From a John Cusack inter view with Georgetown Law Prof. Jonathan Turley. Both of whom declare themselves as Destructocrats: CUSACK: Right. So, in that sense, the Bush administration had set the precedent that the state can do anything it likes in the name of terror, and not only has Obama let that cement harden, but hes actually expanded the power of the executive branch to do whatever it wants, or hes lowered the bar — hes lowered the law — to meet his convenience. Hes lowered the law to meet his personal political convenience rather than leaving it as something that, as Mario Cuomo said, the law is supposed to be better than us. TURLEY: Thats exactly right. In fact, President Obama has not only maintained the position of George W. Bush in the area of national securities and in civil liberties, hes actually expanded on those positions. He is actually worse than George Bush in some areas. CUSACK: Can you speak to which ones? TURLEY: Well, a good example of it is that President Bush ordered the killing of an American citizen when he approved a drone strike on a car in Yemen that he knew contained an American citizen as a passenger. Many of us at the time said, You just effectively ordered the death of an American citizen in order to kill someone else, and where exactly do you have that authority? But they made an argument that because the citizen wasnt the primary target, he was just collateral damage. And there are many that believe that that is a plausible argument. CUSACK: By the way, were forgetting to kill even a foreign citizen is against the law. I hate to be so quaint... TURLEY: Well, President Obama outdid President Bush. He ordered the killing of two US citizens as the primary targets and has then gone forward and put out a policy that allows him to kill any American citizen when he unilaterally determines them to be a terrorist threat. Where President Bush had a citizen killed as collateral damage, President Obama has actually a formal policy allowing him to kill any US citizen. CUSACK: But yet the speech that Eric Holder gave was greeted generally, by those others than civil libertarians and a few people on the left with some intellectual honesty, with polite applause and a stunning silence and then more cocktail parties and state dinners and dignitaries, back the Republican Hypocrisy Hour on the evening feed — and he basically gave a speech saying that the executive can assassinate US citizens. TURLEY: That was the truly other-worldly moment of the speech. He went to, Northwestern Law School (my alma mater), and stood there and articulated the most authoritarian policy that a government can have: the right to unilaterally kill its citizens without any court order or review. The response from the audience was applause. Citizens applauding an Attorney General who just described how the President was claiming the right to kill any of them on his sole inherent authority. CUSACK: Does that order have to come directly from Obama, or can his underlings carry that out on his behalf as part of a generalized understanding? Or does he have to personally say, You can get that guy and that guy? TURLEY: Well, he has delegated the authority to the so-called death panel, which is, of course, hilarious, since the Republicans keep talking about a nonexistent death panel in national healthcare. We actually do have a death panel, and its killing people who are healthy. CUSACK: I think you just gave me the idea for my next film. And the tone will be, of course, Kafkaesque. TURLEY: It really is. CUSACK: Youre at the bottom of the barrel when the Attorney General is saying that not only can you hold people in prison for no charge without due process, but we can kill the citizens that we deem terrorists. But we wont do it cause were the good guys remember? TURLEY: Well, the way that this works is you have this unseen panel. Of course, their proceedings are completely secret. The people who are put on the hit list are not informed, obviously. CUSACK: Thats just not polite, is it? TURLEY: No, its not. The first time youre informed that youre on this list is when your car explodes, and that doesnt allow much time for due process. But the thing about the Obama administration is that it is far more premeditated and sophisticated in claiming authoritarian powers. Bush tended to shoot from the hip — he tended to do these things largely on the edges. In contrast, Obama has openly embraced these powers and created formal measures, an actual process for killing US citizens. He has used the terminology of the law to seek to legitimate an extrajudicial killing. CUSACK: Yeah, bringing the law down to meet his political realism, his constitutional realism, which is that the Constitution is just a means to an end politically for him, so if its inconvenient for him to deal with due process or if its inconvenient for him to deal with torture, well, then why should he do that? Hes a busy man. The Constitution is just another document to be used in a political fashion, right? TURLEY: Indeed. I heard from people in the administration after I wrote a column a couple weeks ago about the assassination policy. And they basically said, Look, youre not giving us our due. Holder said in the speech that we are following a constitutional analysis. And we have standards that we apply. It is an incredibly seductive argument, but there is an incredible intellectual disconnect. Whatever they are doing, it cant be called a constitutional process. Obama has asserted the right to kill any citizen that he believes is a terrorist. He is not bound by this panel that only exists as an extension of his claimed inherent absolute authority. He can ignore them. He can circumvent them. In the end, with or without a panel, a president is unilaterally killing a US citizen. This is exactly what the framers of the Constitution told us not to do. CUSACK: The framers didnt say, In special cases, do what you like. When there are things the public cannot know for their own good, when its extra-specially a dangerous world... do whatever you want. The framers of the Constitution always knew there would be extraordinary circumstances, and they were accounted for in the Constitution. The Constitution does not allow for the executive to redefine the Constitution when it will be politically easier for him to get things done. TURLEY: No. And its preposterous to argue that.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 17:47:39 +0000
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