DOJ Argues: US can kill own citizens without review when state secrets involved
abajournal.com
abajournal.com
“DOJ” in this case is the defense attorney. What a shit job. Regardless, the DOJ is not giving the USG the ability to kill US Persons with no judicial review. Judge Millett’s exasperation should be an example of how preposterous this is.
The way this post is titled is misleading and is intended to flame.
The article’s title is “US can kill its own citizens without review when state secrets are involved, DOJ lawyer argues” which clearly includes the “this is just one lawyer”.
The submitter squeezed this into “DOJ Argues: US can kill own citizens without review when state secrets involved”. I’d probably update that to “DOJ Lawyer: ...” which would reduce the confusion.
This other article [1] has what is purportedly a related, direct quote: “In all of these circumstances, he [Kareem] is not even the only person present, much less is there anything to suggest that he’s actually the target of any of those specific attacks.”.
So yeah, I’d agree that even the original sources are likely flamebait for what a real headline should be “DOJ Lawyer: national security precludes disclosing who is on kill list, including Americans” (at trial).
It’s not clear to me that this argument holds (it’s close enough to “we are going to imprison you, but we can’t tell you why”, violating habeus corpus), but at least it’s clear that this is the argument they’re making.
[1] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/18/kill-n18.html
The reality is actually the opposite of what OP is attempting to signal here.
This really is the worst kind of fake news. If you look at the Reddit response to this title... it's abhorrent: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/jzqv3f/us_can_kil...
However, as the grandparent post notes, “DOJ Argues” makes it sound like the Attorney General / the entire DOJ argues such a thing. “DOJ Lawyer” makes it clear “some lawyer at the DOJ said”.
I would certainly agree that winning a case with this argument would establish such a precedent. But again, it’s not clear that “the DOJ” stated this, nor is it (seemingly) an argument that worked.
Just because the judge thinks something is appalling doesn't necessarily mean that they won't rule in favor of the appalling statements/argument.
I don't understand how you came to that conclusion. Here is the first paragraph of the OP (ABA Journal) article:
> A U.S. Department of Justice lawyer argued Monday that the United States can kill its own citizens without judicial review when litigation would reveal state secrets.
Here is the first paragraph on the CNS article on which the ABA article is based:
> Drawing alarm at the D.C. Circuit, a lawyer for the United States argued Monday that the government has the power to kill its citizens without judicial oversight when state secrets are involved.
Neither of these suggest that this is the defense attorney's claim. If you want to challenge the Judge's characterization of DOJ's position, feel free to read through their brief and come back with a legitimate argument.
Also, a sibling comment suggests that this should be dismissed as the decision of a single DOJ attorney, rather than the DOJ as an institution. There's not a chance in hell that this case isn't being strategized, coordinated and monitored from the highest levels of the DOJ. The idea that this would be the argument of a single, possibly rogue, prosecutor is ludicrous.
Of course none of that is explained, and the reader is left to believe that the DOJ is actually making this argument in court - which they are not.
>The government sought to dismiss the case, invoking the state secrets privilege because Kareem sought discovery on whether he had been targeted, the process the government used to target him, and whether the United States had attempted to kill him. A federal judge agreed with the government.
The involvement of state secrets is what is preventing discovery of whether or you were targeted by the government, not whether or not they are allowed to kill you. This seems very different from the government provably killing someone, and then claiming "state secrets" as a defense for being allowed to do it.
True, it may not be provable that you were targeted if "state secrets" prevents evidence from coming to light, but this is orthogonal to whether or not killing you is legally allowed, which is what the headline is suggesting.
No it doesn't. If the public disagree with those actions they won't remain legal for long.
The world has a long sad history of showing this isn’t the case. The slow creep of authoritarianism usually happens by pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable and goes beyond the previous norms of legal interpretation.
Basically, "if it is legal or not" is not the only important factor, because laws can change.
It would be hard to imagine the Government getting away with bombing downtown San Francisco without any consequences.
