Droning On 0
Shaun Mullen has doubts about the legality of raining remote-controlled death from the sky, “targeted” or not. He considers the knotty case of the droning of Anwar al-Awlaki. A nugget:
Those leaps of logic included Yoo’s disingenuous commingling of World War II prisoners of war with post-9/11 enemy combatants, as well as the assertion of Michael Mukasey, who was easily the most dangerous of the three Bush administration attorneys general, that Yoo and his brethren cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of the president and the president cannot commit crimes when he acts under the advice of his lawyers.
But that is small comfort. No president should be able to pick and choose when to uphold and defend the Constitution, let alone Obama, who was once a constitutional scholar. His legal eagles need to craft a redo on the Awlaki memo. The alternative is to acknowledge that despite the fact Awlaki was a very bad man, a strong legal case wasn’t made to take him out.
I don’t have a strong opinion about this case; my objection to drone wars is similar to my objection against the death penalty: We get it wrong too damned often–we take out too many weddings and childrens’ birthday parties and bystanders. Nevertheless, please do read the rest.
