"Murder Is Legal," Says the Attorney General

The title of this blog is the one used by David Swanson, who wrote War Is a Lie and who writes frequently on peace and justice issues. I generally read Swanson in the Oregon Peaceworks newsletter. Swanson takes Attorney General Eric Holder to task for his many questionable and even hard-to-believe assertions made in his March 5 speech at the Chicago branch of the Northwestern Law School.

David Swanson begins his piece by belittling Holder's conception of war: Holder is not talking about a war that looks like a war; he is talking about a war "that is everywhere all the time."

Swanson contrasts Holder's view that military commissions have been successfully reformed with the view of the former chief prosecutor of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay prison, who has said that the "decision to use both legal settings is a mistake. It will establish a dangerous legal double standard that gives some detainees superior rights and protections, and relegates others to the inferior rights and protections of military commissions. This will only perpetuate the perception that Guantanamo and justice are mutually exclusive."

Holder said that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) "mandated that a narrow category of al Qaeda terrorist suspects be placed in temporary custody." Swanson counters that President Obama altered the NDAA with an unconstitutional signing statement, having the NDAA apply to the largely non-Al Qaeda prisoners held in Afghanistan.

Holder argues that because the United States is in armed conflict, it is authorized to use force against any enemy belligerents under international law. Swanson's counter-argument is that the 2001 authorization to use force resolution violated the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the UN Charter and the U.S. Constitution. He says: "No international law recognizes secret global war without limitations in time or space."

Another claim made by Eric Holder in his March 5 speech is that the United States is at war "with a stateless enemy prone to shifting operations from country to country." I would say that if this is true, there is no way to identify the enemy and our identifications of the enemy will shift over time.

Eric Holder assured his listeners that the president will only kill someone in a foreign land if that country will not kill someone for him and that constitutes "respect for another country's sovereignty," which is about as ridiculous a way of showing respect as can be imagined. Also, Holder  contends that a kill order from Obama  does not violate the executive order banning assassinations because Obama would only kill those who constitute an imminent threat and U.S. citizens are not immune from being targeted. In reply, David Swanson wonders who knew the "the president alone can give you due process without explaining it to anyone else." Similarly, Swanson is very skeptical of Holder's claim of "robust oversight," because "informing a handful of Congress members, and no doubt forbidding them to report what they are told, does not create Congressional oversight."

Looking overall at the specious claims made by Attorney General Eric Holder in his March 5 speech to justify the war the Obama administration is waging against Al Qaeda and "associated forces," there are ample grounds to relieve Holder of his position as soon as possible; however, there is no reason to believe that he is not representing the positions of the Obama administration.

Eric Holder's Curious Reading of the Constitution

The common understanding of the due process language in the U.S. Constitution is that the basic elements are a trial, the right to be informed of the charges against you, and the right to face your accuser. Attorney General Eric Holder has a different, even curious interpretation of the Constitution. Speaking at Northwestern Law School on March 5, Holder said: "'Due process' and 'judicial process' are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process." What Holder seems to be saying is that, at least in regard to terrorism, all that is constitutionally required is a process, no matter how secretive and flimsy in nature.

President Barack Obama has assumed the power to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen, a step-up in power that even the law-adverse George W. Bush did not venture to assume. Reuters has said that the decision to assassinate would be based on a "kill or capture list" drawn up by a "secretive panel of senior government officials." The Justice Department has responded to an ACLU request for information about the assassination program by neither confirming nor denying the existence of any records.

Who is a terrorist? The operative definition is that a terrorist is one "who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda  or associated forces;" therefore, a terrorist is someone the president has accused and then deemed in secret to be a terrorist without the need to present any evidence. The president and senior underlings are judge, jury and even executioner wrapped up in one.

When Barack Obama was a  U.S. senator from Illinois, he denounced the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba with the charge that "a perfectly innocent individual could be held and could not rebut the Government's case and has no way of proving his innocence." Senator Obama even mocked the right-wing claim "that judicial inquiry is an antique, trivial and dispensable luxury."