All the President's Men

MGR Opinion -
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing - Edmund Burke, 1729-1797

*Updated Mar. 7*
It's not MGR's practice merely to link stories written or posted by other websites or news services. Nor does MGR usually comment on non-Latin affairs.

But for every rule there is an exception, and this is most assuredly one of them.

The president of the United States is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, perhaps the single most respected legal publication in the United States (if not in the world). There are no more prestigious qualifications that an attorney could possibly have.

The president taught American constitutional law at the University of Chicago School of Law for a dozen years. Constitutional law is that branch of the subject which deals with, among other things, the fundamental rights of an individual vis-à-vis the government. In Mexico and many other countries, which for generations have had to contend with arbitrary political leaders and no fixed rule of law, such rights are often referred to simply as human rights. Thus they are highly prized in developing nations.

In the United States of America, core constitutional rights include such elementary guarantees as the presumption of innocence and the right to a speedy public trial by jury if one is accused of a crime. The president could recite a whole litany of such rights from rote memory, without a moment's pause. So could many sixth graders. For those who may have forgotten, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. constitution, collectively known as the Bill of Rights, delineate them.

The president has an attorney general. His name is Eric Holder, and he too has a most distinguished background. Holder is a graduate of Columbia University Law School. He has served as a federal prosecutor, and as a judge of the Superior Court for the District of Columbia. Judges are charged with the duty of enforcing the law, and of protecting citizens from abusive or unlawful government conduct.

The president and his attorney general and his national security staff and other people who work with them have been using unmanned drones for several years to eliminate enemies of the United States in foreign lands. The president, and all his men, get to decide who will die. Judges and courts don't.

On at least one occasion, one of those enemies was an American born citizen with an Arab name. The man was not facing charges in the United States, nor had any grand jury indicted him, nor had any court issued a warrant for his arrest. Nonetheless, he was blown up in an instant because All the President's Men said he should be. Others near him when the drone struck died in the explosion, too.

Several press sources have reported in recent weeks that over 3,000 people have been killed abroad by American drone strikes. Most of them were bystanders, not the targets. The president's men refer to them as "collateral damage." A U.S. Senator says the actual drone death toll is about 4,700.

The only remaining question has been whether the president's men could do the same thing to a U.S. citizen on American soil. Of course, everybody knew that the answer was no. But everybody, it turns out, was mistaken.

Yesterday in a letter to Sen. Rand Paul (R. Ky.) Holder confirmed that although "unlikely to occur," the president of the United States would have authority under the constitution and laws "to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial."

The attorney general's letter is below. And here is a link to this evening's Huffington Post article on the subject. Eric Holder: Drone Strike To Kill U.S. Citizen On American Soil Legal, Hypothetically.

Americans can sleep well at night, knowing that they're being protected by All the President's Men.

Mar. 7 - Senator Paul spent 13 hours on the Senate floor yesterday, filibustering against president Obama's nomination of John Brennan to be director of the CIA. It was a symbolic protest against the administration's drone policy, and especially attorney general Holder's acknowledgment that such strikes against U.S. citizens on American soil would, under appropriate circumstances, be lawful.

Here's part of what Paul said:

"I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court. That Americans could be killed in a cafe in San Francisco or in a restaurant in Houston or at their home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, is an abomination.

"When I asked the President, can you kill an American on American soil, it should have been an easy answer. It's an easy question. It should have been a resounding and unequivocal, 'no.' The President's response? He hasn't killed anyone yet. We're supposed to be comforted by that. The President says, I haven't killed anyone yet. He goes on to say, and I have no intention of killing Americans. But I might.

"Is that enough?

"Are we satisfied by that?

"Are we so complacent with our rights that we would allow a President to say he might kill Americans?"

May 22 - U.S. acknowledges killing of four U.S. citizens in counterterrorism operations

© MGRR 2013. All rights reserved. This article may be cited or briefly quoted with proper attribution or a hyperlink, but not reproduced without permission.

Eric Holder Letter of March 4, 2012 to Sen. Rand Paul (R. Ky.) by Edward V. Byrne