Drone Lawyer: Kill a 16 Year-Old, Get a Promotion
by alethoBy Medea Benjamin | Op-Ed News | May 15, 2014
If
you think that as a United States citizen you’re entitled to a trial by
jury before the government can decide to kill you–– you’re wrong.
During his stint as a lawyer at the Department of Justice, David Barron
was able to manipulate constitutional law so as to legally justify
killing American citizens with drone strikes. If you’re wondering what
the justification for that is, that’s just too bad – the legal memos are
classified. Sounds a little suspicious, doesn’t it? What’s even more
suspicious is that now the Obama Administration wants to appoint the
lawyer who wrote that legal memos to become a high-ranking judge for
life.During his stint as a lawyer at the Department of
Justice, David Barron was able to manipulate constitutional law so as to
legally justify killing American citizens with drone strikes.
Disturbingly,
this is not the first time that the president has rewarded a high-level
lawyer for paving the legal way for drone strike assassinations. Jeh
Johnson, former lawyer at the Department of Defense, penned the memos
that give the “okay” to target non-US citizen foreign combatants with
drones. His reward? He’s now the Secretary of the Department of Homeland
Security. These Obama nominations are eerily reminiscent of the
Bush-era appointment of torture memo author Jay Bybee to a lifetime
position of a federal judge.
Barron,
a Harvard law professor and former legal counsel at the Department of
Justice, was recently nominated by President Obama to the lifetime
position of a judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals—just one step
below the Supreme Court. While at the Department of Justice, Barron
wrote at least 2 secret legal memos justifying the use of lethal drones
to kill Americans suspected of involvement in terrorist activities.
Should
someone who has done such immense damage to the rule of law and our
moral sensibilities be awarded with a judgeship on the First Circuit
Court?
The
Attorney General has conceded that four Americans located outside the
United States have been killed by drone strikes since 2011. One of those
killed was Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was attacked while in a tribal region
of Yemen in September 2011. Then Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son
Abdulrahman, also an American citizen, was shamefully killed in a drone
strike in rural Yemen two weeks later.
Call
me old-fashioned, but I believe that Americans suspected of committing
crimes deserve to have charges brought against them, to have a chance to
surrender or be captured, and to be given a fair trial. If they cannot
be captured and refuse to surrender, they could be tried in absentia.
But Barron helped set a terrible precedent that American citizens have
no right to a judicial process—something that human rights advocates
around the world have been fighting for since the signing of the Magna
Carta 800 years ago.
How
can Barron be a judge if he does not understand the deeply valued laws
of our land, laws that include habeas corpus and the right to a fair
trial? As stated in the Bill of Rights: the Fourth Amendment guarantees that a person cannot be seized by the government unreasonably, and the Fifth Amendment
guarantees that the government may not deprive a person of life without
due process of law. A judge is supposed to uphold the Constitution, yet
Barron has already torn it down.
In an op-ed
supporting Barron’s nomination, law professors Charles Fried and
Laurence Tribe argue that Barron didn’t order the strikes or design the
legal framework for their authorization. Certainly he didn’t order the
strikes, but his job as acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel was
precisely to provide legal opinions to the President, opinions that
became the legal foundation on which the strikes were based.
Some
Senators said they would not proceed with Barron’s nomination until
they got access to the memos he has written about drone strikes. “This
nomination cannot go forward unless this body — every member of this
body — is given access to any and all secret legal opinions this nominee
wrote on this critical issue,” Grassley said. The White House responded
by allowing all interested Senators to go to a secret chamber to read
“all written legal advice issued by Mr. Barron regarding the potential
use of lethal force against US citizens in counterterrorism operations.”
This pretense of transparency is meaningless, though, because Senators
won’t be able to publicly question and challenge Barron about the memos
unless they are declassified.
That’s why some senators,
including Democrat Mark Udall and Republican Rand Paul, are insisting
that the memos be made public. That’s all well and good, since we—the
public–certainly should have the right to read them. It makes no sense
for legal memos to be considered secret national security documents.
Even the courts have said as much, when a federal judge in April 2014
ordered the administration to release the legal analysis to the public
(an order the administration has so far ignored).
But
the Senators should go further and state that David Barron is simply
not fit to sit on the bench to interpret our Constitution.
In the hopes of moving our nation back to one that respects, honors and upholds the rule of law, we are pushing the Senate—particularly Majority Leader Harry Reid—to
kill Barron’s nomination. Senator Rand Paul is one of the few Senators
challenging Barron’s nomination. “I can’t imagine appointing someone to
the federal bench, one level below the Supreme Court, without fully
understanding that person’s views concerning the extrajudicial killing
of American citizens,” he wrote.
Unfortunately,
now that the administration has placated Senators by giving them access
to Barron’s memos, he will most likely be be confirmed. There is one
good thing that could come out of this, though – the sparking of a
much-needed national conversation about drone warfare and U.S. policy on
the use of killer drones. Does the use of drone strikes that often hit
innocent people and incite hatred towards Americans actually ensure our
safety, or trigger greater danger? In the meantime, we should urge our
Senators to push for the public release of these classified drone memos
and should oppose the appointment of David Barron. We don’t need a judge
on the bench who has already shown his disregard for the Constitution
and for the rights of American citizens. Tell your Senator to vote “no” for drone lawyer David Barron.
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