A First Draft of the Third War
Why President Obama should commission a history of targeted killing.
BY MICAH ZENKO | MARCH 6, 2013

Since 11:47 on Wednesday morning, the beginning of a Senate filibuster to delay a vote on John Brennan’s nomination to head the CIA, “Rand Paul,” “drones,” and “John Brennan” have intermittently been trending on Twitter. This attention-grabbing focus on targeted killings — which will last only until Paul runs out of steam — is representative of the sporadic attention that the controversial tactic has received from policymakers and the public.
With each supposed revelation — the “kill list,” “signature strikes,” “disposition matrix,” and the leaking of a Department of Justice white paper providing the legal justification for killing American citizens — there is a frenzy of interest in drone strikes. Analysts (myself included) are repeatedly asked, “Where is this all heading in five or ten years?” In other words: What additional lethal missions will U.S. armed drones execute, and where will they occur? What other states will seek to develop this military capability?
But, in general, there is relative indifference to the history of America’s Third War — the 10-year campaign of over 400 targeted killings in non-battlefield settings that have killed an estimated 3,500 to 4,700 people. And that is puzzling, particularly since they have become a defining feature of post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy.
Over the past few months, many stakeholders in and out of government have offered recommendations about how the Obama administration should change, limit, end, or enhance its targeted killing policies. However, there have been no calls for an official government study into the history and evolution of non-battlefield targeted killings. This is essential, since reforms must first be informed by an accurate accounting of how the policies were originally conceived, how they were implemented and altered based on updated information, whether they succeeded or failed at achieving their objectives, and what their intended and unintended effects have been.
If President Obama believes what he said in his State of the Union address — “It is not sufficient for citizens to just take my word for it that we are doing the right thing” — then he should authorize a comprehensive historical review into targeted killings, ideally by an independent commission. This review would later be declassified — with input from the original classification authorities — to the greatest extent possible without revealing classified information regarding the sources and methods of such operations. This would include protecting those foreign liaison relationships that facilitate U.S. military or intelligence access to denied areas.
The president and his senior officials have repeatedly asserted that drones are “surgical,” “discriminate,” and “precise,” and that there is a very careful and deliberate interagency process (“not a bunch of folks in a room somewhere just making decisions”). If that is true, then the Obama administration must believe it has a positive targeted killings story to share with the public. This would be preferable to the surreptitious custom of rebutting criticisms of targeted killings via anonymous officials, or selectively disavowing attacks that were initially thought to be drone strikes, as the New York Times reported on Monday.
Such an action would not be unprecedented. In May 2009, President Obama declassified Office of Legal Counsel memoranda justifying torture “because the existence of that approach to interrogation was already widely known, the Bush administration had acknowledged its existence.” Today, targeted killings via U.S. drone strikes are openly debated, and Obama himself explicitly acknowledged the practice of targeted killings in Pakistan over 13 months ago. The principle and excuse of deniability no longer applies and is an unacceptable defense for the limitless secrecy surrounding the targeted killings program.
There are publicly available or partially declassified U.S. government reports on similarly controversial topics, including the CIA’s 2004 report on detention and interrogation, the Pentagon’s 2005 review of detention and interrogation, and the director of national intelligence’s 2012 report on Guantanamo detainees. There have also been major reports, like the 9/11 Commission Report and the congressional joint inquiry into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as well as the U.S. military’s highly critical assessments of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Finally, there was the Senate Foreign Relations Committee report on Afghanistan’s narco-war, which revealed that U.S. military forces “put drug traffickers with proven links to the insurgency on a kill list, called the joint integrated prioritized target list.”
If the White House is unable or unwilling to conduct a similar study on drones, then Congress should build upon its recent efforts at oversight by initiating a full and complete accounting of non-battlefield targeted killings. This could be done through a joint inquiry or within the committees on governmental affairs, foreign relations, armed services, or intelligence. It would include staff investigations, closed hearings with administration officials, and public hearings with outside experts and former officials. One recent example is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s 6,000-page report on CIA torture, which may be released in whole or in part “after receiving executive branch comments,” according to Senator Dianne Feinstein. Given that Congress (justifiably) investigated America’s role in the torture of an estimated 136 victims, it is surely worth investigating the targeted killings program, which has killed over 3,000 suspected terrorists, militants, and civilians — and counting.
The first component of reform is drawing upon the experiences and lessons of the past. Without an official history of targeted killings, future U.S. government officials and employees will only be influenced by the immediate scope of their responsibilities, and citizens will absorb each new headline without a broader context or awareness. An executive or congressional historical report of targeted killings should receive bipartisan support, since the program has actually spanned three administrations — even Bill Clinton maintained a kill list of “fewer than ten” suspected al Qaeda members. However, virtually all policymakers and citizens have forgotten that and are similarly unaware of the deep and opaque history of the Third War, because their focus is forever on the present and the future.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Micah Zenko (@MicahZenko) is the Douglas Dillon fellow with the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. He writes the blog Politics, Power, and Preventive Action.
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My dear Micah Zenco,
What have you against me?
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Barack Obama (Drone) Commander in Chief
…and I am Sid Harth@elcidharth.com
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Rand Paul ends epic filibuster over Brennan
WASHINGTON — After nearly 13 hours on the Senate floor, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., ended his filibuster blocking Senate confirmation of John Brennan, President Obama’s pick for director of the CIA.
“I’m going to speak as long as I can to draw attention to something I find very disturbing,” Paul said when he started speaking around 11:45 a.m. Wednesday morning. He finally ceded the floor at about 12:40 a.m. local time on Thursday.
