<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<i>"...as the Obama administration hastily rushes for the exits in Iraq
and Afghanistan, <br>
the U.S. will be losing the bases, infrastructure and practice that
make possible the high tempo of <br>
drone and special-forces operations. The U.S. may be left with no
opportunities for capture, <br>
and precious few chances to kill."</i><br>
<br>
[say it ain't true, Linda Lou...]<br>
<br>
*<br>
If there ever was to be a real non-Ibsen-esque & bonafide Enema of
the People, <br>
John Yoo would have to be the prototype incarnate.<br>
<br>
<img src="cid:part1.06050402.05040304@pigs.ag" alt="" height="249"
width="178"><br>
This war criminal and <i>putong</i> <i>wangbadan</i> has not only gall
and cajones but mocking insolent arrogant disrespect and contempt for
humanity<br>
to put this dastardly <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> in print, and the
WSJ printed it, online at least--<br>
<br>
<a
href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204226204576603114226847494.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204226204576603114226847494.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion</a><br>
<br>
*<br>
<br>
>From Gettysburg to Anwar al-Awlaki<br>
American citizens have never been considered immune from lethal force
when they take up arms against their country.<br>
<br>
By JOHN YOO<br>
<br>
The United States can cross Anwar al-Awlaki off the al Qaeda roster.
The Yemeni-American cleric killed by a U.S. drone strike on Friday was
linked to the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight over
Detroit in 2009, the shooting spree at Fort Hood in Texas that killed
13 that same year, and the near-miss car bombing of Times Square in
2010.<br>
<br>
Yet, from the howls on the left, you would never know that President
Barack Obama had won another victory in the war on terror. Even as
details of the operation leaked out, critics claimed that our
government had "assassinated" an American citizen without due process.<br>
<br>
Showing that antiwar fervor is a bipartisan disease, Rep. Ron Paul (R.,
Texas) immediately went on the offensive. "Al-Awlaki was born here; he
is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes,"
declared the Republican presidential candidate. "If the American people
accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice
of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I
think it's sad."<br>
<br>
Such fevered accusations echo weightier claims from groups like the
American Civil Liberties Union and the United Nations. Representing
Awlaki's father, the ACLU sued the Obama administration last year on
the theory that the Constitution forbids the government from trying to
kill an American citizen for allegedly joining the enemy. According to
the ACLU, the United States must arrest Awlaki and bring him home for
trial. U.N. officials also issued a report last year suggesting that
U.S. drones violate the human rights of suspected terrorists because of
the lack of due process.<br>
<br>
Last December, however, a federal court in Washington dismissed the
ACLU's case. It observed that judges had little ability to intervene in
wartime targeting decisions and that Awlaki always had the option of
returning home to prove his innocence.<br>
<br>
Today's critics wish to return the United States to the pre-9/11 world
of fighting terrorism only with the criminal justice system. Worse yet,
they get the rights of a nation at war terribly wrong. Awlaki's killing
in no way violates the prohibition on assassination, first declared by
executive order during the Ford administration. As American government
officials have long concluded, assassination is an act of murder for
political purposes. Killing Martin Luther King Jr. or John F. Kennedy
is assassination. Shooting an enemy soldier in wartime is not. In World
War II, the United States did not carry out an assassination when it
sent long-range fighters to shoot down an air transport carrying the
Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.<br>
<br>
American citizens who join the enemy do not enjoy a roving legal
force-field that immunizes them from military reprisal. President
Abraham Lincoln confronted this question at the outset of the Civil War.<br>
<br>
Under the Ron Paul-ACLU worldview, Lincoln could not order Union troops
to fire on Confederates without a trial and should have released them
all from military prison because they remained citizens (a view shared,
incidentally, by Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of Dred Scott v.
Sandford). What if Union officers could have seized Gens. Robert E. Lee
and Albert Johnston at the start of the war?<br>
<br>
"Unquestionably, if we had seized and held them, the insurgent cause
would be much weaker," Lincoln wrote. "But no one of them had then
committed any crime defined in the law" and a court would order them
released. Instead, Lincoln concluded, the laws of war must allow the
United States to treat its own citizens as enemies when they take up
arms in rebellion.<br>
<br>
Supreme Court opinions have upheld Lincoln's principle. During World
War II, the FBI caught eight German saboteurs trying to sneak into the
U.S. and at least one of them was a citizen. On reviewing their
military trial and death sentences, the Justices declared: "Citizenship
in the United States of an enemy belligerent does not relieve him from
the consequences" (Ex Parte Quirin, 1942). "Citizens who associate
themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its
aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts are
enemy belligerents." A nation at war has the right to kill enemy
belligerents in war.<br>
<br>
The war on terror's unprecedented nature only makes Lincoln's rule even
more critical. Al Qaeda has no territory, population or conventional
armed forces. It draws its operatives from any country and trains them
to covertly infiltrate peaceful societies to launch surprise attacks on
civilian targets. If the U.S. were to reserve criminal justice rules
for American terrorists, it would only encourage al Qaeda to recruit
citizens and ease their path into this country. American al Qaeda
operatives would be free from targeting, and efforts to stop them—here
or abroad—would require the whole system of warrants, judges, Miranda
warnings and lawyers.<br>
<br>
Realizing this, the Supreme Court has made clear that the old rules
would apply even in this new war. In 2004, it upheld the military
detention of Yaser Hamdi, a Saudi Arabian captured during the 2001 U.S.
invasion of Afghanistan who had been born in the U.S. "There is no bar
to this Nation's holding one of its own citizens as an enemy
combatant," the Court's plurality agreed. "A citizen, no less than an
alien, can be part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States
or coalition partners and engaged in an armed conflict against the
United States."<br>
<br>
Simply because the Obama administration has the legal right to use
force to kill members of the enemy does not mean it must always pull
the trigger. It should have good reasons to believe an American has
joined al Qaeda. Intelligence reasons favor capturing al Qaeda leaders
whenever possible to gain information. But as the Obama administration
hastily rushes for the exits in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. will be
losing the bases, infrastructure and practice that make possible the
high tempo of drone and special-forces operations. The U.S. may be left
with no opportunities for capture, and precious few chances to kill.<br>
<br>
Mr. Yoo is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley
and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He was an official
in the Justice Department from 2001-03, and is co-editor of the
recently published "Confronting Terror" (Encounter Books).<br>
<br>
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>