Just in time for the President’s speech on Thursday, the Hoover Institution has released Chapter 2 of our serialized book: Speaking the Law: The Obama Administration’s Addresses on National Security Law.
The Introduction and Chapter 1 came out in … Read more »
On Thursday, President Obama will be giving a major address on national security and counterterrorism, styled as a companion to the 2009 National Archives address. That 2009 speech adopted a pragmatic approach blending a renewed emphasis on criminal prosecution … Read more »
Ben quotes from this morning’s Washington Post editorial on AUMF reform, the last two sentences of which assert that “Countering the jihadists with intelligence and law enforcement tools manifestly failed before Sept. 11, 2001. Congress would be wise to … Read more »
For those who’d prefer the shorter version of Jen Daskal and my draft paper on life “After the AUMF,” we’ve got a short op-ed out in today’s New York Times with a far less alliterative title: “Don’t … Read more »
In advance of Thursday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), Jen Daskal and I have expanded upon our exchanges with Bobby, Jack, Matt, and Ben in a new (draft) working … Read more »
This Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing which will cover, among other things, the question whether to alter the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force. This is a question that we, Ben, and Jack addressed … Read more »
Big news out of the House Armed Services Committee: Representative Mac Thornberry (a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, I proudly note) is going to introduce a bill enhancing oversight of kill/capture operations that may be conducted … Read more »
As Andrew Rosenthal noted in yesterday’s New York Times, things seem to be heating up in Congress with respect to whether–and to what extent–the September 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) needs to be updated, repealed, and/or … Read more »
Earlier today, former State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh gave a talk at the Oxford Union, entitled “How to End the Forever War?” His remarks begin as follows:
Thank you, Mr. President and Members of the Union, for inviting me
This morning, a gentleman named Sina Kashefipour, who tweets on national security-related matters under the improbable moniker @rejectionking, came by my office to interview me for a podcast he runs on national security called the Loopcast. He just … Read more »
I have already written my thoughts on the Oxford Union drone debate from last week, but here is video of the guest speeches of that event. Unfortunately the video appears not to include the student floor speeches, several of which … Read more »
While we are on the subject of Mark Mazzetti’s The Way of the Knife, and for that matter while we are speaking of Mali, check out this Washington Post report on U.S. boots being on the ground in … Read more »
Going to a university campus to defend the use of armed drones is a little like ascending the pulpit in a Southern Baptist church on a Sunday morning to speak on behalf of the Devil. So it was with no … Read more »
Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation, which is the leading compiler of information about US drone strikes, made this interesting comment in his testimony yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee:
The drone program has increasingly evolved into a counterinsurgency
As Greg McNeal noted, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights is holding a hearing this afternoon on the targeted killing program entitled “Drone Wars: The Constitutional and Counterterrorism Implications of Targeted Killing.”… Read more »
Can the targeted killing program be reformed? That will be the topic of discussion today at 4pm EST, as the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights holds a hearing entitled “Drone Wars: The … Read more »
Ben and Steve are speaking on a panel at the CATO Institute entitled “Drones and the New Way of War” along with Rosa Brooks of Georgetown Law and Benjamin Friedman of CATO. The event will be moderated by … Read more »
Mary M. Laurie, a third-year law student at Penn State Law, has rewritten the DOJ White Paper on targeted killing from the perspective the Chinese government. She explains:
China considered using a drone strike against Naw Kham, the Burmese
It has been widely reported that the two prime suspects in the Boston marathon bombings—one who was killed in a shootout early this morning—are ethnic Chechens. The brothers allegedly lived in Kyrgyzstan with their family before moving to the United … Read more »
Last week a group of major human rights NGOs sent this letter to the President on U.S. targeted killing practices. It calls on the Obama administration to “publicly disclose key targeted killing standards and criteria; ensure that U.S. lethal force … Read more »
While ex-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was busy admitting on CNN that he approved at least some U.S. drone strikes on Pakistani territory during his time in office, the chief judge of Peshawar’s High Court was busy stating that drone strikes … Read more »
I wonder what Ben Emmerson was thinking when he watched CNN this evening. Emmerson, the UN Special Rapporteur on Counterterrorism and Human Rights who is conducting an investigation into the legality of the U.S. targeted killing program, concluded after a … Read more »
A while back, Jack asked a student named Samantha Goldstein to help him assemble some resources on targeted killing. The resulting bibliography has expanded over time, and we have decided to post it as a resource for people interested in … Read more »
Ken Anderson and I have just published a new policy paper through the Hoover Institution: Law and Ethics for Autonomous Weapon Systems: Why a Ban Won’t Work and How the Laws of War Can.
