Today we learned that the U.S. wants to target another American citizen with a drone attack who they say is a terrorist:
An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaeda is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year.
The CIA drones watching him cannot strike because he’s a U.S. citizen and the Justice Department must build a case against him, a task it hasn’t completed.Four U.S. officials said the American suspected terrorist is in a country that refuses U.S. military action on its soil and that has proved unable to go after him. And President Barack Obama‘s new policy says American suspected terrorists overseas can only be killed by the military, not the CIA, creating a policy conundrum for the White House.
This has brought back the debate about constitutional rights for US citizens and on CNN's The Situation Room, while arguing the merits of killing US citizens with drones on foreign soil with the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer, law professor Alan Dershowitz told Wolf Blitzer that the U.S. is at war with Pakistan a a response to Jaffer's point that America can't use wartime authority on countries its not at war with. I'm not sure anyone else in America knew that, did you?
Dershowitz: We need to adapt the rules of war to the new realities of the dangers facing America, that's the debate we should be having.
Jaffer: Well I don't think we should treat the whole planet like a battlefield. The United States is at war with Afghanistan, it's not at war with many of the other places in which it is carrying out targeted killings and you have to draw a distinction between those two things. The government can't use wartime authority in places in which the government is not at war.
Blitzer: All right, we gotta leave it there.
Dershowitz: With Pakistan we're at war.
I didn't know America was engaged in a secret war with Pakistan, did you? Is he hoping to push us into another conflict with another middle eastern country? The United States stated just a few days ago that they were going to curtail drone strikes in Pakistan so they can negotiate with the Taliban.
The Obama administration has sharply curtailed drone strikes in Pakistan after a request from the government there for restraint as it pursues peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, according to U.S. officials.
In Pakistan, the National Journal reported that the US has a secret agreement with Pakistan to allow drone strikes, so obviously they are more of an ally than an enemy, Alan. Does he have secret war powers that we don't know about?
Wouldn't it be nice if the media kept as many warmongers off the air as possible? They obviously have done their best to rid the airwaves of liberals.
