More Interesting Commentary on Targeted Killing White Paper

The white paper should have said that due process doesn’t apply on the battlefield. By instead making due process into a rubber stamp, the administration is ignoring precedent and subverting the idea of the rule of law. When is some law worse than none? When that law is so watered down that it loses the meaning it has had for 800 years.

In sum, the original meaning of the due process clause is that the President cannot unilaterally kill U.S. citizens he thinks are potentially dangerous.  Perhaps there are examples of historical practice that suggest an exception applicable to the present case (as there are obvious historical exceptions on the battlefield and for prevention of imminent harm).  But the burden should be on those who want an exception to the text, and that burden shouldn't be met merely by the claim that it would be more convenient to have such an exception.

To my mind, a lot of the criticism is overblown because it doesn’t give enough consideration to the fact that the memo’s rationale for targeted killing is strictly limited to American citizens who are “senior operational leader[s] of al-Qa’ida or an associated force.” On the other hand, there is a very troubling issue that the memo does not address: Who decides whether a potential target qualifies as a senior operational terrorist leader, and how much evidence does he need to have?