Later On

In my career, I have worked in education (two words: faculty committee), in business (one word: meetings), and in the education business (three words: standardized achievement tests). In all of those environments, I noticed the strange dynamics of meetings and committees: each person generally feels not responsible for the group decisions. When decisions turn out to be bad, somehow it seems each person in the meeting or committee opposed the decision. When the decision turns out well… hmm. I’m not sure. (I’m trying to think of a committee decision that turned out well. I’ll get back to you.)

The problem is that these committees and meetings were mushy. They didn’t have rules and procedures. The power within the organization of the members were widely disparate, and there was no way a relatively weak member could prevail against a powerful member using nothing but rational argument. Always, it seemed, decisions were made based not on the issues at hand and the facts of the case but on long-running organizational battles and maneuvering for power.

So on reading this Reuters story by Mark Hosenball on the process by which Obama decides that an American citizen should be summarily assassinated without benefit of due process, I am concerned. The story begins:

American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.

The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants.

The White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration of President Barack Obama’s toughness toward militants who threaten the United States. But the process that led to Awlaki’s killing has drawn fierce criticism from both the political left and right.

In an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor George W. Bush’s expansive use of executive power in his “war on terrorism,” is being attacked in some quarters for using similar tactics. They include secret legal justifications and undisclosed intelligence assessments.

Liberals criticized the drone attack on an American citizen as extra-judicial murder.

Conservatives criticized Obama for refusing to release a Justice Department legal opinion that reportedly justified killing Awlaki. They accuse Obama of hypocrisy, noting his administration insisted on publishing Bush-era administration legal memos justifying the use of interrogation techniques many equate with torture, but refused to make public its rationale for killing a citizen without due process.

Some details about how the administration went about targeting Awlaki emerged on Tuesday when the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, was asked by reporters about the killing.

The process involves “going through the National Security Council, then it eventually goes to the president, but the National Security Council does the investigation, they have lawyers, they review, they look at the situation, you have input from the military, and also, we make sure that we follow international law,” Ruppersberger said.

Other officials said the role of the president in the process was murkier than what Ruppersberger described. . .

Continue reading. It sure sounds to me very like no one is really in charge, no one really knows what’s going on, and no one is taking responsibility. It’s also not clear who argues the defense, who is responsible for making the best case that the assassination should not go forward. And, obviously, keeping everything secret is exactly what would be done if the process is totally corrupt and indefensible. In fact, the more indefensible the process, the more secretive the Obama administration will be. I note that they are being quite secretive inded.

Glenn Greenwald also offers some cogent observations on the direction Obama has taken the government.

So far as I can tell, the actions Obama has taken are utterly indefensible and contrary to the spirit of American jurisprudence—which is why he so rigorously avoids the judicial branch in doing this sort of thing.