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The Hit List: The Public Applauds As President Obama Kills Two Citizens As A Presidential Prerogative

Below is today’s column in USA Today (to run in paper form on Wednesday) on President Barack Obama’s claim to the right to kill citizens as dangers to the nation. Ironically, the day after I wrote the Los Angeles Times column on Obama’s disastrous impact on the civil liberties movement in the United States (including his assertion of the right to kill citizens on his own authority), the U.S. killed two citizens in Yemen. Notably, Ron Paul (who has emerged as the only candidate discussing these issues from a civil libertarian perspective) suggested an impeachment inquiry based on the killing of the two citizens. Below is the column in USA Today.

Last week, Americans saw a curious sight for a free nation: their president ordered the killing of two U.S. citizens without a trial or even a formal charge and the public applauded. President Obama never denied that he told the military to kill Anwar al-Awlaki on his sole discretion a year ago. They did so last week in Yemen – and killed U.S.-born cleric Samir Khan for good measure. Two U.S. citizens killed because a president unilaterally declared them to be part of a terrorist organization.

Before the killing, Obama successfully fought efforts by al-Awlaki’s family to have a court review the legality for the planned assassination of their kin. Due to reported prior associations of the U.S. government with al-Awlaki, it was a hearing that the intelligence agencies likely did not want to occur. At the time, the Justice Department argued that if al-Awlaki wanted judicial review, he should file with the clerk’s office himself – despite an order for him to be shot on sight. The Obama administration succeeded in arguing that the planned killing of a citizen on this hit list was a “political question,” not a legal question.

While few people mourn the passing of a figure like al-Awlaki who was accused being a leader in al Qaeda, they should mourn the passing of basic constitutional protections afforded to all citizens. So a president can now kill a citizen without publicly naming him as a target, stating the basis for his killing, or even acknowledge his killing once it has been carried out. Even if one assumes citizens would only be killed outside the country, it would mean that a your life becomes dispensable the minute you step a foot over one of our borders.

At the same time, the government has expanded the definition of terrorism and material support for terrorism, which in turn further expands the scope of possible targets. When confronted on the lack of knowledge of who is on this list and the basis for their killing, the Obama administration simply says that citizens must trust their president. It is the very definition of authoritarian power – and Americans appear to have developed a taste for it.

Obama’s hit list is a continuation of a policy defended by George W. Bush, who ordered an attack that killed U.S. citizen, Kamal Derwish, in Yemen in 2002. While Bush wanted Yemeni Abu Ali al-Harithi (the alleged mastermind behind the 2000 bombing of the U.S. Cole) dead, Derwish was riding in the car with him (as well as four other individuals). Derwish was not even on a hit list, but U.S. intelligence officials said it did not matter because they were authorized to kill Americans in such operations.

The sight of free people applauding the president’s discretionary killing of citizens would have horrified the framers of our Constitution. In conflict with a system based on checks and balances, Obama controls not just who will die but whether a court can review his decisions. Even if the family of these men were to try to sue for wrongful death, the Obama administration insists that they have the discretion to block such cases under the “military and state secrets privilege.” Thus, even if a president arbitrarily were to order the killing of a citizen, neither the victim nor his family could challenge the matter before an independent court (assuming they even knew about the order).

Notably, in the face of this extrajudicial killing of two citizens, Democrats who claim to be civil libertarians like Dianne Feinstein have cheered the president – creating a record for the next president to expand on these acquiesced powers.

No republic can long stand if a president retains the unilateral authority to kill citizens who he deems a danger to the country. What is left is a magnificent edifice of laws and values that, to quote Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.

141 thoughts on “The Hit List: The Public Applauds As President Obama Kills Two Citizens As A Presidential Prerogative”

  1. I have been saying for years, this is the year the people will come to the streets. The protests are spreading. If the younger people come out they will become protests that can make a statement and change. Bloomberg’s arrests and the apparent forcing of illegal activity (the Brooklyn bridge issue where protestors say they were corraled into impeding traffic so cops would arrest for that exact infraction.)will also be a help in fomenting interest and action.

  2. S.M.,

    What’s interesting about the occupy wallstreet protestors is their lack of partisanship. They realize that the social injustice which is in force in the US came about through the work of Democrats and Republicans alike. This is not a movement for the election of Romney, Obama or anyone else. It is a movement for social justice on behalf of the people of the US by the people of the US.

  3. puzzling,
    most of the people on this blog seem to agree that the citizen hit list is unconstitutional, but the issue of Mr. Paul being the shining light is up for discussion. I also agree with Mr. Paul that we should have never gone into Iraq and we should be out of Afghanistan, but that does not hide the fact that he is speaking from both sides of his mouth on other issues. The integrity issue is what I have been responding to.

  5. Jeff H.,

    What you are advocating is a form of: “we must destroy the village to save it”. We have a Constitution. The president took an oath to protect and defend it. Instead he has destroyed it. Here are the legal, Constitutional options that Obama should have taken in this case.

    Mr. al-Awalki should have been charged with a specific crime if there was sufficient evidence to legally charge him with that crime. The charge should have been clearly laid out in public.

    He should then have been arrested. Arrest is not impossible. Dangerous conditions for arrest exist every day. Law enforcement officers have taken an oath to uphold our Constitution, therefore they take the risk, even of their own death to follow that oath. We owe them a debt of gratitude for abiding by their oath. Further, the FBI had al-Awalki arrested by authorities in Yemen in 2006. (They also had him tortured, with their full knowledge, at that time.) We see then that even Mr. al-Awalki could be arrested.

