RUTHFULLY YOURS

Obama’s drone policy is more about politics than law

The Obama administration’s justification for the killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 has always been somewhat murky.

Awlaki was killed in Yemen along with another American, Samir Khan (editor of the al Qaeda magazine “Inspire”), when a missile fired from an American drone struck the car in which they were riding.

The best explanation of the legality of the killings was in a Justice Department “white paper” leaked by NBC in February 2013. It stated a cogent – if troubling – rationale. It said that if: (1) an “informed high level official of the US government” decided that the person posed an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States; and (2) capture was infeasible; and (3) the operation would be conducted in accordance with the law of war, then an American citizen who was a senior leader of al Qaeda or an associated force outside the United States could be assassinated by our government.

Many people were troubled by the power found to exist in any “informed high level official” to order the death of an American without due process of law. I was not one of them. A person who forswears his allegiance to America in favor of al Qaeda has become an enemy combatant who can be lawfully killed in battle by any American soldier. That is the law of war. In that respect, killing Awlaki with a drone strike was no different from the carefully-planned shooting down of Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto’s aircraft in 1943.

On Monday, the court-ordered release of a 31-page redacted Justice Department legal opinion revealed more of the rationale behind the Obama administration’s claim to the authority to kill American citizens without due process of law.

It begins by making clear that an American who kills another American outside the jurisdiction of the United States is guilty of murder. Going further than the Justice Department white paper, it invokes the “public authority” justification for law-breaking that covers acts such as a fire engine running a stop light to reach a fire. It concedes that the “public authority” justification doesn’t cover all actions by the Executive Branch, but finds – as the white paper did – that the September 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force authorized the president to kill an American who was associated with al Qaeda-related forces such as Awlaki.

“First Presbyterian Church of Fort Myers, Lee County’s oldest Presbyterian church, went on record Monday night opposition to the vote by its national governing body, Presbyterian Church USA, that they say condemns the nation of Israel and vilifies three American companies.

Rev. Paul deJong, senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Fort Myers, said the decision by the local church’s session was unanimous and will be sent to Presbyterian Church USA as a formal protest.

“We cannot and will not support Presbyterian Church USA in its misguided decision to divest itself of stock in companies whose products Israel uses in the occupied territories,” deJong said. “We stand in full support of Israel’s right to protect its citizens and of all American companies to engage in honest free enterprise.”

The center of the controversy was a vote Friday by the General Assembly of Presbyterian Church USA to sell stock it owns in Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola because the companies make products used by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank. The resolution passed 310 to 303.

“The actions of the denomination are at best misguided, at worst represent outright racism, and certainly give every appearance of intentionally promoting anti-Semitism. One must question the motives of anyone who vilifies Israel with greater fervor than any other nation, especially when we consider the numerous places in which violence is being reported continuously. Indeed, rarely in history has one side held so much power and yet used that power with such restraint as Israel is doing in our day,” Rev. deJong said.

Rev. deJong said First Presbyterian Church considers the Bible to be the Word of God and the Bible clearly states that the people of Jerusalem (those we now call Jews) are God’s chosen people.

“There is no defense for anti-Semitism in the guise of peace-making. We find this action by the PCUSA to be indefensible, and we wish to differentiate ourselves from all who would single out for condemnation either Israel as a nation or Jewish people as a race. We call upon all true Christians to do the same,” he said.

Presbyterian Church USA is the largest Presbyterian body in the nation with more than two million members.”

“Just Say No” was the anti-drug slogan coined by Nancy Reagan during her time as First Lady. Then as now, we had a portion of the population addicted to “mind altering substances” that put drug users into an alternate reality. Many of these addicts were enabled by a society that permitted them ready and plentiful access to these drugs.

Well – we now have a similar problem – we have addicts living in an alternate reality. Their inability to grasp the reality around them, or the ramifications of living in a dangerous world, has left them detached and isolated; they are also known as the Obama national security team.

The new addicts, and their alternate reality are fueled by their drug of choice — money – funds that they demand to fuel their completely ineffective foreign policy.

