Targeted Assassinations Of American Citizens…The Left’s Hypocrisy

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A Blast From The Past...This Is How The Left Viewed Bush Then

As I wrote about in an earlier post, the hypocrisy of the left in regards to Obama’s policy of allowing assassinations of United States citizens is quite telling.

Take for example this speech given by our Attorney General in 2004:

With all due respect to President Reagan, the problem is not government. The problem is with those who run the government. In the struggle against terrorism, these people have made a mockery of the rule of law

And yet a disturbing pattern has emerged. Lawyers for this administration have attempted to sanction the wholesale roundup and extended detention of Middle Eastern men on routine immigration violations, and the indefinite detention of American citizens with minimal judicial supervision, and without access to legal counsel.

Now I understand that we live in difficult times, and that we face an extraordinary, unprecedented threat. We cannot be naive in how we expect to conduct this struggle. This is not a time for the liberal community to see our enemy for anything other than what they are: murderers bent on the destruction of our way of life, which is superior to that which they seek to impose. We must be aggressive in the conduct of the war, and in the interrogation of prisoners taken in that war. But this Administration’s view, that the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief can almost always overcome what it views as burdensome laws, restrictive International treaties, and tired old customs is extremely dangerous.

Our history is replete with scandals and miscues that are tied to the unrestricted exercise of Executive Branch power, in peace and in war. We must employ techniques in the current struggle that are consistent with the spirit of our founding documents, and that will also stand the test of time. We must feel comfortable, fifty years from now, looking back at our actions in a way that we do not when we examine for instance, the detention of American citizens during World War II.

Now let me be clear. This is not to equate American al-Qaeda sympathizers with law abiding Japanese-American citizens. But citizenship must mean something. The guarantees that come with it must be respected.

The war on terrorism can be won and our tradition of respect for civil liberties can be respected. The tension that this administration sees existing between the two simply is not correct.

That was then, this is now:

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asserted on Monday that it is lawful for the government to kill American citizens if officials deem them to be operational leaders of Al Qaeda who are planning attacks on the United States and if capturing them alive is not feasible.

“Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack,” Mr. Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school. “In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.”

…While Mr. Holder is not the first administration official to address the targeted killing of citizens — the Pentagon’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson, did so last month at Yale Law School, for example — it was notable for the nation’s top law enforcement official to declare that it is constitutional for the government to kill citizens without any judicial review under certain circumstances. Mr. Holder’s remarks about the targeted killing of United States citizens were a centerpiece of a speech describing legal principles behind the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies.

“Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,” Mr. Holder said. “This is simply not accurate. ‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”

I agree wholeheartedly with Bush’s practice of fighting this war on terror and I agree wholeheartedly with Obama’s new policy.

But the hypocrisy is mindboggling.

I never thought I would link to Glenn Greenwald but he is especially pissed at the hypocrisy from his side of the aisle:

(1) The willingness of Democrats to embrace and defend this power is especially reprehensible because of how completely, glaringly and obviously at odds it is with everything they loudly claimed to believe during the Bush years. Recall two of the most significant “scandals” of the Bush War on Terror: his asserted power merely to eavesdrop on anddetain accused Terrorists without judicial review of any kind. Remember all that? Progressives endlessly accused Bush of Assaulting Our Values and “shredding the Constitution” simply because Bush officials wanted to listen in on and detain suspected Terrorists — not kill them, just eavesdrop on and detain them — without first going to a court and proving they did anything wrong. Yet here is a Democratic administration asserting not merely the right to surveil or detain citizens without charges or judicial review, but to kill themwithout any of that: a far more extreme, permanent and irreversible act. Yet, with somerighteous exceptions, the silence is deafening, or worse.

How can anyone who vocally decried Bush’s mere eavesdropping and detention powers without judicial review possibly justify Obama’s executions without judicial review? How can the former (far more mild powers) have been such an assault on Everything We Stand For while the latter is a tolerable and acceptable assertion of war powers? If Barack Obama has the right to order accused Terrorists executed by the CIA because We’re At War, then surely George Bush had the right to order accused Terrorists eavesdropped on and detained on the same ground.

That the same Party and political faction that endlessly shrieked about Bush’s eavesdropping and detention programs now tolerate Obama’s execution program is one of the most extreme and craven acts of dishonesty we’ve seen in quite some time.

He goes on write and link to my post, saying “By stark contrast, right-wing leaders, pundits and bloggers are being commendably consistent”

Yup. We have.

I agreed with the policy then and do now.

And I completely agree with Glenn when he writes that the hypocrisy of the left is “the most extreme and craven acts of dishonesty we’ve seen in quite some time.”

Obama in 2006:

The bottom line is this: Current procedures under the CSRT are such that a perfectly innocent individual could be held and could not rebut the Government’s case and has no way of proving his innocence.

I would like somebody in this Chamber, somebody in this Government, to tell me why this is necessary. I do not want to hear that this is a new world and we face a new kind of enemy. I know that. I know that every time I think about my two little girls and worry for their safety–when I wonder if I really can tuck them in at night and know that they are safe from harm. I have as big of a stake as anybody on the other side of the aisle and anybody in this administration in capturing terrorists and incapacitating them. I would gladly take up arms myself against any terrorist threat to make sure my family is protected.

