Enemies of the state: Questions about the drone policy

The just-leaked "drone white paper" conclusively proves that the Obama administration has claimed the power to secretly declare a US citizen to be an imminent terrorist threat and to have that citizen killed if it is too inconvenient to apprehend him, all without review by any other branch of government. It is not necessary to seek an indictment in criminal court, to lay out the evidence against such a person in front of a judge, to warn the citizen beforehand or give him an opportunity to surrender, or to justify such an action to the public even after having the citizen killed.

On the face of it, this is an extraordinary assertion: it gives the executive the power of life and death over its citizens simply by declaring them enemies of the state. It is the kind of policy that, if enacted under the Bush administration, would almost certainly have caused universal condemnation among those identifying as Democrats and liberals. Now, however, the reaction among us is mixed-- many people are horrified, but many seem to accept it and defend it. To those who support the administration's position, I ask the following questions:

1. One argument I frequently hear is that by joining Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group, a citizen has become an enemy combatant and has no more rights than, say, a German soldier in World War II. This argument frustrates me to no end, because it completely sidesteps the main issue: How do we know that somebody on the kill list is actually a terrorist? The whole point of disagreement is that in a free and democratic society, nobody can be declared guilty simply by executive assertion.

2. A citizen arrested at home is entitled to know the charges against him, to see the evidence and cross-examine the witnesses, and to have jury of his peers decide his fate. The Obama administration asserts now that none of this is necessary-- not only does the citizen not have any of the rights of the accused, he doesn't even have to be formally accused or indicted. A citizen may never know he is considered a terrorist before he is killed by his own government. Why has the entire process of judicial review been removed? There are provisions for secret trials and secret evidence in our legal system. Why can't even a minimal amount of outside review be put into the process.

3. The drone white paper describes targeting those citizens posing "an imminent threat" against the United States. It then goes on to say that "the condition that an operational leader present an 'imminent' threat of violent attack does not require clear evidence that a specific attack will take place in the immediate future." (slightly edited to shorten the text without changing the meaning; see full text here). Isn't it flatly contradictory to say that an "imminent" threat does not have to be in the "immediate future"? If a threat is indeed not in the immediate future, isn't there time to invoke due process?

4. The administration does not put any geographic limitations on its power to kill its own citizens, other than to say that it will do so only when capture is not feasible, though it then very much weakens the conditions for infeasibility. Nor, as far as I can tell, does it put any time limitation on its claimed powers. Is there any limit in time and space to the executive's power of extrajudicial killing? Are you comfortable with giving the executive branch this power indefinitely?

5. Would you be comfortable with future presidents, including Republicans, having this power? Would you trust foreign leaders to implement similar policies and to carry out extrajudicial killings of their citizens in the United States?

Finally, something that bothers me a great deal:

When George W. Bush was president, he argued that as a wartime president, he had the right to have American citizens held indefinitely without charge. He legitimized the waterboarding of detainees and refusal to follow the Geneva Conventions with regard to people he considered enemy combatants. While all this was happening, Republicans supported Bush's policies while Democrats criticized them. Now that similar policies are being carried out by the Obama administration, Republicans are still supporting them and many Democrats are supporting them as well. What does it say when it is the Republicans who are consistent (though in my opinion, wrong) in their principles and we change them depending on who the president is?