But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, also a Kentucky Republican, said he would continue to oppose Brennan’s confirmation and ending debate on it.
What started in the morning as a solo effort turned into a multi-senator debate that included one Democrat, Ron Wyden of Oregon, and at least seven Republicans questioning the constitutionality of drone strikes on U.S. citizens at home and abroad.
“No American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found guilty of a crime by a court,” Paul said. “How can you kill someone without going to a judge, or a jury?”
Paul, a critic of Obama’s unmanned drone policy, started his self-described filibuster by demanding the president or Attorney General Eric Holder issue a statement assuring that unmanned aircraft would not be used in the United States to kill terrorism suspects who are U.S. citizens.
Paul said that his opposition was not about Brennan himself, but the constitutional issues involved. “We really just want [Obama] to say he won’t” attack noncombatants on U.S. soil.
The federal government has not conducted such operations and doesn’t plan to, Attorney General Eric Holder told Paul in a March 4 letter. But, Holder added, it was possible President Obama could be forced by an “extraordinary circumstance” to kill citizens inside the United States, and he cited the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks as examples.
During his filibuster, Paul said the fuzziness of such language created a slippery slope that could lead to the targeting of citizens who merely have different opinions about policies than the president.
“You can’t be judge, jury and executioner all in one,” Paul said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., took the floor around 4:30 p.m. to say any vote to end debate on Brennan’s nomination or to approve him as CIA director would happen Thursday.
Wyden, a longtime critic of excessive government intelligence and surveillance programs, said “the senator from Kentucky has made a number of important points.”
There are times, Wyden said, when a U.S. citizen who takes up arms against the United States while overseas can be attacked by a drone. But the executive branch of government, he said, should not be allowed to “conduct such a far-reaching policy without scrutiny.”
It’s not a partisan issue, Paul said, noting that he voted to support the nominations of John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, the secretaries of State and Defense.
Paul and other senators had delayed a full Senate vote on Brennan’s nomination until they received more information about the drone program. The White House provided Justice Department documents on the drone program to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.
The committee then voted 12-3 to approve Brennan’s nomination.
Brennan, the White House’s top counterterrorism adviser, was closely linked to the drone program. The administration has used the unmanned aircraft to regularly target suspected terrorists in the Middle East and Africa.
In 2011, U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a drone strike in Yemen, raising questions about the use of the armed drones on American citizens.
Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina had used Brennan’s nomination to air concerns about the administration’s handling of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.
McCain and Graham said they would oppose Brennan unless they got classified documents detailing the administration’s actions immediately following the attack, the Associated Press reported.
The White House has said it provided more documents to lawmakers about that attack.
Before coming to the White House, Brennan served 25 years in the CIA.
Contributing: Alia E. Dastagir in Tysons; the Associated Press
Why Drone Paranoia Works
If you want to stop something, scream, “Tyranny!”
By David Weigel|Posted Thursday, March 7, 2013, at 6:42 PM
His mind restored by sleep, his bladder finally emptied, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul gave his first interview after a 12-hour drone-policy filibuster to an awed Glenn Beck.
“This man is going to be the logical choice for president of the United States,” Beck told his listeners, just after 10:30 a.m. “He is reasonable, polite, and I believe in a teaching mode right now.” Paul was telling Americans that they “have the right to live, and to have a trial, and to have a warrant. Not just to be killed, gunned down in the streets, or in this case, killed by a drone, because this president or any president says, yeah, take him out.”
The last time most people saw Glenn Beck, he was hosting a Fox News show renowned for its use of a mobile blackboard. In white chalk on black slate, viewers learned that Barack Obama was building a private army, that the government would seize private land to peg a new post-dollar currency, and that the Arab Spring was an “Archduke Ferdinand moment” for Marxists.
That was the old Glenn Beck. The new Glenn Beck calls himself a “libertarian” akin to Penn Jillette. His news site and online video channel brim with stories about heroic applications of the Second Amendment (“Wanted fugitive fatally shot by gun-toting Kansas farmer”), left-wing censorship (“Do you count as an extremist ‘patriot’?”), and politicians alternately heroic (Rand Paul) and vile (John McCain).
Paul’s filibuster became such a sensation, so fast, that it’s easy to forget where anti-drone activism started. It started on the left. Last year, when Charles Krauthammer got spooked about domestic surveillance drones, he warned that he was taking the “hard left, ACLU” stance. If you showed up at any sizable anti-war rally since 2012, you probably saw the grey, phallic head of a papier-mâché drone hoisted over the crowd. The first city councils to debate drone bans were in liberal Charlottesville, Va. and even-more-liberal Seattle. “The request for our resolution came from the Rutherford Institute,” says Charlottesville Mayor Satyendra Huja. That organization, based in that college town, has called Barack Obama the “executioner-in-chief.”
If you want the government to regulate or ban drones—for domestic surveillance, for warfare, for targeted killings of Americans—this is exactly how you want the politics to work. There’s no scrutiny of government surveillance or warfare programs unless those programs stir up left-right paranoia. When that paranoia crests, a bill can be stopped, or a ban can squeak through. Ask the poor lobbyists for REAL ID, or ask one of the tech lobbyists who thought the Stop Online Piracy Act was going to sail through. You can’t win one of these battles unless the lumpen talk radio fan thinks the government will use its powers to steal his freedom.
Until this week, that was the problem facing anti-drone campaigners. One month ago, the Washington Post/ABC News poll asked voters whether they favored “the use of unmanned, ‘drone’ aircraft against terrorist suspects overseas.” Eighty-three percent said they did, and 65 percent said they favored even targeted killings of American citizens. That was more than a year after a drone attack killed al-Qaida’s “YouTube preacher” Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, American citizens both. Most Americans didn’t worry about that.
David Weigel is a Slate political reporter. You can reach him at daveweigel@gmail.com, or tweet at him @daveweigel.
elcidharth.com/2013/02/…/drone-assassinations-legal-not-mor…Feb 4, 2013 – John Brennan faces grilling over drone leak as senators demand …… key words pop up, yep webworldismyoyster.com is all about: drone, …

