On January 23, 2009 -- or three days after he took office -- President Barack Obama began killing people deemed to be enemies of the United States. A little over a year later, his administration began offering not details of the killings but rather measured justifications of its power to kill. In public speeches, in interviews, and in some cases in articles informed by leaks from the President’s closest advisors, the Obama Administration has spoken to American citizens about the legality of -- among other things -- killing, without trial, American citizens determined to present a threat to other American citizens.
[...]
What we have never heard -- what we have not been permitted to hear -- is what the Administration sounds like when it’s speaking to itself.
[...]
That’s why the ACLU and the New York Times have sued to make the Administration turn over the classified memorandum in which the Office of Legal Counsel argued for the legality of “targeting” Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen turned Al Qaeda leader. That’s why 11 senators wrote a letter to the White House suggesting that they might hold up the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA director if the OLC’s memorandum is not at last made available to them. And that’s why the “white paper” leaked [...] to NBC News is so important: though it offers only a summary of the OLC memo, it also offers, for the first time, an inkling of what the king’s ministers are whispering in the king’s ear.
And I do mean “king,” because anyone who takes the time to read the leaked white paper will be struck by how ancient, how almost Shakesepearan are its concerns. For all the Obama Administration’s efforts to characterize “targeted killing” as a modern solution to a modern problem, the white paper suggests that its real quandary with regard to citizens who have taken up with the enemy is as old as power itself: how to eliminate them without being accused of murdering them.
[...]
And so when we read it, we recognize it for what it is: the kind of document that has always been proferred to power. The kind of document that always ends with somebody dead.
Charlie Pierce - Correction: This piece is by Tom Junod
[...]
What we have never heard -- what we have not been permitted to hear -- is what the Administration sounds like when it’s speaking to itself.
[...]
That’s why the ACLU and the New York Times have sued to make the Administration turn over the classified memorandum in which the Office of Legal Counsel argued for the legality of “targeting” Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen turned Al Qaeda leader. That’s why 11 senators wrote a letter to the White House suggesting that they might hold up the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA director if the OLC’s memorandum is not at last made available to them. And that’s why the “white paper” leaked [...] to NBC News is so important: though it offers only a summary of the OLC memo, it also offers, for the first time, an inkling of what the king’s ministers are whispering in the king’s ear.
And I do mean “king,” because anyone who takes the time to read the leaked white paper will be struck by how ancient, how almost Shakesepearan are its concerns. For all the Obama Administration’s efforts to characterize “targeted killing” as a modern solution to a modern problem, the white paper suggests that its real quandary with regard to citizens who have taken up with the enemy is as old as power itself: how to eliminate them without being accused of murdering them.
[...]
And so when we read it, we recognize it for what it is: the kind of document that has always been proferred to power. The kind of document that always ends with somebody dead.
Charlie Pierce - Correction: This piece is by Tom Junod
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