    After 9/11 the govt. had a legal method for dealing with terrorists, one that has served the US well for a very long time. That method was to use the criminal justice system to try terrorism cases. Instead the govt. choose war and a host of illegal and immoral actions which have resulted in so many deaths, both of civilians and soldiers. It has also resulted in the destruction of our Constitution. The govt. needlessly put our soldiers in harm’s way. Actually, they criminally put our soldiers in harm’s way because they lied us into a war of aggression against Iraq.

    The American spirit consists of the willingness to hold fast to the rule of law, even when we are frightened, especially when we are frightened.

  6. David,

    That was a beautifully written summation of the what we now face as a nation. I think Wootsy makes an important addition to it with her/his reference to our population’s lack of reliable information.

    This murder, and it was a murder, is not really difficult to understand. The president has claimed the right to declare anyone a terrorist, anywhere in the world (including the US) and to kill them (that also includes in the US) on his say so alone. Harold Koh has been laying this “right” out in speech after speech since at least Nov of 2010. This presidential “right” up ends our Constitution, rendering it null and void.

    The president is engaged in torture, extraordinary renditions, the protection of war and financial criminals and illegally spying on our population. Again, these actions are not justified by our Constitution, they shred it to pieces. Yet, too many Americans will support and applaud each of these actions and the man who engages in them. That support and applause is our worst problem, worse even than having a president who murders and tortures.

    As our population supports the dismantling of the rule of law, we will all come under the effect of having no law. Few will be spared, for even current sycophants may offend someday, finding too late, that they too are expendable after all.

    Our media serves their masters to obfuscate simple, but profound truths. There is also the denial of Democrats, just as there was with Republicans when Bush was president. Republicans said, Bush is a nice guy. He wouldn’t do anything wrong, he wouldn’t make a mistake. He wouldn’t lie to us. Under Obama, these are now the words of too many Democrats.

    Denial must end. Partisanship must end. We need every person of conscience to speak out on behalf of our nation and what it should stand for.

  7. Mr. Turley. I think that you are very short sighted in your assessment on American turncoats. These people do there best to kill not only our soldiers but attempt to out do the cowardly 9/11 sneak attack on New York. If erasing these turncoats is the way to help protect our soldiers and our country then more power to the American Spirit.

  8. ekeyra – beautifully said. It’s almost a “shoot the messenger” mentality.

    I didn’t see the comment that was alleged to be removed in this thread, but I’m sure that JT, Glenn Greenwald and others speaking out against the president’s actions will receive heavy criticism from the left… particularly when they call attention to the only national candidate who is actually challenging the president and introducing the impeachment discussion. Partisanship over principle.

    Or perhaps no principle at all.

  9. Hold up! Did my comment regarding RP being JT’s boy get scrubbed? Noooo, not on this list where freedom of speech reigns.

  10. I love how a discussion about an incumbent president who murdered two american citizens in another country without trial, evidence, legality, morality, or even the half assed theatrics of due process, turned into how ron paul would be a terrible president because he might have said some rascist things in a newsletter from 20 years ago, and had the audacity to suggest doctors wouldnt just let patients die even if the government wasnt forcing them to provide treatment.

    Do you comprehend the conversation you’re having or does it all just sound like the ocean?

    How is it irrelevant that ron paul doesn’t want the government to have the ability to kill you anywhere on the planet and deny even the responsibility to have to explain why?

    You also seem to accept the idea that the same government that arrogates to itself the right to annihilate you where you stand at any moment, at any location, will simultaneously provide the best healthcare possible, to as many people as possible, because the people providing that care right now don’t care enough to do so with the resources available. Im sorry who exactly has the greater disregard for human life?

  12. Ron Paul ’90s newsletters rant against blacks, gays
    January 10, 2008|From Brian Todd CNN
    http://articles.cnn.com/2008-01-10/politics/paul.newsletters_1_newsletters-blacks-whites?_s=PM:POLITICS

    Excerpts:
    A series of newsletters in the name of GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul contain several racist remarks — including one that says order was restored to Los Angeles after the 1992 riots when blacks went “to pick up their welfare checks.”

    CNN recently obtained the newsletters — written in the 1990s and one from the late 1980s — after a report was published about their existence in The New Republic.

    None of the newsletters CNN found says who wrote them, but each was published under Paul’s name between his stints as a U.S. congressman from Texas.

    *****

    The controversial newsletters include rants against the Israeli lobby, gays, AIDS victims and Martin Luther King Jr. — described as a “pro-Communist philanderer.” One newsletter, from June 1992, right after the LA riots, says “order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.”

    Another says, “The criminals who terrorize our cities — in riots and on every non-riot day — are not exclusively young black males, but they largely are. As children, they are trained to hate whites, to believe that white oppression is responsible for all black ills, to ‘fight the power,’ to steal and loot as much money from the white enemy as possible.”

    *****

    Ron Paul’s racist newsletters from the ’90s

  14. Isaac,
    He started to say no, and then went into a screed that the churches would take care of him. Listen to the whole clip. How can you miss that?

  15. So did no one hear him say “No” when Wolfie asked, “So society should just let him die?” The morons in the crowd responded affirmatively. Ron Paul quite clearly said no. How can you miss that?

  18. What bugs me most about Ron Paul and his son Rand, is both are physicians who claim to be staunchly “pro-life”; and yet, care so little about how inadequate ( going for deliberate understatement) the “free market” is in meeting people’s needs.

    http://thinkprogess.org/health/2011/09/14/318633/ron-paul-campaign-manage-died-uninsured/

    http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/ron-pauls-health-solution-fail

    That and the fact that they are hypocritical “libertarians” who are strongly against a women’s right to choose!

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