Our paper begins:
Public debate
The New York Times has posted a lengthy and very interesting article by reporter Mark Mazzetti entitled “Rise of the Predators: A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood,” which will appear on tomorrow’s front page. The piece is an … Read more »
Jens David Ohlin (Cornell) has an interesting post up at LieberCode in which he discusses a range of LOAC issues raised by CIA involvement in drone strikes. Jens raises the question whether CIA personnel involved in drone strikes can qualify … Read more »
From Weekend Edition, a very thoughtful and useful discussion with Greg McNeal on some of themes of his recent guest blogging on Lawfare:
Over at the Hoover Institution’s Defining Ideas site, Victor Davis Hanson has this useful essay on the politics of drones. Hanson is a classicist, so it is fitting that he opens his discussion as follows:
The biographer Plutarch tells
We are excited to announce the launch of a project at which we have been hard at work for some time. It’s a book—being published chapter by chapter—by the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law, explicating and … Read more »
The British Royal United Services Institute has issued a report entitled “Hitting the Target? How New Capabilities are Shaping International Intervention.” Here’s how the organization describes the project, along with its table of contents:
While the US drone-strikes
This is sure to satisfy your targeted-killing jonesing for the week: Out of Sight, Out of Mind, a website launched by a company called Pitch Interactive, documents—quite stunningly in visual terms, if not altogether fairly—the scope and scale … Read more »
Ritika linked yesterday to a new Gallup poll on public attitudes towards drone strikes. The results are not surprising, but they are interesting. Americans largely support drone strike against foreign terrorist suspects abroad (65 percent support) but are less supportive … Read more »
Philip Carter and Deborah Pearlstein have posted a thoughtful essay at Foreign Policy that emphasizes the utility of civilian criminal prosecution as a counterterrorism option. I very much agree with their positive take on DOJ’s track record, and I agree … Read more »
Over at the graphical Drawnward blog, Caitlin Fitz Gerald has figured out an interesting way of illustrating our increasingly polarized attitudes over drones. She typed “drones are” into Google and grabbed a screen shot of the suggested searches Google … Read more »
As Ben and Gregory McNeal posted earlier, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counterterrorism and Human Rights, Ben Emmerson, issued this statement on March 14 after a three-day visit to Pakistan, in which he concluded that U.S. drone strikes are, … Read more »
Mary Dudziak has a truly bizarre oped in the New York Times today taking on the Obama administration’s drone wars on, let’s just say, a new basis: that President Nixon once secretly bombed Cambodia.
I’m not exaggerating. Here’s how it … Read more »
In my prior posts I discussed the process of targeted killing, and some of the accountability mechanisms embedded in the process. This post, and my next and final post will address reform recommendations that may help make the targeted killing … Read more »
Keith Gerver writes in with the following account of yesterday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, which seems to have tracked closely some recent arguments on Lawfare:
The recent debate between Bobby, Jack, Ben, and Matt, on the one hand,
Following up on Wells’ post, I increasingly think that the shift in drone authorities from CIA to DOD first reported by Dan Klaidman might not amount to much in substance, and that any proposed changes face many hurdles in … Read more »
Lawfarers are by now steeped in this news: the White House apparently intends to diminish the CIA’s responsibility for drone strikes, and to transfer that responsibility, over time, to the Department of Defense. That’s gist of Dan Klaidman’s recent reporting… Read more »
As Jack mentioned, Dan Klaidman of the Daily Beast reported today that “the White House is poised to sign off on a plan to shift the CIA’s lethal targeting program to the Defense Department.”
Over at ForeignPolicy.com, I just … Read more »
While we appreciate Ben’s answer to our question (and share his view that we’re reaching the point of the conversation where everything has been said and everyone has said it), we still fail to understand how the Libya example illuminates … Read more »
The following guest post is the latest in a series comprising a debate as to whether LOAC requires an attempt to capture rather than a first-resort to lethal force in some circumstances. The debate involves Professor Ryan Goodman, on one … Read more »
Ben writes that it is the “political reality” that “any president is going to feel obliged to maintain counterterrorism on offense,” i.e., counterterrorism through military means, “and Congress—whining, carping, complaining all the way both that the president is being … Read more »
That is the title of Dan Klaidman’s important story:
Three senior U.S. officials tell The Daily Beast that the White House is poised to sign off on a plan to shift the CIA’s lethal targeting program to the Defense
It’s quickly becoming apparent that we and Jack appear to be talking past each other on the merits of the Chesney/Goldsmith/Waxman/Wittes (CGWW) proposal for a new framework statute for “extra-AUMF threats.” In Jack’s final response, for example, he frames … Read more »
We appreciate Jack’s quick and comprehensive clarification of his views—and of what the CGWW proposal we critiqued last night seeks to achieve. Like Jack, we want to start by emphasizing the many areas of agreement between us and CGWW … Read more »
Over at the D.C. Exile blog, Ben Farley has this thoughtful post on U.N. Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson’s recent statement on drone strikes in Pakistan. It concludes:
Pakistan’s behavior in general has been at best ambiguous. Despite having the capacity
Former Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson is, at this hour, giving this speech at Fordham Law School in New York:
Keynote address at the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School:
A “Drone Court”: Some Pros and Cons
by
In the very first days after the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration asked Congress for broad statutory authorization to use military force to “deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United … Read more »
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
William P. Barr (former Attorney General), Jamie S. Gorelick (former Deputy AG), and Kenneth L. Wainstein (former Assistant AG for National Security) have this Times op-ed on the AP subpoena controversy. They write:
While neither we nor the critics know the circumstances behind the prosecutors’ decision to issue this subpoena, we do know from the government’s public disclosures that the prosecutors were right to investigate this leak
