The Drone Court Dodge

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) quoted today in the CSM on the dubious idea of Star Chamber-style "drone courts":

Congress will carefully consider any drone-court proposal, Sen. Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon told National Public Radio on Thursday. Senator Wyden has demanded access to secret documents about the lethal drone attacks on Anwar al-Awlaki, an American cleric living in Yemen who was killed in 2011.

For his part, Wyden expressed reservations “about this idea of just setting up more special courts.”

“I mean, it’s not as if we’ve struck the right balance with respect to the FISA court at this point in terms of protecting the American people. I’ve been trying to get a number of these opinions declassified for years now,” he added, “and I haven’t been able to do it.”

The very creation of such a monstrosity would bring America a giant step closer to a real-world version of Orwell's 1984.

Ignored And Irrelevant

The NYT today, describing the state of Congress and foreign policy making:

In the Obama administration, however, foreign policy has been set mainly in the White House, which shows little interest in congressional prerogatives; transparency has been less than promised and the role of Congress, in matters like Libya, ignored.

Add drone policy to the list, and that about covers it.

Nixon's Ghost: The Return Of The Imperial Presidency

"The Human still has stone age feelings, medieval institutions and god-like technology. That’s what we have to deal with.” – Edward O. Wilson

The famed biologist wasn't talking about drones when he made that statement, but given the emotional motivations for drone use and the kinds of institutions employing them, his statement certainly seems to apply. ProPublica has another piece out on the so-called "signature strikes" by U.S. drones in Southwest Asia:

Earlier this week, we wrote about a significant but often overlooked aspect of the drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen: so-called signature strikes, in which the U.S. kills people whose identities aren’t confirmed. While President Obama and administration officials have framed the drone program as targeting particular members of Al Qaeda, attacks against unknown militants reportedly may account for the majority of strikes. The government apparently calls such attacks signature strikes because the targets are identified based on intelligence “signatures” that suggest involvement in terror plots or militant activity.

As I've observed previously, the "signature strike" is to the "Drone Wars" what the "free-fire zone" was in the Vietnam War during the Nixon presidency: an indiscriminate way to attack an insurgent enemy hiding among a cooperative (or cowed) population. Under such a system, the slaughter of innocents is inevitable. But there are many more similarities between the two presidents' wartime policies--and the echoes from that earlier era of the Imperial Presidency in Obama's own approach are hard for any objective observer to miss:

Bogus use of intel/questionable intel (Gulf of Tonkin incident, NIE 14.3 & playing down numbers you don't like then; downplaying drone strike KIA/collateral deaths now).

"Secret" wars (Cambodia/Laos then, PK/FATA, YE, SO now).

Industrial-scale surveillance of the population (SHAMROCK, COINTELPRO, etc. then, PATRIOT Act, FISA Amendments Act now)

Shutting Out Congress & the public.

And the American public seems just fine with this state of affairs. A poll featured by POLITICO on 2/12/13 showed that 71% of Americans supported the Obama administration's assassination-by-drone policy. The public is a little squeamish about assassinating Americans--but not by much:

But Americans aren’t as certain about targeting U.S. citizens abroad who have become terrorists. A plurality, 49 percent support the program, and 38 percent oppose killing American terrorists. Fifty-eight percent of GOPers back the idea, along with 48 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of independents. The highest level of opposition to the drone program comes from independents, not Democrats. A quarter of independents oppose the drone war, and 43 percent oppose targeting American citizens.

The Obama administration is continuing the "secret law" model developed by Addington, Yoo and Bybee in the Bush administration: to wit, the law is used as a justification/cover for policy, not something that represents a boundary within which the executive branch must operate. And if they think Congress will oppose the policy--even ineffectually--they will endeavor to keep it secret.

And its not just classified legal opinions on drones that are at issue here, but the endlessly expansive interpretation of 2001 AUMF. LIbya, and now Mali, are examples of direct executive action to commit US forces to combat without any Congressional authorization/justification.

GWOT, PATRIOT Act, FISA Amdts Act, FY12 NDAA indefinite detention provisions, unilateral war making by POTUS--all are symptoms of the same disease...the Imperial Presidency. That mentality can only be combatted effectively, if at all, in the political arena vice the courts--which have over the decades become increasingly deferential to the executive on national security matters (Feres, state secrets privilege, etc.). What that requires is 1) an aroused population ready to challenge those policies and 2) groups and political figures willing to lead the opposition. Instead, we have a public largely content with remote-controlled wars and public officials passively accepting the situation--when they aren't issuing press releases hailing the alleged death of "suspected" Islamic insurgents.

Welcome to the new American Imperium.

To War In Africa: Prediction Fulfilled

From today's NYT:

Opening a new front in the drone wars against Al Qaeda and its affiliates, President Obama announced on Friday that about 100 American troops had been sent to Niger in West Africa to help set up a new base from which unarmed Predator aircraft would conduct surveillance in the region.

The new drone base, located for now in the capital, Niamey, is an indication of the priority Africa has become in American antiterrorism efforts. The United States military has a limited presence in Africa, with only one permanent base, in Djibouti, more than 3,000 miles from Mali, where insurgents had taken over half the country until repelled by a French-led force.

In a letter to Congress, Mr. Obama said about 40 United States military service members arrived in Niger on Wednesday, bringing the total number of those deployed in the country to about 100 people. A military official said the troops were largely Air Force logistics specialists, intelligence analysts and security officers.

I said previously by the spring of 2013. Welcome to our new, undeclared "drone war" in Africa.

Liberals, Obama And The Lessons Of History

Former Bush and Obama aide Douglas Ollivant has a reminder in today's NYT on what really matters in the executive powers debate over drones, etc.:

For four years, Mr. Obama has benefited at least in part from the reluctance of Mr. Bush’s most virulent critics to criticize a Democratic president. Some liberals acknowledged in recent days that they were willing to accept policies they once would have deplored as long as they were in Mr. Obama’s hands, not Mr. Bush’s.
“We trust the president,” former Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan said on Current TV. “And if this was Bush, I think that we would all be more up in arms because we wouldn’t trust that he would strike in a very targeted way and try to minimize damage rather than contain collateral damage.”
But some national security specialists said questions about the limits of executive power to conduct war should not depend on the person in the Oval Office.
“That’s not how we make policy,” said Douglas Ollivant, a former national security aide under Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama and now a fellow at the New America Foundation. “We make policy assuming that people in power might abuse it. To do otherwise is foolish.”

If this debate seems familiar, it's because we had it 40 years ago, as I've noted previously.

Unfortunately, that is exactly how partisans on both sides have been making policy since 9/11: by executive fiat, with servile Congresses either rubber-stamping the policies or ignoring them until they are exposed by whistleblowers or the press. No democracy that operates in such a way will remain a democracy over the long term.