Delia's Gone

50statepress:

This is a thoughtful, well-reasoned - and largely non-political - piece by Stephen L. Carter, a professor at Yale Law School.

He considers two questions:

(i)  What is the source of the President’s authority to order drone killings; and

(ii) What about reciprocity - by using tools of warfare against terror groups, are we somehow giving them license to reciprocate in kind.

To be honest, the second question strikes me as somewhat academic, since I think we can assume that terror groups will use any means at their disposal to carry out attacks.  The first one, though, is more vexing.

It’s interesting to read the user-generated comments on Professor Carter’s article (which is published in The Daily Beast).  Many of these are along the lines of “this guy’s just living in some ivory tower, and if we’re going to be safe we need to go out and blast terrorists straight to hell regardless of their location or nationality.”

I can understand the fear that motivates those who argue that way (although I agree with Ron Paul that some of this fear seems to be artificially generated by politicians who stand to benefit from it).  But my greater fear is that in the long run we sacrifice the principles that make us a free people - the principles set out in the Constitution - for the expediency of a short-term, and perhaps even illusory sense of safety.

I am also worried about President Obama’s trend towards highly authoritarian behavior - the assumption of the power to issue “kill orders” against Americans being fairly authoritarian in my book - and am even more concerned about the way people seem to accept this without question.  The dangers of a charismatic leader who gets away with this kind of thing have been well-established by history.

Interesting article.  Trying to determine (with a wonky internet connection and no English-language television news) whether Northeastern University and the Satte Department’s warning are the usual BS.