Please make better arguments. You seem to be making deliberate bad faith arguments and nobody benefits from engaging in that kind of discourse.
I didn't say "downtown San Francisco", I said "your home." How would you prove that blew up your home? If you can't prove it, then they got away with it. My point is that when we open up the definition of "can" in this headline to mean "things the government can do and get away with", then it becomes meaningless if it's not bounded by the legality of those things. There are a boundless number of things, including assassinations, framings, etc etc, that the government "can" do and get away with.
So the only definition of "can" worth discussing, since the headline is intentionally vague about what "can" means, is whether or not it is legal to do the things described.
No one ever faced any consequences for the MOVE bombing, and it wasn't even a secret that the (local) government did it.
Parent is right, the law is abstract. Violence is absolute. If the largest dispenser of violence in human history decides to bomb San Francisco, they're going to do it, and it will be legal.
true, but only vacuously so. the "US Federal Government" is not some monolithic entity with a single will. it is made up of many organizations, factions, and individuals with their own motivations. if a military official ordered the bombing of san francisco, their subordinates may simply disobey them. if the orders were actually carried out, there would likely be other parts of the government that would find it politically expedient to hold those responsible to account. they may or may not be able to direct the use of force to do so.
the government can only take extreme actions when some level of internal consensus (or at least apathy) exists, as in the case of the MOVE bombing.
There were a few claims that as a court they could not rule on and dismissed (like whether he was a proper target on the battlefield), but a few big questions remain. Is there due process around the kill/capture database, and does it violate free speech and press if someone can land in it for interviewing enemy soldiers?
These questions (which might not even have difficult answers) remain open because the government wouldn't turn over evidence.
Even with the parts about "targeting decisions in a warzone" and the like settled, the open issues here are pretty important.
The requested discovery sought information about how targeting decisions were made for military strikes overseas. I see the argument for why, when a US citizen is involved, there might be a due process issue. But there is undeniably a huge state military interest in secrecy.
As practiced in the developed world, the rule of law does not encompass courts second-guessing military decisions overseas. Courts are primarily domestic and civilian by their nature. The Supreme Court has found that certain due process issues are implicated where US citizens are involved even with respect to conduct overseas. But there is a tension there with the legitimate prerogatives of the executive with respect to military action.
I’m curious whether any other developed country releases that sort of targeting information. To me knowledge, US courts are already more willing to intrude into military action abroad than courts in other countries.
No other developed country has a kill/kidnap database as large as ours. The US also has a bill of rights which does not depend on the rights respected in other countries across the world.
The Constitution describes a separation of powers. The executive has primacy when it comes to waging war. Courts have primacy in protecting the rights of individuals domestically. The Supreme Court has held that U.S. citizens outside the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. have certain constitutional protections, which can be adjudicated by U.S. courts. That puts those spheres of power into conflict. On one hand, courts generally don't get to second-guess the military's targeting decisions. On the other hand, if a U.S. citizen alleges that the military is targeting strikes in a battlefield in an effort to kill him, that's exactly what the court has to do.
Other developed countries also distinguish executive from judicial power, and domestic from foreign theaters. How they address this tension is illuminating, I think.
Other forms of executive privilege that protect autonomy are easier to invoke, and easier to challenge. State secrets privilege cannot be used lightly. It's used all the time now, and there is reason to be suspicious that it is used fraudulently.
The courts really need to figure out a way to in principal allow US citizens bring a case in situations like this. You have to prove now, in essence, that your name is on an invisible piece of paper. I agree that the nomination procedure is extremely sensitive, but I think there is some room on the yes/no presence of someone on the kill list, given other supporting evidence. The danger is that we reveal to someone that we're trying to kill them -- but again, we're talking about a citizen, and if they have supporting evidence and are in court then they already suspect that.
The US has been killing US citizens this way for over a decade. It's pretty darn clear that the DOJ considers this legally allowable. Now the DOJ is arguing that once the goverment decides it is allowed to kill you, you can be prevented from challenging that decision in court if state secrets are involved.
