Squealing Versus Killing

by
Andrew P. Napolitano

Recently
by Andrew P. Napolitano: Where
Is the Outrage?

If you are
still listening to those in the political class who are falling
over each other to condemn leaks from the government to the media,
you’d think the leaks had revealed private information in which
the public has no legitimate interest, or perhaps a planned secret
government mission to rescue innocents. Neither is the case.

Republicans
and Democrats in Congress, most of them from the House and Senate
intelligence committees, have blasted the White House for leaking
to The New York Times and others the existence of President
Obama’s secret kill list and his cyber-warfare against Iran. According
to those doing the blasting, the leaks were made in order to bolster
the president’s war-on-terror credentials with voters in anticipation
of an onslaught against those credentials by Gov. Mitt Romney in
the coming fall presidential campaign.

So, who has
violated the Constitution and federal law, who has caused more harm
and who has performed more of a disservice to the nation: those
who leaked the truth to the media, or the president, who caused
death and destruction among those he hates and fears?

We already
know the basic facts, as the White House has denied none of this.
The president meets every Tuesday morning with a select group of
military, intelligence, national security and, occasionally, political
advisers and reviews the background and photos of persons in foreign
countries whom he hates or fears, some of whom are Americans. He
then personally decides whom among them to kill. Then he dispatches
civilian agents of the government, no doubt the CIA, to do the killing
using drones. He uses the CIA to do this because if he used the
military, federal law requires public reporting of that use and,
eventually, congressional approval. Some of the killings have taken
place in Yemen, a country that has welcomed them, and some in Pakistan,
a country that has condemned them. We are at war with neither.

We also know
that the president has directed the CIA to use technology to disrupt
the workings of computers in Iran on a grand scale. The government
of Iran consists of a gaggle of religious fanatics and crackpots
who have threatened the U.S. and Israel until they are blue in the
face, but these misguided authoritarians have not harmed the U.S.
or any of our allies. And of course, we are not at war with Iran.

Nevertheless,
the president, with the knowledge of certain members of Congress
but without the consent of the House and the Senate as the law requires,
destabilized and caused physical harm and financial loss to millions
of innocent people in Iran – physicians, hospital administrators,
businesspeople, academics, pro-Western students, shopkeepers – when
major computer servers there were immobilized. Just imagine the
chaos – and the political reaction – should Iranian agents cause
all that computer damage here.

The president
is evading federal law on the use of the military by having the
now-paramilitary CIA kill people in foreign countries with drones
and disrupt a foreign population with a cyber-war. And he is violating
the Constitution and federal law by starting wars on his own. But
the loudest and most sanctimonious of politicians are not demanding
that the president follow the Constitution and the laws he has sworn
to uphold. Rather, they are demanding to know who told the media
about the president’s war making.

Which is ultimately
more harmful to freedom: that the president on his own kills and
maims and destroys, or that some people in our own government who
have greater fidelity to the Constitution than loyalty to an out-of-control
presidency – and who are protected by law when they reveal government
crimes – tell us what the president is up to? What kind of politicians
complain about truthful revelations of unconstitutional behavior
by the government, but not about death and destruction, and, let’s
face it, criminal abuse of power by the president? Only cynical
power-hungry politicians who have disdain for the Constitution they
have sworn to uphold could do this with a straight face.

The president’s
use of drones and cyber-warfare to kill people and to destabilize
a foreign population, without a formal declaration of war, is the
moral equivalent of an illegal war. When President Nixon started
a war on his own in Cambodia, Congress enacted legislation over
his veto to prevent that from happening again. Yet, the members
of Congress who are demanding to know who told the truth to the
media about President Obama’s war making apparently agree with his
unlawful use of the war-making power he has stolen from them.

How base our
culture has become when the hunt for truth tellers is more compelling
than the cessation of unlawful government killing. If the president
can fight private wars and start public ones on his own, and the
public is induced to focus on those who have told us what he is
doing and not on his misdeeds themselves, and Congress remains a
potted plant or willing dupe, the president can get away with anything.

Reprinted
with the author’s permission.

June 14, 2012

Andrew P.
Napolitano [send
him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey,
is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano
has written six books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent
is It
Is Dangerous To Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case
for Personal Freedom. To find out more about Judge Napolitano
and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists,
visit creators.com.

Copyright
© 2012 Andrew P. Napolitano

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