Further on Leaked White Paper Re "Targeted Killing"

The powers it claims are broad and, as Isikoff pointed out on Rachel Maddow's show, actually contradict some of the administration's public statements and enter into Orwell's world of false language rendered to conceal an arguments "too brutal for most people to take."  Consider the notion of "imminence." Last year Eric Holder claimed that a lethal strike against an American citizen can only be made if to protect against "an imminent threat of violent attack." But the white paper states that imminence "does not require that the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons or interests will take place in the significant future." Effectively, the word "imminence" has no meaning beyond "we think you're a bad guy."

The white paper further claims that it can carry out operations "with the consent of the host nation's government," and then moves on to declare that such operations would still be lawful "after a determination that the host nation is unwilling or unable to suppress the threat posed by the individual targeted." In other words, we will ask your consent, but we don't really need it.

This kind of language -- imminence that isn't, consent at gun-point -- runs throughout the white paper. It authorizes, for instance, not just the killing of Al Qaeda leaders, but of any "an associated force." Who determines what constitutes "an associated force?" The same people ordering the killing.

I don't want to be thick-witted here. [...] But practically, much of our foreign policy now depends on the hope of benevolent dictators and philosopher kings. The law can't help. The law is what the kings say it is.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

What is so extraordinary about this moment in American life is that tens of millions of people are ferociously defending the Second Amendment, and throw the name of the Constitution around like it's sacred, and yet they utter not one peep when its basic principles are shaken to their foundation. And let's be honest about why the right doesn't attack Obama for this outrageous violation of the founding principles of the country: They don't want to look weak, and they think that it only affects people they don't mind seeing die anyway. As for the idea that Al-Qaeda is so much of a threat that it requires extraordinary extensions of the president's powers, I can only say that the United States didn't need a sovereign while facing the Nazis or Communist Russia, both of which were infinitely more resourceful and threatening than a bunch of camel-humpers living in remote caves in the most desolate places on earth. Rome didn't need a sovereign for five hundred years, while facing half a dozen truly existential threats. We all know how that turned out. At least they knew when they had an emperor. They had a ceremony and everything. Obama just has a white paper.

  Charlie Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.