Why is this something to get worked up over?
The US government has acknowledged the killing of four American citizens as part of its drone attack program – one person intentionally and three others not specifically targeted but killed in strikes aimed at terrorist suspects.
The information comes in a letter to congressional leaders from Attorney General Eric Holder, reported Wednesday by several news organizations, first by The New York Times.
We are under no obligation to refrain from killing an enemy just because he is an American citizen. And killing an American citizen fighting for the enemy doesn't require them to be an imminent threat to us. War consists of destroying enemy assets--ideally long before they are a threat to our forces.
If an American jihadi is sitting in his living room here in America, attempting to arrest the jihadi rather than striking him with a drone missile is the first choice. Which is why back in the day I was outraged at the Philadelphia police bombing that MOVE rooftop "bunker." The MOVE members were nutballs. But law enforcement methods should have been used for a law enforcement problem.
This is an obvious exception to using air power on domestic jihadis. But we're far from that and I don't think we'd ever get even close to that stage.
Perhaps if our administration wasn't so committed to fitting completely normal wartime drone strikes on enemies into a domestic law enforcement template, this wouldn't be so awkward. The collateral damage to our civil rights could be far worse than that MOVE bombing conflagration.
We remain at war with nutball thugs who will hate us regardless of what we do or don't do. And restricting or repealing the 2001 authorization to use force is part of the insanity.
UPDATE: This post was a scheduled post written before President Obama's "war over" speech. Funny enough this was intended to defend the president's war powers against critics. Silly me.
UPDATE: And imagine my surprise that the president announced a restriction of drone strikes right after a stirring defense of their legality and effectiveness, using an explanation for targeting American citizens that I started this post with:
[When] a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America – and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens; and when neither the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot – his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a swat team.
Yet we'll greatly reduce the drone strikes. The recent lull wasn't a pause, it was a trend already in place before the speech. Let's remember this warning from the president:
I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies [unintended civilian deaths while targeting jihadis] against the alternatives. To do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties – not just in our cities at home and facilities abroad, but also in the very places –like Sana’a and Kabul and Mogadishu – where terrorists seek a foothold. Let us remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes.
President Obama made an eloquent defense of drone strikes. So he was for them 9right) before he was against them. This will work out swell.
