Monday, October 3, 2011

Legal opinions and the killing of Awlaki

Andrew C. McCarthy : War-Power Paranoia "Second, “commander-in-chief” is not the sum total of the Constitution’s presidential endowment. The president is also made sole repository of government’s “executive power.” This, as no less a states’-rights partisan than Thomas Jefferson acknowledged, was a conferral of plenary power over foreign affairs. Moreover, “commander-in-chief” is not, as Mr. Williamson suggests, an honorific that implies only “titular” power. The Supreme Court construed it in 1850 to empower the president to “employ [the armed forces] in the manner he may deem most effectual to harass and conquer and subdue the enemy.” During the Civil War, it held that even in the absence of congressional authorization, the commander-in-chief was not merely authorized but obliged to repel attacks against the U.S. by any necessary force."

 Volokh Conspiracy : Public Legitimacy for Targeted Killing Using Drones  "This will never satisfy the non-governmental advocates or the academics, of course. They have no skin in the game and hence can always hold out for the most extreme position with only an indirect cost in credibility.  In the case of drones, in which even some of the advocates are belatedly realizing that the weapon is indeed more precise and sparing of civilians, ignoring the NGO advocates as profoundly mistaken has spared a human tragedy in collateral damage over the long run." 
Wouldn't you call the killing of Alwaki the same as the killing by police of armed resisters, such as those body-armored, machine-gunning bank robbers in LA some years ago? They didn't get due process either and plenty of limosine liberals howled about that as well. (Also because they had "no skin in the game".)
jihadica: English-Speaking Jihadis Lose Principal Propagandists

Political Cartoons by Chip Bok
http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/chipbok

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