OBAMA'S KILL LIST

I have been struggling with the concept of Obama having a “kill list”. I hate the idea that he has such a list but I also know that he is a very intelligent man and probably has good reason to do what he is doing. What might those reasons be? It was Chris and his guests’ intellectual treatment of this subject on his program “Up” on MSNBC-TV this morning (6/19/12) that stimulated me to think about this subject. One of the guests, Jeremy Cahill was the most outspoken in condemning the President. The problem was the he offered no alternative to the dilemma about how to counter terrorists. In his great book, Blackwater, he implied that he had an excellent alternative to private armies, which was the U.S. Army.  It would cost the taxpayers less; it would be under civilian control that is the elected president, etc. In this case, he gave no alternative. We have individuals in various sovereign states around the world, some of whom are U. S. Citizens, making bombs ant otherwise plotting to kill people indiscriminately. Cahill, the other guest, and the host condemned the President setting in the White House selecting from a list who to kill and who not to kill. Supposedly, a group of unknown but well-informed people created the list without the benefit of a selected judge and jury, and especially egregious decision if the target of a drone attack was an American. The alternatives not to do this are “boots on the ground”, which is the tough Marlborough Cowboy solution, let the people in the country that harbors the terrorist do it, or use the so-called surgical assault as was done with the Osama Bin Laden strike, or the drone attacks, which is what the president is doing. A special ops assault like the Osama ground attacks implies we would give the culprit a fair trial. The final option, to do nothing, is off the table.

My question to Chris and gusts is, all options are gut wrenching but which alternative results in the lowest number of casualties, including what is repeatedly refer to as “innocent civilians”, with vocal emphasis on the word ‘innocent’. The subtlety was that Chris and every one of his guests tacitly agreed we should bring the bomb makes to justice.

We could invade Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen, the sites of drone attacks, but no sane person, at least those who now have the commander in chief’ ears, would agree that three wars, or even one, is a good alternative. The armed strike alternative is the Osama type raid. However, many of the people and in some cases even the governments in the countries harboring these people, agree with the terrorist and would protect them. I addition, they would not agree with an army violating their sovereignty. Judging from the reaction of the Pakistani people and government after the Osama raid it would not be good.

If we capture terrorists and bring them to trial, which we can only do by a special operation raid, therefore, many people would put at risk of dying trying to capture the “presumed” guilty party. We can judge the reaction of the far-right to a civilian trial of a terrorist from their reaction to the President’s proposal to have a Guantanamo prisoner brought to justice in New York. New Yorkers were afraid terrorist would kill people by bombs around the world but even in New York. In addition to this difficulty, to declare a person to be an enemy combatant is the only way we can bring a person to justice before a military tribunal. Of course, a military trial is wrong because they are not violating written law and certainly not military law. How can they violate U.S. Law in Yemen?

Drone attacks are final; the president carries out the sentence before trail, therefore wrong from several basic points of view of law. A person is innocent until proven guilty. That being the case, what is the crime? Habits corpus, etc throw is out thee window. Are these people are guilty of building bombs and wanting to use them, having a history of being involved in previous terrorist attack, or guilty of actually planning attacks on the U.S. or our allies? The preemptive nature of the latter, because of the Iraq war, leaves a bad taste in the mouths of Americans, or at least it should. Bush had no knowledge of preemption.

The drone attack in a very high percentage of cases kills the culprit but it also kills “innocent people” or at least kills the company the bomb maker keeps. The overall problem is interesting from a philosophical point of view. Steven Pinker, in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, documents the steady decline in deaths from human conflict. If a person careful examines each one of the options, the number of deaths declines with each, starting with the option of letting terrorists do what they will, until we get to the last option on the table, which is the drone strike. The President is trying to appeal to his better angels, which is exactly what I want him to do. The basic rule of morality is that to murder someone is wrong. Keep in mind, the only justification for murder is self-defense but also keep in mind that our most powerful sense is the sense of self-preservation or the sense of survival. In the case of the president, my using the personal pronoun ‘our’ I mean “We the people of the United States”.