But as a parent, I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence.

This is not just an entirely fictional scenario, by the way. We have already had reports by the CIA and various generals over the last few years saying that many of the detainees at Guantanamo should not have been there.

But it’s ok to assassinate that person without judicial review now eh?

Where’s the terror for your family members now?

H Y P O C R I S Y

In a sign that the left’s hypocrisy may not be going over so well is this editorial from the NYT’s today:

Perhaps most disturbing, Mr. Holder utterly rejected any judicial supervision of a targeted killing.

We have said that a decision to kill an American citizen should have judicial review, perhaps by a special court like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes eavesdropping on Americans’ communications.

Mr. Holder said that could slow a strike on a terrorist. But the FISA court works with great speed and rarely rejects a warrant request, partly because the executive branch knows the rules and does not present frivolous or badly argued cases. In Mr. Awlaki’s case, the administration had long been complaining about him and tracking him. It made an earlier attempt to kill him.

Mr. Holder said such operations require high levels of secrecy. That is obvious, but the FISA court operates in secret, and at least Americans are assured that some legal authority not beholden to a particular president or political party is reviewing such operations.

Mr. Holder argued in his speech that judicial process and due process guaranteed by the Constitution “are not one and the same.” This is a straw man. The judiciary has the power to say what the Constitution means and make sure the elected branches apply it properly. The executive acting in secret as the police, prosecutor, jury, judge and executioner is the antithesis of due process.

While the NYT’s editorial pages maybe coming around to their hypocrisy, we do not hear the wailing and the crying from the rest of our media, the rest of the Democrat party, the rest of the liberals.

H Y P O C R I S Y

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Great read Curt… Stunning isn’t it??

Every time I read excellent articles like this here at FA my head slowly moves from side to side in apparent disgust at the hypocrisy. And it all debunks the ever intertwining of bullsh*t piled on top of bullsh*t by the left. Which they claim is provided in the name of “Democracy”. They should really stick to the “keep it simple, stupid” rule – it works every time.

I can hardly wait for our Lefty Liberal friends to come and defend the indefensible [above] here at FA. lol

Funny how the retards, oh, I mean Republicans, in congress can’t seem to hold hearings on this and make the Democrats pay a political price for this hypocrisy.

Will wonders ever cease?

Ivan, any hearings to expose/exploit “hypocrisy” would be hypocritical in themselves. All of this is born out by the Afghanistan AUMF, of which a likely amount of the committee members voted in to begin with.

Therefore while attempting to blow the shoes off their Dem opponents, they will succeed in shooting off their on feet simultaneously.

What’s also astonishing is that such hypocrisy is so thoroughly defended and supported by the mindless left wing numbnuts. Had Obama promised to follow these policies on 2008 democrats would have had nothing to vote for. Now that Obama has flipped, so have they.

They have no principles whatsoever.

Curt says, “I agree wholeheartedly with Bush’s practice of fighting this war on terror and I agree wholeheartedly with Obama’s new policy.” But if you believe in these policies, but believe they are found on hypocrisy, what does that make you?

Maybe ultra-conservatives think basically the same on every issue, but liberals don’t. Maybe extreme leftists do, but I don’t. I am very liberal, for example, but I believe in Second Amendment rights. But that’s the point of articles like this one: To paint the other side with as broad a brush as possible, so that the enemy becomes clear. Just because most of the readers of blogs like this one think in a particular manner, they think all of the opposition thinks one way too. Or, maybe they’re talking about the narrow slice of the liberal wing that’s populated by as few true-believers as the radical right.

It’s no more legitimate to consider the killing of any of these well publicized members of factions that support the enemy killings as assassinations, than it would be to call the killing of any soldier for the opposition as an assassination. I’m sure there are legal definitions for the word assassination, and whether one’s actions represent this form of activity is more within the purview of the law—not among partisans of blog-site.

As this issue is similar to whether it’s right to torture someone who may have information which we would like to have during a time of war, the difference is that a lawyer of a single president (G.W. Bush) rewrote the definition of torture to the satisfaction of his party—it was not defined by an august, non-partisan legal group (like the Supreme Court). The importance of having a correct legal definition is, as Reagan noted, because torture is against the Geneva Convention and other humanitarian dicta. As far as I know, Obama administration has not revised the definition of assassination of assassination—only clarified it (and there is a difference).

We need to be careful about using the word ‘hypocrisy’ as our only argument—for we’ll eventually forget the meaning of reason and logical argument all together (if that hasn’t occurred already).

@Liberal1 (objectivity):

Curt says, “I agree wholeheartedly with Bush’s practice of fighting this war on terror and I agree wholeheartedly with Obama’s new policy.” But if you believe in these policies, but believe they are found on hypocrisy, what does that make you?

That statement right there displays a complete lack of understanding of Curt’s point, Lib1. It isn’t the policy itself that Curt is responding to with a claim of hypocrisy. It’s the left’s “transformation” on the issue, from being very outspoken against it when Bush was President, to their current stand of either being silent on it, or full-blown proponents of it, now that Obama is President, and that includes the President himself.