In this 21st century alternate reality, the Department of Defense (DoD) is at the spearhead of our national security – and primary consumer of money.

Congress is now being asked to fund the Pentagon’s “war chest,” basically a slush fund used to break the budget ceilings put in place by Congress (and signed into law by the President), without any strategy or idea as to what they will do with the money.

So – let us ponder this for a moment. The White House and DoD now want more money … to do what?

About those 300 U.S. military advisers that the Obama administration has ordered to Iraq.

They belong on the United States border with Mexico. They are urgently needed to assess what U.S. military force should be deployed immediately to secure our own border, not Iraq’s border, from what is surely the most unconventional and, I believe, the most dangerous war in our history. As tens of thousands of so-called unaccompanied alien children (UAC) crash our southern border, we are undergoing a war against the existence, the concept of the USA as a nation-state.

After all, a nation-state doesn’t exist unless it controls its borders and protects its citizens. We, the People, do neither. But the existential danger here comes not from the assault itself. Nightmarishly, it comes from the Obama administration, which, in its greatest betrayal, is leading, or at least supporting, the aliens’ charge.

That’s why the cavalry isn’t coming.

A normal government — one with the best interests of its own citizens at heart — would have taken immediate steps to 1) halt these border crossings that pose a dire threat to public health and safety, and 2) set in motion the deportation efforts necessary to return these illegal aliens to their home countries.

But the Obama administration is not a normal government. It saw these veritable columns of minor aliens forming, and, rather than stop them from entering the country, actually sought to help them, borrowing a phrase from Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., wipe their feet on our “welfare welcome mat” and stay.

How do I know this? Every American should examine the Department of Homeland Security solicitation notice that appeared six months ago at the federal business opportunities site FedBizOpps.gov. The notice seeks “Escort Services for Unaccompanied Alien Children,” describing exactly the services now required to process, not deport, this massive influx.

According to this notice posted back on Jan. 29, 2014, DHS was already gearing up to receive “approximately 65,000 UAC in total.”

Senate 9, President 0
Obama pitches a shutout at the Supreme Court on recess appointments.

The Supreme Court handed President Obama his 13th unanimous loss in two years on Thursday, and this one may be the most consequential. All nine Justices voted to overturn Mr. Obama’s non-recess recess appointments as an unconstitutional abuse of power.

Over nearly 238 years of American history, the Supreme Court has never had to review the President’s authority to temporarily fill vacant executive offices when Congress is adjourned. Mr. Obama’s 2012 maneuver to void the Senate’s advice and consent role triggered a judicial intercession, and defeats at the High Court are seldom as total as this one.

Two years ago Mr. Obama packed the National Labor Relations Board with three new members and made Richard Cordray the chief of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Other Presidents have made such appointments and we’ve long supported that authority—as long as they are made when Congress is genuinely in recess.

But in this case the Senate was conducting pro forma proceedings (gavel in, gavel out, every three days) because neither chamber can adjourn without the other’s permission under Article I, Section 5. The House refused to consent to prevent Mr. Obama from making recess appointments, so he simply assumed the power to define on his own when a coequal branch of government is at work.

On this invention, the President could presumably make recess appointments overnight or during a lunch break, but Mr. Obama’s provocation was deliberate. “I refuse to take no for an answer,” he justified his behavior at a campaign event the day after the appointments. Democrats ran the Senate then and run it now. Mr. Obama merely thought the normal confirmation checks and balances too frustrating and preferred to install his union appointees without a debate.

He should have read the Recess Appointments Clause before Justice Stephen Breyer did it for him. In Noel Canning v. NLRB, a Washington state soda bottler challenged a board decision on grounds that the recess appointments were null and thus the board lacked the three-member quorum to do business. Because the Constitution delegates power to each branch to independently make their own rules, writes Justice Breyer, “the Senate is in session when it says it is.”

