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Military Drone Attacks Are Not 'Hostile'
sanzibar writes "Not satisfied with the legal conclusion of the DOJ, the Obama administration found other in-house lawyers willing to declare a bomb dropped from a drone is not 'hostile'. The strange conclusion has big implications in determining the President's compliance with the law. If drone strikes are in fact hostile and the Libyan campaign continues past Sunday, he may very well be breaking the law."
Enough (of the right) lawyers and you get to modify reality.
That's pretty neat.
"No, dropping a cinder block thru your windshield was NOT a hostile act,
just clumsy, oopsie!"
In all seriousness though, he's exploiting a loophole
it seems, because the law was written in 1973, before
drones existed.
"It should come as no surprise that there would be some disagreements, even within an administration, regarding the application of a statute that is nearly 40 years old to a unique and evolving conflict. Those disagreements are ordinary and healthy," he added.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
You're wrong, it is a law.
War Powers Resolution
It's called the War Powers Resolution for a reason... it was a resolution, of Congress... which does not have the signature of a President... it was not vetoed... or even pocket vetoed... because it was never presented to a President for his signature... preventing any possibility of a veto override.
As much as I loathe this President... I do have to give him credit for standing up against the WPA... it’s a shame he’s not competent enough to recognize the reality of the WPA and state it... rather than playing these games.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.
It passed the House on July 18, 1973.
It passed the Senate on July 20, 1973.
President Nixon vetoed it on October 24, 1973.
His veto was overridden by the Senate on November 7, 1973. Thus immediately the bill became law, without the need for Nixon's signature.
And this is a high resolution scan of the final bill.
Maybe you were unaware that "the previous guy" disagreed on this point, and took a very careful view of complying with the "War Powers Resolution". In other words, unlike Obama, Dubya got congressional approval for his war(s). Whatever vague point you were trying to make, your post is factually misleading.
You (and a lot of other people) gave money to a guy whose political career consisted of being a first-term US Senator after a couple of years in the state legislature. What did you expect?
Let's see if any Democratic group has the stones to mount a primary challenge. I'm not really impressed by any of the Republican candidates. See if you can get Hillary to give it another go.
Obama isn't trying to 'stand against' the WPA, he's trying to say it doesn't apply to him. He supported it in the past, and if he said it didn't apply, he would look like a hypocrite.
The constitution says that only congress may declare war, but from the beginning, the US has engaged in conflicts without declaring war. In fact, congress has only declared war five times. The original words in the constitution draft were that only congress could "make war," but it was changed to say only congress could "declare war," in recognition of the fact that sometimes the president should be allowed to fight without declaring war.
No one knows where the line between what the president can do and what congress must authorize exists, though. The WPA is nothing more than congress's opinion, because they don't have the right to restrict the president further than the constitution.
Now, if congress really cared, they could bring the matter up to the Supreme Court, and get an injunction prohibiting the president from further action in Libya. But they haven't, which is how you know their words are nothing more than an attempt to win cheap political points.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Except the US and NATO don't "indiscriminately" kill as they please, they put a ton of planning into every strike and try to conduct operations is with a minimal amount of civilian death and injuries.
After all, the US and UK have been using inert bombs on radar and light structures for over 12 years, because an explosive would do too much civilian damage.
Those ignorant of military history think all modern bombing and air strikes look like Sir Harris planned them and that because a B-52 can carry 35 tons of bombs, every time a B-52 is mentioned it must have dropped 35 tons of bombs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bombing
But the vast majority of airstrikes and bombings by the US and NATO since 1992 have been with smart weapons, guided missiles or single small (500 pound or 1000 pound) bombs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_guided_munition
In Iraq/Kuwait in 1991 8.8% of air strikes were with PGMs, in the Kosovo War the number is up to 90%, in 2001 Afghanistan it drops back to 55%
In Libya it looks like about 75-80% PGM, and of course anything from a Predator or Reaper drone is going to be a PGM, either a Hellfire (Laser or Millimeter wave radar) or a small JDAM (GPS and/or laser)
http://theamericanaudacity.blogspot.com/2011/03/canadas-six-cf-18-hornets-deployed-to.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nato-runs-short-on-some-munitions-in-libya/2011/04/15/AF3O7ElD_story.html?hpid=z1
http://jha.ac/articles/a110.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_guided_munition
The value of goods produced and held is, as a whole, the wealth of the participants in the economy. Everything has some value to the holder, but it varies over time, often decreasing as things get old, eaten, worn out, etc.
The interesting part is the allocation of resources towards producing that which maximizes the perceived wealth created and held, and when it comes to munitions they tend to be very expensive for the perceived wealth; using those resources for basically any other production would create more value and make the economy wealthier.
The second world war was not essential to getting out of the depression, basically any other production on the same basis would have accomplished the same.
Another misconception is that jobs are intrinsically good for the economy. Make-work jobs are in themselves merely a covert wealth redistribution scheme. As far as the wealth of the economy is concerned, although less palatable, simply taxing the employed and paying the unemployed to sit around doing nothing would be neither more or less valuable (if we assume that munitions have near zero value to the participants in the economy).
Redistribution through building infrastructure or various public works is slightly less wasteful, but ultimately the least inequitable method of managing reduced demand would be to divide the actual work through more general reduced working hours, rather than the binary employed-unemployed tax-makework structure. In the end, as the whole point of an economy is to generate the most wealth for as little work as possible, it would be good to have a method to deal with the end-game in that function, just in case it turns out that demand for goods isn't infinite but balanced against the value of free time.