Dear Friends,
The Administration just announced its policy on so-called targeted killings; I have the same questions as I did last year:
First, who says a person is such an imminent threat to the United States that any action is needed?
Second, the Geneva Conventions and the US Constitution do not allow such unilateral actions. Just because our Congress passed a vague authorization does not mean all subsequent activities are legal.
In the case of the Cleric killed last year, and for that matter, also in the case of OBL, these men were not an imminent threat to us.
The Administration said that National Governments’ Laws would be followed. Yet in neither of these cases was the host Country asked for an OK to act.
The Administration also said suspects would be arrested and tried in US Courts. Great, yet neither man was captured alive to stand trial – or, as the Admin also pointed out, were they kept alive to find out what else useful they knew.
As I asked last year, we are supposed to be a bastion of Democracy and fully honor the rule of law. Isn’t that why we fought WW2; our enemies did not respect laws, individual civil liberties or National Sovereignty.
As I asked last year, our ‘do as we say, but not as we ourselves do’ sends the exact wrong message to places like Syria and Iran. It also confuses those in Nations like Egypt and Libya who looked to us as an example of what they were striving to accomplish.