Her book tour exposes forgotten vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

News is surprise. The news out of Hillary Clinton’s book tour is that it hasn’t gone well. It was supposed to establish her iconic position in American political life while solidifying her inevitability. Instead it exposed vulnerabilities. The media was neither at her feet nor at her throat but largely distanced, which was interesting. Her claim that the Clintons were “dead broke” when they left the White House inspired widespread derision. Her exchanges on Benghazi didn’t bury the issue but kept it alive.

The scripted answers were tiring. The old trick of answering the question you wish you’d been asked instead of the one you were is weary to the point of antique. So is her tendency to filibuster. On Wednesday she almost committed candor in an interview with PBS’s Gwen Ifill. Ms. Ifill was teasing her out on the presidency. Hillary, with a look of good humor, said that frankly, “you have to be a little bit crazy to run for president . . . so totally immersed, and so convinced that you can bring something to that office”—and then she caught herself, mid-honesty, and lapsed into a long, fatuous aria about how she sees the people and they tell her of their struggles.

It was sad. She was almost interesting! Her tendency to check herself comes across more as a tic she can’t control than an attempt to maintain discretion.

The book was almost uniformly panned. Sales were disappointing, falling a reported 44% in the second week, which means word of mouth wasn’t good. To top it off, the Wall Street Journal and NBC released a poll taken at the height of the tour that said while 55% of Americans find her knowledgeable and experienced enough to be president, less than half consider her honest and straightforward.
But the tour yielded three positives. Mrs. Clinton put away the issue, if it was an issue, of age. She has sufficient energy, brightness and hustle to banter and parry with interviewers and audiences in a lengthy major national tour. There is nothing wrong with her brain. In fact, she changed the way you see her when you think about her. Twenty-two years ago, when she first arrived on the national scene, she was the brittle harridan in the headband, the high-ticket attorney who wasn’t gonna be bakin’ no cookies. That image has changed over the years, but during the tour the change became definitive. Now she’s Mom—mature, settled, with a throaty laugh and a thickening middle. Or grandma. After six years of presidential leadership from a lithe, supple, snotty older brother, Mom will seem an improvement.

Retreat abroad and bigger government at home has made the U.S. weaker.

‘What would America fight for?” asked a cover story last month in the Economist magazine. Coming from a British publication, the headline has a tone of “let’s you and him fight.” But its main flaw is that it greatly oversimplifies the question of how the U.S. can recover from its willful failure to exert a positive influence over world events.

That failure is very much on display as Iraq disintegrates and Russia revives the “salami tactics” of 1930s aggressors, slicing off parts of Ukraine. Both disasters could have been avoided through the exercise of more farsighted and muscular American diplomacy. A show of greater capability to manage “domestic” policy would have aided this effort.

The U.S. is still militarily powerful and has a world-wide apparatus of trained professionals executing its policies, overt and covert. It has an influential civil society and a host of nongovernmental organizations with influence throughout the planet, not always but mostly for the better. It has a preponderance of multinational corporations. Although confidence in America has waned significantly, it is still looked to for leadership in thwarting the designs of thugs like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Syria’s Bashar Assad and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei.

Yet President Obama has followed a deliberate policy of disengagement from the world’s quarrels. He failed to bluff Assad with his “red line” threat and then turned the Syrian bloodbath over to Mr. Putin, showing a weakness that no doubt emboldened the Russian president to launch his aggression against Ukraine. The errant Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, beset by a Sunni-al Qaeda insurgency, has been told, in effect, to seek succor from his Shiite co-religionists in Iran. Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry amazingly urges America’s only real friends in the area, the Iraqi Kurds, not to abandon the ill-mannered Mr. Maliki in favor of greater independence and expanded commerce (mainly oil) with our NATO ally, Turkey.

Three families in Israel are in agony. On June 12, when their sons Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrah and Gil-Ad Shaer were kidnapped by Islamic savages, the Fraenkels, Yifrahs and Shaers entered a new world where every breath they take is filled with devastating guilt – that they breathe free while their sons suffer unknown miseries.

