the assassination president

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Robert Coleman

AN ANALOGY

When abortion doctor George Tiller was gunned down at his church in Kansas two years ago, I did not rejoice.  I was in fact horrified, and expected justice to be dealt to his assassin.

I am not merely opposed to abortion under qualified circumstances; I am unflinchingly and absolutely Pro-Life.  Tiller’s assassin was a so-called Pro-Life activist.  But the act of gunning down a human being in cold-blood, no matter how evil the target may be, is anathema to the Pro-Life worldview.

Evil, indeed.  Tiller had not only provided thousands of abortions over his career, he provided late term (“partial birth”) abortions:  The kind that are so gruesome, as to inspire common cause among the Pro-Choice and Pro-Life.

In every sense of the term, I considered Tiller a mass murderer.

Yet, I did not rejoice over his heinous assassination.  His tragic end did not exact justice for his victims; and I sincerely wish, if it was in the will of God, that peace and all the fruits of paradise were bestowed upon his soul.

This analogy should give pause to any “Conservative” who thinks it is their civic duty to rejoice over political assassinations.

US LAW, INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE LAWS OF WAR

The U.S. Constitution expressly provides that International Law is a part of our law.  However, the Constitution retains unquestioned primacy as the Law of the Land:  No treaty, for example, can abridge the Fifth Amendment.  Indeed, no Executive Order can, either.

International Law is not created by any one Parliament or a Congress, per se.  The UN Security Council acts unanimously, subject to veto by the US; while the General Assembly’s role is largely advisory:  It has no binding legal authority.  Thus, International Laws come from custom and treaty.  A treaty has no effect on the United States so long as the President has not signed it and the Senate has not ratified it.  Beyond this constitutionally defined process, the Supreme Court has the power of constitutional review, should a treaty conflict with the Constitution (however, the Supreme Court largely avoids overturning ratified treaties).

Once passed, a treaty is equivalent to a federal statute:  Both are subject to the US Constitution.

There is no treaty allowing for political assassination.  However, there has been considerable development in the custom of targeted killings.  A targeted killing is where a sovereign government, acting under the urgency of war, specifically targets an individual enemy, evading arrest or capture.

Since the dawn of time, humans have struggled to define what the Romans called Jus Ad Bellum, or the Laws of War.  War is evil, gruesome and, frankly, inconvenient.  Yet, we can’t seem to knock it off.  Our current International Laws of War find a direct link, through masters like Lieber and Grotius, to St. Thomas Aquinas and his Just War Theory.  In essence, Aquinas, a Catholic monk and theologian, held war to be an evil under the Christian worldview; yet, its implementation could be justified as a way of avoiding greater evils (for example, subjugation, mass murder and violent social upheaval).

Central to this theory, is the motivating principle of self-defense.  War is just, if it is firstly defensive.  Without hazarding a thorough treatise on the theory, one can extrapolate this theory and apply it in the case of targeted killings.  Should a combatant, posing a high degree of risk to civilian populations, evade capture or arrest, a targeted killing could prove a just means of defending one’s nation against the same combatant.  Instead of letting him remain at large, an unannounced and targeted strike can end an otherwise deadly risk.

The only real difference between a combat death, and targeted killing, then, is that the latter includes deliberate execution of a specific and deadly individual.

Such killings find natural usage against combatants not enjoying protections under the Geneva Conventions.  The four Geneva Convention of 1949 were held in the wake of World War II, and a hundred years that had bled the erstwhile Roman continent scarlet red.  (The first Geneva Convention had been held on the precipice of that century, in 1864).

Geneva laid out certain humanitarian guidelines by which nations would treat prisoners of war (POWs) and other categories of prisoners.  Excluded from its strict terms were what have come to be called Enemy Combatants under American Law.  Such combatants evade the protection of Geneva by dressing as civilians, targeting civilian populations, and not belonging to any sovereign military force.  Al Quada “terrorists” are Enemy Combatants.

While parts of Geneva did provide for a lesser degree of humanitarian protection for Enemy Combatants, the US has not ratified these parts.  Hence, Enemy Combatants held under our custody are subject to US Law.  In an unorthodox series of cases over the past decade, the Supreme Court has taken a (small “l”) liberal approach, holding that these combatants are entitled to certain due process rights.

BIN LADEN

Bin Laden was not in US custody, and not on US soil when he was killed in May, 2011.  To the extent that the “War on Terror” is a legitimate and legally authorized war (this remains its own debate), Bin Laden remained an at large military target.  Indeed, the US Congress enacted an Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) in 2002 for the purpose of defending the US from Al Quada (a terrorist organization of which Bin Laden was and remained the recognized head).  As legally debatable as the AUMF and the so-called “War on Terror” have been, the AUMF provides discernible statutory authorization for the US President to use force against the Al Quada operatives who perpetrated 9/11.