I'm pretty sure that targeted killings of US citizens believed to be engaged in war against the US by the federal government started not later than the 1860s (if you ignore those conducted under the auspices of the USA prior to the Constitution in a war in which whether a “US citizen” was even a legitimate concept was fundamentally in dispute.)
Secondly, Airwars.org does not show US strikes in that area and the US insists coalition forces in general did not have any air strikes at Idlib during the time in question.
Finally, I do not find the title to be a fair summary of their argument for dismissal:
>Plaintiff lacks standing to pursue this suit. Plaintiff alleges that he was in the vicinity of five near-misses in Syria—a nation with an ongoing civil war. But he alleges no facts specifically linking the United States to those attacks. The most he offers is an unsupported assertion that one attack involved a type of missile used by the United States, among other countries. And he likewise fails to plausibly allege that any of these attacks, even if attributable to the United States, actually targeted him.
My understanding is that Idlib is mostly where the Russian and Syrian Air Forces were bombing the Turkish-backed jihadis. I wonder if the Turkish Air Force (largely equipped with US ordnance on US-made F-16s) was flying sorties in the region as well?
Seems like a circular argument. Is that to say, he discovered the 'state secret' that he was on a hit list (for no specified reason), and any action taken to kill him is retrospectively justified?
Without fail, one way or another, the shit US dishes to non-US citizens will eventually find its way back to US citizens.
If US citizens shrug when their government does bad things to other people, they better be prepared to also shrug when their government decides to do the same to them. Murder-without-trial and all.
Who’s they?
Has been happening since the beginning of time - and here we are. Happens in the most populous nations on earth, and in the richest countries. It happens naturally every day.
Honestly, “these are not the droids you are looking for”
https://dariolorenzo.medium.com/foucaults-boomerang-how-tact...
This is odd to me. I guess in my mind it goes without saying that the government should be required to name all individuals it's trying to kill, presumably to allow them to surrender themselves for trial. I get in combat this may not be practical, but it sounds like this individual identifies as a journalist (and the fact that he's appealing to the court system).
Perhaps stating the obvious again, I think the idea that the individual should have to prove to the government that he's on a kill list, when the government has access to the kill list, is a bothersome mentality.
So really, this says that the US can kill its own citizens without review full stop.
Doing something for peace is not dependent on being a universally good person. You can still save more lifes than you have butchered.
He'd became president January 20 and was awarded the prize on October 9 - he hadn't really had time to do anything meaningful for international relations.
The only way to interpret the prize was as a rebuke on former president George Bush for gleefully upping the ante from a localised tragedy in America into annihilating two countries, countless deaths and destabilising half a continent. It was a passive aggressive "well we can't stop you America, but we saw what you did".
There was a lot more to those invasions history-wise, but the basic message was clear.
Except his legacy is arguably worse. Extrajudicial assassinations, the return of open-air slave markets, the deliberate overthrow of middle east governments that created the power vaccuum filled by ISIL, the inadvertant arming of ISIL through the deliberate arming of Jihadists in Syria (which is an ongoing civil war today)...
Edit: Just to add. Bush (really Dick Cheyney) expanded the power of the Executive with the approval of Congress. Cheyney is a monster who saw 9/11 as a chance to consolidate executive power to the detriment of his rivals and enemies.
Obama extended the power of the Executive largely through legal scheming of the DOJ, the courts abdicating their responsibility, labelling everything under the sun as "state secrets", and ruthlessly destroying the lives of whistleblowers. In fact, when using the secret courts set up by the Bush administration, Obama's still violated and exceeded its authority 5% of the time.
There's clearly one of these that looks more dictatorial than the other and it's not the answer most people want.
Hopefully they consider their decisions going forward, but that seems unlikely.
I could say well Bush lost the popular vote, so clearly anything he did looks more intrinsically dictatorial. Or because he raised private armies. It would be misleading. It doesn't matter how power is consolidated.
I assume you mean in countries outside of Iraq? "Deliberate overthrow", citation please?