And why the transformation? Is it because of a complete change in thought process on the issue? Doubtful, but in some cases maybe. Or, is it because of pure partisanship? That is the most likely answer, and is where the charge of hypocrisy is founded, Lib1.

Your efforts are nothing but an attempt to obfuscate and defend against the charges of hypocrisy to the majority of your brethren. And even a handful of noted liberal writers such as Mr. Greenwald are labeling it what it is.

@Liberal1 (objectivity):

Maybe ultra-conservatives think basically the same on every issue, but liberals don’t. Maybe extreme leftists do, but I don’t. I am very liberal, for example, but I believe in Second Amendment rights.

Would you agree, however, that a belief in 2nd Amendment rights is not a liberal position on the issue? That there is legitimacy in generalizations?

Of course not all liberals would be labeled hypocrites on the topic of this post. Curt cites Greenwald as an example of ideological consistency.

What do you make of Senator Obama’s criticism of Bush-era policies and exercise of executive powers which, now that he’s in office, he either perpetuates/carries out himself, or in some cases has expanded upon?

AMERICANS MILITARY are being blame in AFGHANISTAN, FOR ANYTHING , AND NO ONE IN LEADERSHIP IS TAKING THEIR SIDE IN A CLEAR WAY TO TELL THE AFGHANS THIS IT IT OR
YOU TEND FOR YOURSELF, BUT THEY ALWAYS TAKE THE SIDE OF AFGHANISTAN NEEDS AS OPPOSE TO AMERICAN MILITARY NEEDS, THEY ARE LETTING THE MILITARY DOWN, TO KEEP THE WAR ON WHICH IS NOT A REAL WAR BUT A PLACE TO BE MURDER IN THE BACK BY THE SAME ONE WHICH THE
AMERICANS GAVE TRAINING, AND NOW ARE UNABLE TO TURN THEIR BACK FROM,
I can understand that staff military killing those because he was probably not obeyed when he gave an order to freeze, and not obey and saw himself in danger for his life, decided to shoot on sight and the children where probably used as a shield from those AFGHANS, WHOM DID SHOW BEING ABLE TO BE COWARDLY SHOOTING AT THE AMERICANS IN THE BACK,
WHO WILL WE GIVE THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT FIRST, THE AFGHANS ? OR
THE AMERICAN MILITARY? THERE IS NO DOUBT TO MY MIND HERE, IF WE REMEMBER OF NOT LOOSING SITE, THAT THERE IS A WAR AND THE MILITARY ARE IN THE FRONT ROW,
AND LET US NOT FORGET IT EVER. and let no one accuse that SOLDIER who was given a mission to be a USEFUL TOOL on that WAR,

We must realize that Curt makes desperate and fast decisions on a regular basis, decisions that mean life or death or at the least the end of his career if he makes a mistake in judgement or oversteps his authority. He is far more attuned to legal limits, most of us are concentrating on the speed limits. Sometimes I worry about a horse exploding, but that is almost nothing compared to the countless decision Curt must make, while out on patrol, decisions that he will be held accountable for and prosecuted for.

Now we have a president and AG who say one thing and do another, This must be especially disturbing to a peace officer who has no margin of error and sees through the hypocrisy in an instant.

SKOOKUM
HI,
YES and dangerous, if you are given a choice to live to go through lawers to defend you against a jury leaning toward the poor criminal you killed, or be dead too by that criminal.
dangerous yes.
bye

to add up to my comment on 8,
I want to add up, for the STAFF ARMY MILITARY,S actions
what if he arrived in those locations, and notice the clusters of explosives ready to be send to
be burried under the feet of his GROUP OF MILITARY,
he is right there no way out which is not even is an option in his mind for a brave men to save his buddys, he did what he could do and fast no time to ask questions, who’s under the blanket, who’s hidden there and there no time to check it,
he is alone, he must not leave anyone alive to send those
EIDS AND VERY POSSIBLE SCENARIO.
WHAT WOULD ONE DO???????
WHAT WOULD YOU AND YOU AND YOU WOULD HAVE DONE????
let me tell you, what I would have done, the same as he did.

CURT,
adding up to the STAFF SERGEANT profile, he had suffer a trauma injury on another deployment in IRAK
WHEN THE truck was turn over in an attack, this is his 4rth deployment and the COMMANDER ALLEN said, they will look at the cause which might be brain injury cause.

by the way they want TO trial the 5 AMERICANS FOR THE KORAN PARTLY BURN ACCIDENT WHICH WHERE DESECRATED BY THE PRISONERS USING IT TO SEND
messages creating a life THREAT for AMERICAN
BUT THERE WAS MURDER OF 6 AMERICAN MILITARY, by AFGHANS MURDERER
WHICH SHOULD BE ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL
, before anything else, those where an AFGHAN POLICE OFFICER, AND TWO AFGHANS SOLDIERS THAT we KNOW OF, FROM THE NEWS, and two other AFGHAN MURDERER,

Liberal hypocrites….but I repeat myself.

One of the problems with the media is that they have openly become campaigners for the dems.
Pravda seems more balanced most of the time.