Which is probably why words fail:
Mr. Obama himself, in little-noticed remarks, has acknowledged that the legal governance of drone strikes is still a work in progress.“One of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place, and we need Congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president’s reined in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making,” Mr. Obama told Jon Stewart in an appearance on “The Daily Show” on Oct. 18.
In an interview with Mark Bowden for a new book on the killing of Osama bin Laden, “The Finish,” Mr. Obama said that “creating a legal structure, processes, with oversight checks on how we use unmanned weapons, is going to be a challenge for me and my successors for some time to come.”
One wonders---in vain, I suspect---what current rule of law prevents the President from reining himself in right now. Unless he feels that he is already exercising commendable self-discipline by only ordering missiles to be slammed into Pakistani villages once every week or so. Granted, that's a considerable improvement over previous years, but then again, now that he has arrogated the right to assassinate any person of his choosing at any time, he is free to outsource the killing to human assets on the ground instead. But codifying war crimes under federal statute law doesn't stop them from being considered de facto war crimes everywhere else! You'd think our former Constitutional law professor-in-Chief would be cognizant of this. Perhaps he needs to be gently reminded of it.
---Baron V
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