I remember a friend in 2003 saying Bush's Iraq misadventure is going to fuck up a lot of things in the middle east... I can't believe how right he turned out to be.
As far as I understand it the Arab Spring came about due to social unrest due to food shortage brought about by climate change (a 2010 forest fire in Russia burned a lot of grain, Russia stopped exporting them, food prices shot up: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=russia+forest+fires+grain+prices+a... ).
Incredibly that has also lead to a lot of war-fleeing refugees, and the rise of right-wing populism in Europe. Also Brexit and Trump?
Libya.
Or as the BBC referred to it, "the worst mistake of Obama's presidency".
It's already largely a settled question that US State Dept policy and actions during that administration massively contributed to the formation of ISIL.
The difference between the Bush and Obama administrations in the middle east is stark. Despite destabilizing Iraq, the US military stayed on the ground and at least attempted to create a stable transition of power (and over time largely succeeded, at least by comparison).
Obama's destabilizing actions were followed up by abandonment and power vaccuums filled up by extremists that we armed. This is no-brainer kind of shit that we stumbled our way into, Homer Simpson style.
His foreign policy disasters weren't limited to the Middle East either, considering our lack of intervention and abandonment of our southeast asian strategic allies during the Scarborough Shoal incident.
> Or as the BBC referred to it, "the worst mistake of Obama's presidency".
Is that in this article where Obama admitted that himself? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36013703 . Unlike Bush/Cheney who never admitted anything? (But we're not judging these men for their honesty at the moment, are we).
> Despite destabilizing Iraq, the US military stayed on the ground and at least attempted to create a stable transition of power (and over time largely succeeded, at least by comparison).
Huh.. and you're asserting that Obama didn't continue that policy? Sorry but Iraq didn't turn to a peaceful and solved problem in 2008.
Seems like you're just throwing sweeping generalizations and one word answers to complex problems ("Libya"), and sadly I don't know the whole issue in depth either.
If there's any blinders, its the fawning treatment he received form the press for largely doing nothing or worse than nothing. Notice how much more criticism has come at him from the left since leaving office.
He's an adored president with an abysmal legacy. I voted for him, by the way. I'm vocal with the criticism because I feel I share in the responsibility for what happened.
> Huh.. and you're asserting that Obama didn't continue that policy? Sorry but Iraq didn't turn to a peaceful and solved problem in 2008.
I'm not saying that it was, but we and our allies already had troops committed in the region. If we'd left, we would have been leaving our allies holding the bag.
I was comparing Iraq to Libya, where after we removed Gaddafi, we didn't do shit. That situation created all of those other things that I mentioned.
Later on with the leaked cables, we found out that it was largely because he was trying to create a gold-backed pan-African currency that would have harmed French central banking interests in the region.
One of the first things the "revolutionaries" that ousted Gaddafi did was create a central bank. While they were still fighting for territory.
Rinse and repeat with Trump, who arguably has a better track record at least in terms of starting wars.
If you take a step back from how US politics works in the media (mass media and social media) you realize it’s just a complete clown show. Any one who gets their “news” from those sources is just along for the ride.
I never got how Bush was supposed to be both an idiot and a mastermind.
Edit: I am recounting the narrative as I remember it, not endorsing it.
I personally don't distinguish much between these (I'm basically in agreement with Einstein's stated views on the matter) but to pretend that our global human society doesn't believe in these distinctions is somewhat silly.
The US president can mass murder hundreds of children (Obama did just this) and not be seen as a criminal, even by that group, provided it falls into the correct category listed above.
Of course it all started with the Patriot Act. But even looking at who keeps voting for that and keeping it alive and you can't just blame Bush either.
It's like there's no options for Americans politically which doesn't involve massive "black budgets" and secret courts doing who knows what. It's bipartisan and even plenty of the worst Iraq war supporters all have had career revivals in recent years because the media + social media decided that only one thing was bad, the current president. All bad deeds in the past were forgotten for the old set.
Endless "Secret Wars" seem terribly undemocratic and dangerous to me - for the obvious complete lack of public courts, true due process, or war crimes laws that normally are adhered to.