Bin Laden had admitted to masterminding numerous successful terrorist acts against the US and others, including 9/11.  Bin Laden was not a US citizen, privileged of US legal protections:  He was an Enemy Combatant.

AWLAKI

Awlaki was a US born Al Quada propagandist.  A US Citizen, he was thus entitled to US legal protections, including the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause.  Presumably, had he been in the US, he would have been arrested and not assassinated—presumably.  Yet, he was not on US soil when the US government killed him.  However, as he was not a party to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, and as the US has never declared war on the nation he was killed in, Yemen, it is unclear what legal authority the US President had to target this US Citizen for assassination.

Also unclear is the evidence the US held against him.  In essence, the US President played the roles of judge, jury, prosecutor and executioner against a US Citizen.

It is highly unlikely that Mr. Awlaki was free of guilt.  His connections to Al Quada were open and notorious.  Yet it was not shown that he had specifically killed anyone, himself.  Whatever evidence there was against this man, it remains a State secret.  Whatever one reasonably thinks of Awlaki’s guilt, perhaps the assurance of “just trust us” from the US government, should not serve as a proxy for justice and the Rule of Law.  It truly obviates the purpose of the Fifth Amendment to suggest that there is ample yet secret evidence of a US Citizen’s guilt.

The retort here, is that we are at war, pursuant to the AUMF.  This is a fair response, and anyone would agree that if a US Citizen takes up arms on a battlefield against the US, there is no legal obligation to be read Miranda Rights.  But, again, Awlaki, was not fighting on a battlefield; he stole away to Yemen and had likely killed no specific person.

Thus, the logical question would be:  Does this “War on Terror” imply that the “battlefield” in fact covers the entire globe, including the backyards of non-belligerent nations?  Had Awlaki been found in the US, would he have been killed this way?  (These questions might logically extend to “What is the ‘War on Terror’?”, “How and when can this ever end?”, and “Wouldn’t a Congressional Declaration of War have solved these quandaries?”).

DUE PROCESS

Tokyo Rose was another US born propagandist, who gave aid to the Japanese during WWII with treasonous radio propaganda.  She was eventually arrested, tried, given due process, and imprisoned.  In 1977, President Gerald Ford pardoned her.

To those who think we only try people after war has concluded, the Nazi saboteurs (who were Enemy Combatants) we caught in Long Island, New York in 1942 were tried and executed in a secret military tribunal.

Tried, and then executed.

These military trials were later upheld by the US Supreme Court in ex parte Quirin.

Of the eight men involved, one was a US Citizen.  As there is no guarantee to federal district courts under the US Constitution, the use of military tribunals for the purpose of trying Enemy Combatants has been wrongly criticized (including by the Supreme Court).  Federal courts are created by statute; and so are military tribunals.  Military tribunals do provide due process.  And in Awlaki’s case, it would have been prudent to haul him before such a tribunal.

But that did not happen.  Thus, it is an open question as to how far this federal policy of targeting and killing US Citizens extends.

GADHFI

The US did not directly assassinate Muammar Ghadhfi yesterday.  Rather, the US President initiated, of his own undefined and unexplained authority, military operations against Libya.  Ignoring the confines of the US Constitution, granting coequal war powers to the President and the US Congress, President Obama went to the UN Security Council, in secret, to obtain authority for initiating strikes against Libya.  There was no Congressional Declaration of War pursuant to the express instruction of the Constitution, and not even a dubious AUMF.

Perhaps more baffling, there was no clear US objective in Libya, either.  Libya had not attacked the US, save for Gadhfi’s open and notorious funding of terrorist plots in the 1980s.  The most tragic, and the one having the greatest impact on the US, was the Lockerbie airplane bombing of 1988, in which 270 (189 Americans) were killed.  Gadhfi never admitted responsibility, yet it was provably true that he had funded this bombing.

After 15 years of hostility, Gadfhi, likely seeing the consequences of his diplomatic isolation, made concessions to pay out $2.7 billion to the families in exchange for renewed relations with the world community, including the US.  Soon after, he suspended his nuclear program.  He also agreed to pay $3.5 billion to victims of the IRA terrorists he had supported in the 1980s.

In 2008, he met with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who insisted on his making good on these concessions.

In 2009, he spoke before the UN in New York City.  He even met with President Obama, Senator Joe Lieberman, and Senator John McCain.

By no means had Gadhfi become a friendly ally of the US or other Western governments, but he was by no means a threat, either—at least, no more of a threat than any other of the dozens of human rights abusers we currently share the planet and trade with.

