Vol. 77/No. 8      March 4, 2013

It has led to a debate in bourgeois politics on the effectiveness of the government’s drone program in advancing U.S. capitalists’ interests abroad, as well as the use of the president’s executive authority to decide who, including U.S. citizens, should be killed.

The drone program conducted by the CIA and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command has killed more than 3,000 people over the past decade, according to a Council on Foreign Relations report.

The program, which began under the George W. Bush administration, focused on the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan near its border with Afghanistan. It was stepped up during the last year of Bush’s presidency and greatly accelerated in the first two years of Obama’s presidency. In Pakistan there have been 334 drone strikes since 2004—289 of them under Obama, according to the Long War Journal website. After peaking at 117 strikes in 2010, they’ve declined over the past two years, but still remain higher than under Bush.

In Yemen, 63 of the 64 airstrikes have occurred under Obama’s presidency, 42 of which were carried out last year, according to the Long War Journal.

One of the issues under debate at Brennan’s Feb. 6 Senate confirmation hearing was the Obama administration’s legal rationalizations for targeting U.S. citizens for drone assassination. At least four have been killed, including New Mexico-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in September 2011. While living in Yemen, the White House targeted him as an alleged central leader of al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula.

Several days before the Senate hearing, the Justice Department leaked to NBC News an undated “white paper,” based on a memo that remains classified, summarizing the administration’s rationale for placing U.S. citizens on a “kill” list.

The memorandum asserts that the government may lawfully kill a U.S. citizen if “an informed high-level official” decides the target “poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.”

The memorandum and Brennan’s confirmation hearing have spurred much comment from liberals and conservatives, who despite differences over whether or how to “reform” the program, express concern over the constitutional issues at stake.

These “sweeping claims of executive power are audacious,” writes Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell in a New York Times opinion piece. “For a threat to be deemed ‘imminent’ it is not necessary for a specific attack to be under way.”

“Although the Obama administration’s brief is directed at the assassination of Americans abroad,” comments Jeffrey Rosen in a New Republic article, “the arguments it offers could apply with equal force to the assassination of Americans at home.”

“American citizens should nonetheless be wary of granting the president the power to single out citizens for killing based simply on his own judgment. Aside from being plainly unconstitutional, it’s simply too much trust to place in a single individual,” writes James Joyner, managing editor of the Atlantic Council. “The notion that the government can compile a list of citizens for killing, not tell anyone who’s on it or how they got there, is simply un-American.”

Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who led the Joint Special Operations Command and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told the media that drones have led to resentment among those living in areas where they strike. Drones are “hated on a visceral level,” he told Reuters, and contribute to a “perception of American arrogance.”

Following the Senate hearing, Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Senate Judiciary chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called for setting up a special court to review administration kill list proposals. It would be modeled after the secret courts set up under the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act that have rubber stamped wiretaps and search warrants requested by spy agencies.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home