I fully understand the slippery-slope argument, and it’s not without merit in this case. But the realpolitik of the situation is that, as Holder initially said, *extraordinary* circumstances might not be as black and white as the Rand Pauls of the world would like to believe.
The question is not whether there are any conceivable circumstances where it would be okay to assassinate a US citizen not engaged in combat or an imminent threat. The question is whether we want to institutionalize this power without any checks or transparency on how it will be used.

Kev and 
You wouldn’t be okay with, say, President Romney evading this important question, would you?
Partisanship. Has. No. Place. In. Law.



I think maybe a lot of people don’t know what “assassination” means.
I think a lot of people aren’t thinking.
And then some of them are thinking. And what they are thinking is,
“The President can do whatever he wants.”
Might as well have a King, the way some people “believe” in the infallible godlike President!
By the way, I never once protested the Bush Administration’s usage of war power against Al Qaeda, so cool it with your self-serving partisanship claim.


Anyone who support or excuses this supports and excuses a form of tyranny.

Your ally is anyone who can help you preserve, protect and defend your liberty and America’s integrity. Your enemy is anyone who would lead you so much as an inch off that path. If you can’t see this, you’re a fool, and more part of the problem than you will ever be part of the solution.
This is not time to be divided and conquered. Substance is more important than labels. And this filibuster has CLEARLY added substance to the conversation, and forced this administration to commit to serve We, the People. I am at a loss as to how anyone can criticize it without becoming a Useful Idiot in the process. I certainly haven’t seen anyone pull it off yet.
It does not distract from the discussion at hand to point this out.
And the very next day, the Republicans were back to yelling about the radical notion of trying a captured criminal in Federal court.
What cheeses me off about Rand Paul–and I did admire his just going ahead and filibustering–is that it’s a sideshow. And I don’t think he’s smart enough, on the basis of his subsequent interviews, to say that the filibuster was there to get attention for the important things.

It just stinks.
Given his penchant for bombast and opportunism, I can easily imagine Cruz fully supporting then President Bush and labeling anyone would didn’t as soft on terrorism.
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