AGE OF ASSASSINATION

But Obama’s support for the brutal assassination of Gadhfi solidifies his reputation as the assassination president.

Moreover, it dumbfounds even the passive student of US History, to see the US President give financial, military and moral comfort to violent revolutionaries who just assassinated their leader.  In 1793, President George Washington declared American neutrality to our former ally France after a Reign of Terror had descended across that nation.  We sealed off our treaty of alliance with France, under the theory that the revolutionaries had broken the chain of power with our ally, the King.  Indeed, the revolutionaries hauled their King, tyrant though he might have been (he wasn’t that much of one), before a guillotine and exacted bloody justice.  The French alienated the civil government of Europe and the US, and triggered obloquy and anxiety throughout the continent, and across the seas.

Libyan radicals, some of whom belonged to Al Quada, enjoyed our friendship and moral support just hours after video surfaced of them dragging a live and bloodied Gadfhi through the streets, shouting Allahu Akbar right before placing a bullet in his head.

These are grim days for the Rule of Law.

 

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No Self-Check Outs in Elysium

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Robert Coleman

For decades now, radicals have arrogated to themselves the task of advancing the civil society toward blessed Elysium.  This basic observation should precede any hermeneutics of modern politics.  Posing as romantic catalysts of progress, these antisocial agents of ‘change’ are restless to ‘improve’ on all the unwashed rudiments of civilization.

Among their categorical imperatives is that all must be “fair.”  Yes, we must have fairness.  And fear not the angelic creatures here to define this phantom law of fairness:  For their claims to enlightenment are unimpeachable.

Among these angels is President Obama, whose favorite topic has to be fairness.  As he unrolls his latest Jobs Plan, Mr. Obama is attempting to sell increasing tax rates under this agenda of fairness.  According to some unknowable law he constantly invokes, it seems that some people are not paying their “fair share” in taxes.

In his (campaign) speech this morning to sell his new plan, the president claimed that even George Washington, “grappled with the problem” of taxes.  “He said,” Obama went on, “’Towards the payment of debts, there must be revenue, and to have revenue, there must be taxes.  And no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.’”

Forgetting that there was no income tax at all during the Washington Administration, one can hardly forget the time that the Father of our nation recklessly subsidized green energy firms with billions of dollars, only to go bankrupt in two year’s time.

That he might plausibly argue that George Washington endorsed anything close to the kind (or size) of federal government he is currently advancing is evidence of Obama’s gross intellectual deficiencies.  On their worst days, Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin combined do not misrepresent American history as brazenly as Barack Obama does as a matter of course.

But tax rates aside, one other thing is now clear about our divine reformers:  In their minds, technology and innovation is terribly unfair.

Astride of Mr. Obama’s recent criticism of the economic impact of ATMs and kiosks, Southern California grocers’ came within a hair’s breadth of striking, once again.  Indeed, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union has often lambasted non-unionized companies like Wal-Mart for cutting in on grocery stores with cheaper goods, bolstered by lower-paid employees.  For unspoken reasons (related to fairness), grocery store workers deserve high compensation for menial, low-skilled work; and selling consumers cheap goods, at the expense of giving reasonable market-based wages in places like Wal-Mart, is anathema to “fairness.”

It is only fair that consumers subsidize unskilled and simple work.

Recently, the UFCW has been at the forefront of seeking a state-ban on alcohol sales at Self Checkout machines, on the reasoning that these machines provide easy access to alcohol for under-aged buyers.  (Never mind that the machines stop as soon as alcohol is scanned, and prompt the buyer to present identification to the employee supervising the Self Checkout machines.)  But Self Checkout machines have faced the ire of such unions for years.  A ban on alcohol sales is likely a first step toward regulations that would render these machines nearly useless; lest these innovative marvels of the free market make grocers useless, first.

In the same vein, Mr. Obama famously insinuated that ATMs and kiosks are responsible for killing jobs at banks and airports.  “[A]lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers,” the president said.  Begging the conclusion that this efficiency is unfair to bank tellers and airport workers.

This is on the order of saying automobiles killed the blacksmith industry.  What difference does it make that innovation displaces common functions of certain industries (including jobs)?  And does anyone rationally think that the march of innovation has caused a net-deficit in jobs throughout American history?

To the contrary, history has demonstrated that technology has often liberated vast quantities of time and human resources, allowing citizens and consumers to pursue and create heretofore-unthinkable new frontiers of the free market.  Yet our wise angels, with their faux-compassion for the American worker (shrouding their parasitic relationship with unions), would have us believe that Self-Checkouts, wages commensurate with skill, and low tax rates produce a society of brutality and unfairness.

