Americans: If You Don’t Want To Get Killed By A Drone, Avoid These 4 Things!
SWC members: I made a post at my blog today reference the debate over the use of drones, which has reached its zenith this week. I've cross-posted some of the points here from the entire post and would enjoy the intelligence discussion of all those wise folks here at Small Wars. Here's the introduction and the policy recommendations are at this link: http://selectedwisdom.com/?p=965
"The much anticipated Department of Justice memo authorizing the use of drones to target Americans....scratch that. A white paper from the Department of Justice outlined what might be the U.S. government's position with regards to the killing of Americans via the use of unmanned drones.
Twitter erupted with claims that this memo provided the President unprecedented powers to kill any American, anywhere, for any reason. Well, I read the memo, and I'm fairly certain that is not what it said. (I think @blakehounshell was the first to point this out.) However, in reading this memo, which may or may not exactly detail U.S. policy, I did identify four important points for Americans if they want to avoid getting a warhead to the forehead.
Americans, if you are trying to avoid being transformed into a red mist;
--Don't join al Qaeda outside the United States- Who knew that if you are an American and you decide to join al Qaeda that you might get smacked in the face with a Hellfire missile. Unbelievable, the nerve of the American government to hold a grudge for so long. Can you believe the Executive Branch would be willing to kill members of the terrorist organization, including American members, that committed the largest terrorist attack in history on American soil? Absolutely absurd! However, simply being a member of al Qaeda won't necessarily get a drone sortie on your hut.
--Don't become a Senior Leader of al Qaeda overseas - Even more shocking, if you are an American citizen and you join al Qaeda, and then later, you become one of the senior leaders of that organization, you might just wake up to a mouthful of hell's fire! Unbelievable! To think that you could join a terrorist group and openly advocate for the killing of your fellow citizens, and then be so good at promoting terrorism against your homeland that you would be honored by al Qaeda with a promotion....to think you could then be killed for that promotion. I can't imagine. Who are these barbarians?
--Don't actively plan to kill or actually attempt to kill Americans - It turns out that if you are an American and you join al Qaeda overseas and then you plan to kill or actually try to kill Americans, you could get shot in the face with a missile. Ridiculous. What right do U.S. citizens have to try and prevent terrorists from attacking them? Surely if you join al Qaeda, recruit a guy off the Internet, and then help wrap his junk with explosives before setting him off to take down an airplane over Detroit on Christmas day, you should be allowed to hide out overseas and enjoy another opportunity to try a better, more sophisticated attack against the U.S., right?
-- Don't make it difficult to be arrested - This is where the white paper gets completely ludicrous. It seems that if the U.S. government cannot figure out a way to arrest you since you've joined al Qaeda, been promoted, tried to attack the U.S. and have been hiding in a failed state with no functioning law enforcement, they will then maybe send a drone after you. How insulting! How is this possibly fair to American terrorists that join al Qaeda?
Unlike the folks I witnessed on Twitter suggesting this document provides the President unbounded power to kill Americans, I see the inverse - a legal opinion particularly crafted to pursue one Anwar al-Awlaki. As has been seen in other public domains, Awlaki, an American, served as the head of external operations for AQAP in Yemen (a senior leader position), was being considered for promotion to head of AQAP (a more senior position) and was actively participating in plots to attack the U.S. (See Underwear Bomber). This uniquely qualifies him for targeting according to this white paper. The question should now be: what other Americans could be legally targeted by the U.S.? Adam Gadahn maybe? The list seems to be fairly short and not expansive in the way suggested by drone conspiracy theorists.
Drone critics - what do you want? - see policy recommendations here: http://selectedwisdom.com/?p=965
Reply With Quote
I think you defined both pretty well and have a reasonable matrix for signature strikes. to me however, the issue is not one of legality but rather one of effectiveness, Both kinds of drone strikes suffer in two areas:
Bookmarks