[Peace-discuss] Drone Lawyer: Kill A 16 Year-Old, Get A Promotio

Wed Aug 6 09:53:30 EDT 2014

  Drone Lawyer: Kill A 16 Year-Old, Get A Promotion

Pakistan UN Drones
Resist! <http://www.popularresistance.org/category/resist/> Drones 
<http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/drones/>
By Medea Benjamin, www.codepink.org 
<http://codepink.org/blog/2014/05/drone-lawyer-kill-a-16-year-old-get-a-promotion/>
May 17th, 2014
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If you think that as a United States citizen you're entitled to a trial 
by jury before the government can decide to kill you---- you're wrong. 
During his stint as a lawyer at the Department of Justice, David Barron 
was able to manipulate constitutional law so as to legally justify 
killing American citizens with drone strikes. If you're wondering what 
the justification for that is, that's just too bad -- the legal memos 
are classified. Sounds a little suspicious, doesn't it? What's even more 
suspicious is that now the Obama Administration wants to appoint the 
lawyer who wrote that legal memos to become a high-ranking judge for life.

Disturbingly, this is not the first time that the president has rewarded 
a high-level lawyer for paving the legal way for drone strike 
assassinations. Jeh Johnson, former lawyer at the Department of Defense, 
penned the memos that give the "okay" to target non-US citizen foreign 
combatants with drones. His reward? He's now the Secretary of the 
Department of Homeland Security. These Obama nominations are eerily 
reminiscent of the Bush-era appointment of torture memo author Jay Bybee 
to a lifetime position of a federal judge.

Barron, a Harvard law professor and former legal counsel at the 
Department of Justice, was recently nominated by President Obama to the 
lifetime position of a judge on the First Circuit Court of 
Appeals---just one step below the Supreme Court. While at the Department 
of Justice, Barron wrote at least 2 secret legal memos justifying the 
use of lethal drones to kill Americans suspected of involvement in 
terrorist activities.

Should someone who has done such immense damage to the rule of law and 
our moral sensibilities be awarded with a judgeship on the First Circuit 
Court?

The Attorney General has conceded that four Americans located outside 
the United States have been killed by drone strikes since 2011. One of 
those killed was Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was attacked while in a tribal 
region of Yemen in September 2011. Then Al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son 
Abdulrahman, also an American citizen, was shamefully killed in a drone 
strike in rural Yemen two weeks later.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that Americans suspected of 
committing crimes deserve to have charges brought against them, to have 
a chance to surrender or be captured, and to be given a fair trial. If 
they cannot be captured and refuse to surrender, they could be tried in 
absentia. But Barron helped set a terrible precedent that American 
citizens have no right to a judicial process---something that human 
rights advocates around the world have been fighting for since the 
signing of the Magna Carta 800 years ago.

How can Barron be a judge if he does not understand the deeply valued 
laws of our land, laws that include habeas corpus and the right to a 
fair trial? As stated in the Bill of Rights: theFourth Amendment 
<http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/> 
guarantees that a person cannot be seized by the government 
unreasonably, and theFifth Amendment 
<http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment05/> 
guarantees that the government may not deprive a person of life without 
due process of law. A judge is supposed to uphold the Constitution, yet 
Barron has already torn it down.

In an op-ed 
<http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/12/david-barron-should-confirmed-court-appeals/5WHjPFvMfHqulSMWxO81CK/story.html> 
supporting Barron's nomination, law professors Charles Fried and 
Laurence Tribe argue that Barron didn't order the strikes or design the 
legal framework for their authorization. Certainly he didn't order the 
strikes, but his job as acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel was 
precisely to provide legal opinions to the President, opinions that 
became the legal foundation on which the strikes were based.

Some Senators said they would not proceed with Barron's nomination until 
they got access to the memos he has written about drone strikes. "This 
nomination cannot go forward unless this body --- every member of this 
body --- is given access to any and all secret legal opinions this 
nominee wrote on this critical issue," Grassley said. The White House 
responded by allowing all interested Senators to go to a secret chamber 
to read 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/05/14/morning-plum-obama-administration-may-release-drone-memos-good/> 
"all written legal advice issued by Mr. Barron regarding the potential 
use of lethal force against US citizens in counterterrorism operations." 
This pretense of transparency is meaningless, though, because Senators 
won't be able to publicly question and challenge Barron about the memos 
unless they are declassified.

That's why some senators 
<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/07/1297529/-Senators-on-Barron-Drone-Strike-Memos-Where-Do-They-Stand>, 
including Democrat Mark Udall and Republican Rand Paul, are insisting 
that the memos be made public. That's all well and good, since we---the 
public--certainly should have the right to read them. It makes no sense 
for legal memos to be considered secret national security documents. 
Even the courts have said as much, when a federal judge in April 2014 
ordered the administration to release the legal analysis to the public 
(an order the administration has so far ignored).

But the Senators should go further and state that David Barron is simply 
not fit to sit on the bench to interpret our Constitution.

In the hopes of moving our nation back to one that respects, honors and 
upholds the rule of law, we are pushing the Senate 
<http://codepink.salsalabs.com/o/424/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=7208>---particularly 
Majority Leader Harry Reid 
<http://codepink.salsalabs.com/o/424/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=7211>---to 
kill Barron's nomination. Senator Rand Paul is one of the few Senators 
challenging Barron's nomination. "I can't imagine appointing someone to 
the federal bench, one level below the Supreme Court, without fully 
understanding that person's views concerning the extrajudicial killing 
of American citizens," he wrote 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/opinion/show-us-the-drone-memos.html?_r=0>.

Unfortunately, now that the administration has placated Senators by 
giving them access to Barron's memos, he will most likely be be 
confirmed. There is one good thing that could come out of this, though 
-- the sparking of a much-needed national conversation about drone 
warfare and U.S. policy on the use of killer drones. Does the use of 
drone strikes that often hit innocent people and incite hatred towards 
Americans actually ensure our safety, or trigger greater danger? In the 
meantime, we should urge our Senators to push for the public release of 
these classified drone memos and should oppose the appointment of David 
Barron. We don't need a judge on the bench who has already shown his 
disregard for the Constitution and for the rights of American citizens. 
Tell your Senator 
<http://codepink.salsalabs.com/o/424/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=7208> 
to vote "no" for drone lawyer David Barron.

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