard of any victorious insurgent army. In Afghanistan we could call upon some fierce and hardened fighters in the shape of the Northern Alliance. In Iraq, the Kurdish peshmerga militias had liberated substantial parts of the country from Saddam Hussein under the protection of our "no-fly zone." But the so-called Libyan rebels do not just fire in the air and strike portentous attitudes for the cameras. They run away, and they quarrel among themselves, and they are not cemented by any historic tradition of resistance or common experience.

True, true and true. The rebels are an incompetent and at best probably well meaning group. And that assessment certainly deserves some very strong caveats. The chances of them toppling Qaddafi seem to be increasingly far-fetched.

In effect, this half-baked approach leaves the initiative with Qaddafi. It also means that the mounting death rate, which recently included the lost life of my much-admired Vanity Fair colleague Tim Hetherington along with several others, is not justifiable by any commensurate military or political gains. These are lives that are being frittered away. Hetherington's last tweet described what he saw in Misurata the day before his death: "Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO." How shameful. What is utterly lacking in Libya, still, is an entrance strategy.

Again, true. It seems that the rebels are just strong enough to prolong a stalemate. A stalemate heavily featuring the slaughter in Misurata.

I have heard it argued that the pursuit of Qaddafi runs the risk of civilian casualties, as I presume in theory it must do. But the failure to target him most certainly means a steady and continuous and increasing flow of civilian deaths. To refuse to soil our hands with this homicidal lunatic is an odd way of keeping them clean.

All indisputably true.

But the questions remain: To be paid for by whom? What national necessities obligate our participation in this? For whom are we fighting and would their reign over Libya be for the better or worst?

In short, "Why must we?". Is every humanitarian disaster within our purview, let alone our ability?

Papers Please

Via Radley Balko.

The State Department is going to need just a teensy bit more information before you can get your passport: 

The U.S. Department of State is proposing a new Biographical Questionnaire for some passport applicants: The proposed new Form DS-5513 asks for all addresses since birth; lifetime employment history including employers’ and supervisors names, addresses, and telephone numbers; personal details of all siblings; mother’s address one year prior to your birth; any “religious ceremony” around the time of birth; and a variety of other information. According to the proposed form, “failure to provide the information requested may result in … the denial of your U.S. passport application.”

The State Department estimated that the average respondent would be able to compile all this information in just 45 minutes, which is obviously absurd given the amount of research that is likely to be required to even attempt to complete the form.

It seems likely that only some, not all, applicants will be required to fill out the new questionnaire, but no criteria have been made public for determining who will be subjected to these additional new written interrogatories. So if the passport examiner wants to deny your application, all they will have to do is give you the impossible new form to complete.

Obviously, not something that will be abused by an irritated office worker at State. Ever.

War It Is

And so it begins.

Somehow, inexplicably, a Democrat President has embroiled us in a neo-conservative wet dream. Yet again, we've managed to find ourselves in a benighted hell-hole, committed to bombing people until they stop being nasty to each other and embrace democracy:

The U.S. military attacked Moammar Gadhafi's air defenses Saturday with strikes along the Libyan coast that were launched by Navy vessels in the Mediterranean. 

A senior military official said the assault would unfold in stages and target air defense installations around Tripoli, the capital, and a coastal area south of Benghazi. That's the rebel stronghold under attack by Moammar Gadhafi's forces.

Complete details were not immediately available.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive military operations.

Hours after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton attended an international conference in Paris that endorsed military action against Gadhafi, the U.S. kicked off its attacks on Libyan air defense missile and radar sites along the Mediterranean coast to protect no-fly zone pilots from the threat of getting shot down.

Michael Lind looks to the historical results of this sort of fundamentally neo-conservative style of foreign policy:

Undeterred by the failure of lift-and-strike in the Balkans, neoconservatives proposed the same discredited strategy as a way to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz and others proposed the creation of enclaves in Iraq, from which anti-Saddam forces under the protection of U.S. airpower could topple the tyrant. Critics who knew something about the military dismissed this as the "Bay of Goats" strategy, comparing it to the Kennedy administration's failed "Bay of Pigs" operation that was intended to overthrow Fidel Castro without direct U.S. military involvement by landing American-armed Cuban exiles in Cuba. In Iraq, as in the Balkans, the ultimate result was an all-out U.S. invasion followed by an occupation.

And (via Andrew Sullivan ) Talleyrand closes in for the kill on the argument for military intervention:

Talleyrand, like many other people, is very perplexed by this most recent action. Several European nations, the United States and a few token others have decided to intervene militarily in a civil war on the losing side, and just at the moment when these forces were on the verge of defeat.

The assumption appears to be that Col. Gaddafi and those with him will be so intimidated, demoralized or simply disrupted as to surrender in short order and cede control of the country and its resources to a capable and effective national government led presumably by those now active in Benghazi. If that assumption proves incorrect, the next assumption appears to be that he will be defeated, also in short order, by superior air power. If that assumption proves incorrect, the next assumption appears to be that his Libyan enemies will be so emboldened by outside intervention that they will finish the job themselves. If that assumption proves incorrect, the final assumption appears to be that the “coalition of the willing” will just keep bombing until something else happens. That something else is vague, but the assumption appears to be that it will be better than the state of affairs in Libya during the past four decades.