Trump gives CIA power to launch drone strikes

[Hondo69]

I sure hope this is fake news because if true I find it unusually depressing . . .

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/13/trump-gives-cia-power-to-launch-drone-strikes.html

President Donald Trump has given the Central Intelligence Agency secret new authority to conduct drone strikes against suspected terrorists, U.S. officials said, changing the Obama administration’s policy of limiting the spy agency’s paramilitary role and reopening a turf war between the agency and the Pentagon.

[Cripplecreek]

I sure hope this is fake news because if true I find it unusually depressing . . .

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/13/trump-gives-cia-power-to-launch-drone-strikes.html

I just don't like the idea of the president being insulated from the consequences of strikes. It means someone down the line from the president will be the one facing the consequences.

[thackney]

I sure hope this is fake news because if true I find it unusually depressing . . .

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/13/trump-gives-cia-power-to-launch-drone-strikes.html

This is returning the CIA to the point they were before Obama first reduced then eliminated the CIA making their own drone strikes.

Why CIA drone strikes have plummeted
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-drone-strikes-plummet-as-white-house-shifts-authority-to-pentagon/2016/06/16/e0b28e90-335f-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html
 June 16, 2016

Obama to make new push to shift control of drones from CIA to Pentagon
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/27/politics/drones-cia-pentagon-white-house/
April 27, 2015

[thackney]

For more reference:

Obama's Weak Defense of His Record on Drone Killings
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/president-obamas-weak-defense-of-his-record-on-drone-strikes/511454/
 DEC 23, 2016

...Shortly before Obama took office, leaving his job as a United States senator, a CIA drone strike on a funeral in Pakistan killed as many as 41 civilians, an incident that apparently wasn’t enough to cause him to rethink the wisdom of the U.S. approach.

President Obama presided over a drone strike for the first time shortly after taking office, on January 22, 2009. The strike missed its target, and Newsweek reported that Obama was made aware almost immediately that innocents died in the attack. By the end of 2009 the CIA had already conducted its 100th drone strike in Pakistan....

...Obama chose to allow the CIA, a secretive entity with a long history of unjust killings, to carry out strikes; he chose to keep the very fact of drone killings classified, deliberately invoking the state-secrets privilege in a way guaranteed to stymie oversight, public debate, and legal accountability; and he chose to permit killings outside the greater Afghanistan war zone, in countries with which the U.S. was not at war. Those choices made more unjust killings predictable and inevitable....

...The absurdly low figures cited by Obama administration figures were lies. Along with Orwellian word games that his White House played, inaccurate death tolls helped to obscure a death toll that was a predictable consequence of Obama’s actions:...

...In 2013, I noted that the Supreme Court in Israel, a state with national-security challenges greater than ours, grappled with whether judges have any role to play in targeted killings. They didn't see it as a close question. They saw their role as determining “the permissible and the forbidden” in combat that implicates “the most basic right of a human being—the right to life.” They affirmed that “non-justiciability cannot prevent the examination of that question.” I suspect James Madison would find their approach more prudent than what the Obama administration suggests. The administration asked Americans to believe not only that it was empowered to kill an American in secret, but that after the fact, courts should refrain from judging whether such killings violated the right to life of the target.

Thanks to Obama’s actions, Donald Trump will be inaugurated into an office that presumes the authority to secretly order the extrajudicial killings of American citizens. Was the particular way that Obama targeted Anwar al-Awlaki worth that price?...

...most of Obama’s improvements on drone policy can be undone with the stroke of Donald Trump’s pen. As Naureen Shah of Amnesty International told The Intercept, “What’s so interesting is that President Obama acknowledges this problem—that future presidents will be empowered to kill globally, and in secret. What he doesn’t acknowledge is how much of a role his administration had in making that a bizarre normal … What we’ll be left with from the Obama administration is a far more dangerous precedent of secret, global killings than what we started with.”...

[Hondo69]

I'm old enough to remember this crazy idea that only Congress can declare war.

[thackney]

I'm old enough to remember this crazy idea that only Congress can declare war.

I don't think an government assassination requires a declaration of war.

[thackney]

I'm old enough to remember this crazy idea that only Congress can declare war.

If the government of the land where the drone strike occurs first gives permission, how would anyone consider that an act of war?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/world/obamas-counterterrorism-aide-defends-drone-strikes.html

[truth_seeker]

I'm old enough to remember this crazy idea that only Congress can declare war.

I believe we are currently operating under Congressionally approved measures. (2001,and 2003 ?)

Historical review:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror

[IsailedawayfromFR]

I just don't like the idea of the president being insulated from the consequences of strikes. It means someone down the line from the president will be the one facing the consequences.

Per the Constitution, all power of the Executive resides in a single person, the President.

He is not insulated, as it is his delegation of that power that is enforced.

[truth_seeker]

Per the Constitution, all power of the Executive resides in a single person, the President.

He is not insulated, as it is his delegation of that power that is enforced.

We got plenty of folks, that haven't a clue what "delegation" really means.

You CAN delegate Authority, but you can NOT delegate Responsibility.

I am sure Truman did NOT push the buttons to release two nukes over Japan. He had delegated responsibility to his chain of command to do so.

But Truman himself, still had ultimate Responsibility.

These days politicians often claim no involvement, even though their subordinate did something wrong.

They disavow responsibility.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

I don't have a problem with this. We are at war with al Qaeda, a global terrorist outfit with no borders or uniforms. Trump is delegating to people who know what they're doing. I'm sure FDR delegated air raids, etc. to people who knew way more than him.

[Hondo69]

I believe we are currently operating under Congressionally approved measures. (2001,and 2003 ?)

Historical review:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror

Thanks for posting that.  I wrongly assumed drone strikes fell under a different type of statute.

The Authorization for the use of Military Force Against Terrorists or "AUMF" was made law on 14 September 2001, to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the attacks on 11 September 2001. It authorized the President to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on 11 September 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or individuals. Congress declares this is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution of 1973.