Every moment that passes is filled with crushed hope that they will get word that their sons are free, and then the word doesn’t come. And it doesn’t come the next moment, or the next.

And so they will live, in agony, until this ordeal has ended.

Our hearts go out to these families. Our prayers are continuously directed towards them. And in a profound sense that is uniquely Israeli, the people of Israel share their pain. With this pain comes a sincere and overpowering desire to do something to bring the captive teenagers home.

What can be done?

There are only two ways for Israel to free hostages.

The government can devote all necessary resources to gathering actionable intelligence that will lead IDF troops to the boys.

Or the government can surrender to the terrorists by freeing thousands of Palestinian terrorist murderers from Israeli prisons.

“The whole area of intercept needs to be looked at. We have got a real debate, and it is a genuine debate in a democracy, between the libertarians who say the state must not get too powerful and pretty much the rest of us who say the state must protect itself.” — Liam Fox, Former British Secretary of Defense

In his testimony, Farr defends the practice because Britain has for “many years faced a serious threat from terrorism,” especially the threat derived from “militant Islamist terrorists.” He says the practice has prevented terrorist attacks and saved lives.

A recent spike in the number of British jihadists fighting with Sunni militant groups in Syria and Iraq is fuelling a heated debate over how much government surveillance is necessary to keep the United Kingdom safe from domestic terrorism.

The British government is asking for additional surveillance powers to monitor British jihadists who might be planning attacks in the UK after their return from the fighting in the Middle East.

But privacy groups counter that the British state has already amassed massive surveillance powers, and that what the government really wants is a free rein to monitor all of the communications of every man, woman and child in Britain.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned that the greatest threat to national security is from British citizens and other Europeans fighting with the Sunni militant group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS]. At a press conference on June 17, he said:

“No-one should be in any doubt that what we see in Syria and now in Iraq in terms of ISIS is the most serious threat to Britain’s security that there is today. The number of foreign fighters in that area, the number of foreign fighters including those from the UK who could try to return to the UK is a real threat to our country.”

Actually it will be 100 years ago tomorrow at 11:00AM, that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Austrian-Hungarian throne, was pronounced dead. He and his wife Sophie had been shot by an assassin a few minutes earlier while on a visit to Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was a Serbian nationalist. For the next few weeks, diplomats from all major European countries scurried frantically around (like John Kerry today), in an attempt to head off what too few feared could become an inevitable conflagration. At the same time, they considered mobilization, while measuring capabilities and readiness. They secured alliances.

Diplomacy came to naught. A month and a week later, on August 4th, a day after Germany declared war on France, England declared war on Germany; thereby engulfing the continent in total war. Within the month there would be 182,000 casualties, as German troops, in a week-long battle and outnumbered almost two to one, virtually annihilated Russia’s Second Army at the Battle of Tannenberg. Three battles alone, over the course of the War, saw more than 2.5 million casualties – Gallipoli, Verdun and the Somme. On the first day of the battle of the Somme, England had 60,000 casualties. By War’s end, four years later, three months and one week later 20 million of Europe’s youth would be dead, with even more millions injured. The foundations for the Second World War had been laid, causing the 20th Century to become the bloodiest in the history of mankind.

There are many who suggest that the world today is similarly positioned as it was in 1914. I suspect the differences are the more pronounced. Nevertheless, there are similarities. One hundred years ago, old empires were fading while new ones were rising. The Ottoman Empire had been in decline for some time. Its occupation of the Balkans had been absorbed by two fading empires – Tsarist Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Turkish Straits, still owned by the Ottomans, were eyed enviously by the Russians. The British Colonial period was nearing an end; though most Brits could not see that happening. Germany was a relatively new country – like Italy it had been unified in the second half of the 19th Century – and since Bismarck’s time had been looking to expand east. The Slavic people in Serbia were flexing their muscles, chafing at borders arbitrarily drawn by Vienna and, to a lesser extent, by St. Petersburg. At least a dozen ethnic populations occupied the region, with three distinct religions dominant – Muslim, Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics. It was a combustible mixture.