Well, perhaps it is “unfair,” that some people make millions, while others ended up as grocers.  Perhaps it is likewise unfair that some are born with down syndrome, and others are not.  The full panoply of issues a society can arbitrate in the court of fairness is endless.  Yet it is the despot who doctrinally clings to the belief that government has the ability (and right) to manufacture fairness.  While history, economics, and sanity prove the folly (and tyranny) of such (religious) beliefs.

(Also, no one is stopping Warren Buffet from giving up his wealth and living like John the Baptist.)

 

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Republican Primary Debate at the Reagan Library

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Robert Coleman

It is unclear why anyone would agitate to write a blog about this evening’s 2012 Republican Primary debate from the Reagan Library.  Why would anyone spend sixty minutes trying to sum up ninety minutes of media-contrived Kabuki theatre, and vapid sound bytes delivered by swaggering coxcombs?

Now, everyone can agree that what tonight’s debate needed, was more Rick Perry.  The NBC moderators probably could have allotted the Texas governor eighteen or nineteen more minutes of free styling; followed up by asking all the other candidates, by a show of hands, whether they agreed or disagreed with Perry. (Of course, followed by a ten-minute rebuttal and five-minute guitar solo by Rick Perry.  A little “Stairway” would have been sweet).

Tonight was nothing less than the Rick Perry Show, with special guest star, Mitt Romney.  It is not so much that the other candidates were given far less airtime than Perry and Romney (though they were), but that, charitably, one-third of the other candidates’ questions went something like : “What do you think of Rick Perry’s position?”

Then, as soon as the debate ended, NBC’s Rachel Maddow suggested that Rick Perry was under attack by all the other candidates.  She was, of course, setting up what is sure to be the media’s settled narrative:  Everyone targets Perry.  Yes, it would appear that way given that the candidates were constantly asked to do nothing but distinguish themselves from Rick Perry’s hallowed ensign.

What planet do these people live on?  Of course they all criticized Perry.  All they were asked to do was criticize Perry!

Now, the moderators obviously decided to direct vast amounts of time to Perry and Romney because they are ‘ahead in the polls.’  And any reasonable person can agree that, what with it being fifteen months before the election and what with polling data being infallible, that only candidates getting 28% (Perry) and 18% (Romney) in the most recent poll should be given serious attention.  Not people in third-place with, say, 8% (Paul).

Is that what presidential elections come down to, then?  We select our president from a list of media-approved candidates, after the media allots its airtime based on their own constantly fluctuating, highly speculative, and often dubious polling numbers?  Polling numbers, which actually rise and fall based on the airtime the candidates are being given in the first place!

Indeed, most people answering polling questions are not going to know of a candidate who is not first christened and crowned by some sector of the media.  If I don’t know who Newt Gingrich is, why would I tell a pollster I want to vote for him?

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said this week (stumping on her non-presidential-campaign, campaign) that polls are for strippers and cross-country skiers.  I will not hazard to guess whether she is personally familiar with either of these activities.  In any event, she makes an excellent point.  While, I do not believe for a moment that Palin herself does not follow polling, the fact is that the media is so religiously obsessed with their own polling, one would think that the most recent polling data is on the order of prophesy.

Hence, these debates are made into campaign ads for the person leading the current polls.  Other contenders are treated as ‘throw-away’ candidates, seen as using their limited debate time to push niche issues into the campaign.  Of course, this is all they are given time to do.

Santorum is the ‘social values’ candidate.  As Bachmann begins to slip, she’ll be that ‘tea party’ candidate.  Paul is the Libertarian with ‘extreme’ yet quaint ideas, dubbed the “absolutist” by tonight’s moderator.  Cain is the king of multi-tiered solutions, pushing some sort of “9-9-9” plan tonight (which I understood to be promising 3 large Supremes for $9 each).

And so it went that ‘front runners’ Perry and Romney were given free reign to frame every issue:  Whether by being the first or the only persons to answer a question.  Perry (and to a lesser extent Romney) had his gubernatorial record under the microscope tonight—not because the media wanted to corner him.  Rather, because the media wanted to focus on the prettiest horse.  It makes no difference that the other candidates were leveling criticisms at Perry and Romney; in the final analysis, the entire program was focused on the records and beliefs of two people.  Negative publicity is better than no publicity.  (Just ask Paul, Bachman, Cain, Gingrich, Huntsman and Santorum).

In turn, the voting public will start to hear two or three names connected to the Republican brand.  In fifteen months, most people will cast a vote having no idea who Ron Paul and Rick Santorum are.  I will herein choose to resist a tirade against the idiotic and tyrannical regime bequeathed to this generation in the name of Universal Suffrage and the absurdity that most adults above the age of eighteen are qualified to vote.  Instead, I will just conclude my tirade against the grim media-conducted orchestras we call free elections, and the Hellhounds we call journalists.

 

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