And I also see no proper reckoning in the relevant future either as long as these same "good guys" are back in power.
So I guess we're stuck with it.
Quote from Obama [3]: "Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_murder
[2] https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data
[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-said-hes-really-good-a...
Then after a series of complicated political decision making, he started more. And there are always perfect legitimate reasons, as judging from Obama's perspective and described in the book, that make those things happen.
After a while reading the book, I started to see how futile it has been for US to truly behave as the nation aspires to. Without a equal counter weight, there seems no possibility for the nation's political machine to follow common sense, it's always enemy or ally, and dealing with enemy always involves military power.
Unfortunately, things started taking a more sinister turn as the years went on, so it seemed the prize had been given too prematurely.
Being ignorant and loud at the same time, does not make someone honest.
I post about that extremely often (sorry), but it's because it's so important. It's probably the single biggest factor causing problems here.
The next time they play musical chairs the people being violated may change but the incentives don't.
You might imagine someone having the forethought to consider that someone else might be in power at some future point and put mechanisms in place to constrain their abuses. Modern politicians appear resistant to this logic.
Therefore, the argument would be that it's not a "human right" but mostly a "Western right"
I'd bet on it getting worse from here.
Literally the first amendment (1789):
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debs_v._United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_%2776_(1917_film...
According to the article, Debs' sentence was upheld because it was found that the intent of his message was prevent the war.
By the way, the activist that was sentenced to ten years in jail for arguing against war also got a million votes for the presidency, so this is a case of supression of political candidates because of their speech and political activity.
If you disagree, instead of just downvoting factual statements you disagree with, you should comment to correct them or state why they are in bad form.
Notably the evidence presented has plain gaps. Consider the second link: "Goldstein's attorneys were unable to argue for protection under the First Amendment because the Supreme Court had ruled in 1915 that movies lacked such protection. (That ruling was overturned in 1952.)" That final parenthetical is critical because it suggests that a modern court would not rule the same way the court did in 1915 given similar facts.
To be clear, I don't have enough context to evaluate the merits of the statement in full just noting why it may have come across as glib and hence downvoted.
That said, yeah I'd agree that there wasn't a lot of effort, but the first link reealllyyyyyyy speaks for itself here.
The US didn't even pretend to liberate any of those groups except maybe the Filipinos.
They claimed to defend one set of Vietnamese against another, and didn't even pretend the Indian Wars were for the good of Native Americans.
The Filipinos were actually quite happy the first (Spanish-American War) and third time (World War II). The second time (Filipino-American War), not so much.
We do ourselves a disservice to pretend that every intervention has been a massive failure or worse. It abdicates the specific responsibility of those waging specific wars and invites us to ignore international tragedy.
Suffice to say that both Taiwan and South Korea would not be leading democracies in Asia without US intervention. Yes, both were dictatorships initially.
Are you arguing it would be better if North Korea were running the whole peninsula? And China controlled Taiwan?
I wonder if POTUS has to at least sign all the kill orders.
EDIT FOLLOWS:
The problem is (independently) verifying that the targeted person was a combatant and in a war against USA. If anybody can be a combatant, CIA can kill anybody. See the following, regarding the Obama presidency:
> It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
The obvious questions are:
* Does belonging to Al-Qaeda or similar make you eligible for a drone strike? I don't really think of (potential) terrorists as combatants.
* What about another organization designated as "terrorist"? The executive branch unilaterally puts organizations and people on that list. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_St...
* What oversight and control should there be over the decision to kill someone?
Another interesting point is that it seems that only a fraction of persons killed in drone strikes were intended as targets: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-comp...
No, the logic is that the US government may target enemies in war by all the means lawful against enemies inwar, even if those enemies are US citizens, anywhere in the world, including within the US.
And there's plenty of precedent for that.
There may be good reasons given the nature and mechanisms of modern warfare to establish some additional limits on that now, but we can't have the discussion effectively if we start with a false premise about the rationale and the false idea that prosecuting war without special limitations when some of the individual enemy combatants are citizens is novel.
> I wonder if POTUS has to at least sign all the kill orders.
In general, no, the President is not required to personally sign orders to kill enemies in war, regardless of their citizenship.
> And there's plenty of precedent for that.
There is clearly precedent for criminally charging US citizens for such things, or in the case where they're either subject to the UCMJ or otherwise acting as a lawful uniformed combatant, maybe a court martial.
But what is the precedent for allowing unilateral lethal military targeting of known US citizens outside the US, or anyone within the US, outside of moments when the accused is actively engaging in physical violent warfare? I'm not aware of any before 9/11.
one would think that a formal declaration of war (at least minimally specifying who the US is at war with) would be needed otherwise anybody can be killed just under umbrella of "War on Terror" or "War on Drugs" or "War on Littering and Jaywalking"...
The legal existence of a war has established rules in US law, and a Congressional declaration is one way they happen (though not exclusive what you probably mean by a “formal declaration of war”, which suggests magic words).
> otherwise anybody can be killed just under umbrella of "War on Terror" or "War on Drugs" or "War on Littering and Jaywalking"...
The War on Terror has a legal declaration, which is expressly conditioned only on Presidential determinations, so requiring declarations doesn't actually meaningfully prevent that scenario when Congress is feeling lazy.
The grandparent post is a single sentence and identifies two instances that answer that question (they aren't a full answer because there are more examples in that timeframe.)
No.
> Why not at least go that route, vs blatantly killing citizens?
Because it doesn't exist, and if it did exist it would almost certainly be a contested judicial process which would bring in the same problem as criminal prosecution of enemy combatants that happen to be US citizens but are physically located in territory not practically subject to US or cooperative jurisdiction.
Edited for grammar
Additionally, technically there are two other requirements before committing treason causes a loss of citizenship, just as with all the other potentially expatriating acts: the treason must be committed voluntarily and with the intent to relinquish citizenship, as judged on a preponderance of the evidence standard (i.e. more likely than not). This is a court proceeding and the claimed loss of citizenship can be challenged, though of course those requirements are more likely to be satisfied in treason cases than in some of the other potentially expatriating acts.
None of this is consistent with a unilateral military strike.
It's much easier to kill you and then say that you and your estate have no standing to challenge the official story to see if you were on a list because only people who know they are in the list can see if they're on the list.
If you read the applicable provision of law—8 USC Sec. 1481(a)(7)—you have to not only commit an act of treason, but do so “with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality” in order to lose citizenship.
As long as you still want to be an American, albeit a traitorous one, you don't lose your citizenship just for being a traitor.
(And, it also requires conviction of the treason by a court martial or competent court, so if the government wants to give effect to this, it literally not only have to get a hold of the person, try and convict them of treason, and then prove additionally the intent to relinquish citizenship. At which point the last bit is quite likely to be moot.)
Even if an individual appears to be obviously guilty, shouldn't some form of process be followed in all cases to prevent wrongful convictions and/or executions?
That only would seem to follow if the argument was that we couldn't get him by a drone strike, which obviously is not the argument, as drone strikes don't really do a good job of hauling people before a court.
If the question is politics: we're nearing 100k Yemeni civilians dead, they won't say no, and won't have the choice anyway.
Air superiority, or even air supremacy, doesn't make putting feet on the ground safe.
If you don't want that tradeoff, then don't say an oath that requires you to put your life on the line defending the constitution.
No, taking unnecessary risks to do things that aren't legally required for enemies in war is kind of the opposite of the point of being a soldier.
> If you don't want that tradeoff, then don't say an oath that requires you to put your life on the line defending the constitution
The Constitution doesn't require the government to take any special restraint in war when someone fighting on the other side is a US citizen.
There may be a good argument that the law ought to given the realities of modern war, sure. And that's a debate we should have.
Working for a designated terrorist organization to commit terrorism is a crime in the United States, because terrorism is a crime.
So, even if he absolutely did commit treason, he is a citizen unless the prosecution both occurs and achieves all of that. Citizens deserve due process, period, since government conclusions and criminal charges can both be wrong, and loss of life is a very severe thing to make a mistake about.
If you CAN legally murder your citizens then a lot of things cease to matter because you are no longer governed by the rule of law in the first place.
If that's treason, then I suppose a future leftist Castro-esque president should be free to drone-murder hate speech mongers like Rush Limbaugh and many in the Fox News commentary department.
America likes to talk about respecting democracy and the rule of law, but the way it acts is nowhere near that.
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."
So a) terrorists aren't levying war, because they're not part of a state, and b) good luck ever fulfilling the 2 witness or confession requirement.
Being part of a state is not required to levy war.
This is true under the “magic words” understanding of the power to declare war; but that more limited authorizations than those that simply and expressly “declare war” are nevertheless exercises of the Constitutional power to declare war and create a legal state of war is, however, well-established law, see, Bas v. Tingy, 4 U.S. 37 (1800).
Why would they be?
> Is it just not cool to do anymore or something?
Mostly. It's not like you can give someone a super-death penalty, and when progressive criminalization has made it so that everything that qualifies as treason is also covered by other crimes that carry similar sentences but don't require two witnesses to the same over act or a confession on top of the standard criminal “beyond a reasonable doubt” burden of proof, why would a prosecutor ever bother with treason charges except as a political stunt?
We used to have a system like this. I thought it worked pretty well. Sure it wasn't perfect, but I liked the transparency.
Nothing I'm saying is defending the actions of the citizens in question, only criticizing the propriety of the executive branch unilaterally killing a US citizen without due process outside of situations like your hypothetical where dangerous direct physical violence against American forces is involved. If the government had instead forcibly arrested them and kept them in custody while putting them through the criminal justice system, I'd have no criticism, assuming they had adequate evidence. I'd also want them to release the accused in the unlikely event of an acquittal (since government accusations can be wrong), but the regular courts are very good at convicting people who actually do stuff like this and federal prosecutors are very good at their role.
One helpful analogy is to imagine what would happen if we entirely removed the foreign flavor, since after all we're discussing the attempted killing of a US citizen by the US government. Suppose instead that the US military had strong evidence that entirely domestic groups, unlinked to any global extremist Islamist movements, were doing communications or logistics in support of a planned attack a domestic US military base. Maybe this hypothetical attack is due to dissatisfaction with, or skepticism of the legitimacy of, the government in power.
My guess as to what would happen in that scenario: law enforcement would be directed to arrest the people involved and hold them without bail for criminal trial, and would be authorized to use whatever force is necessary if there is physical resistance, including lethal force if necessary. The goal would just be to arrest, however, with killing simply accepted as a possible accidental result.
Something similar would likely have been appropriate here, albeit with the involvement of the military due to the location outside the US and the high likelihood of violent resistance.
A warzone, regardless of if you believe in the war or not, is still a warzone.
I don't like how the defense attorneys are trying to say its the same if someone was in a parking lot in the US or in Syria.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it's just not the same.
Why would it be OK for the US to kill anyone?
"We are the good guys, we only kill bad people which we have decided are bad".
But then at the same time the US constantly points at Russia or Iran accusing them of assassinations.
* Chinese surnames are monosyllabic, and given names are disyllabic. It'd be more awkward to say "average Joe or Xiùyīng".
* Both Chinese given names and surnames are usually "real words". Just like how "Joe" is a descendant of the Hebrew "Yohanan" meaning "Graced by God", or even the many English given names that are real words: Carol, Eve, Jade, etc. It's just more common in Chinese names.
* Given names are rarely used by themselves (much less than in Latin languages).
None of the presidential administrations I've been alive for have particularly cared about upholding it.
Not only Alwaki himself was killed, but his wife, son, daughter, brother in law, nephew, and few other certainly non-involved relatives over a period of many years.
Strikes, and raids made when US was hunting down his family member killed few dozens more people falsely believed to be his relatives.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/seal-american-girl-die-fi...