Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster didn’t impress me much. He was protesting the Obama Justice Department’s recently-leaked legal opinion stating that drone strikes can be used to kill American citizens living abroad, if the President believes they may be supporters of Al-Qaeda or its various spin-offs. On Wednesday, Paul took this legal opinion for a ride down the slippery slope, as many civil libertarians of various sorts have lately.
If the President can use drone strikes to kill American citizens abroad, the Senator wondered, can he also use them to kill American citizens at home? As in, on American soil? On mere suspicion of being affiliated with a terrorist? The Attorney General, in a hilariously patronizing letter, responded with one word: “no.”
While I, like most people, have obvious concerns about the Obama drone policy, I think it’s important to acknowledge the truth about the ideological hang-ups that motivate its most obsessive critics. Though some liberals have expressed delight that the right is “finally” starting to care about wartime civil liberties, I think most Republican indignance on this issue flows from a different headspace entirely: the tired Obama-as-dictator trope.
As David Weigel writes in Slate:
[Paul] invoked the shootings at Kent State in 1970, and asked whether the government could have used drones to kill Jane Fonda. A conservative who slapped a “Not Fonda’ Kerry” sticker on his Dodge Ram nine years ago didn’t hear a defense of anti-Vietnam War activists. He heard Paul, and thought about the government maybe targeting right-thinking Americans who rallied at Tea Parties.
This is a real forrest-for-the-trees type issue. Populist critics like the result of the drone policy (government killing Americans) because it’s a powerful rhetorical trope that can be used to fan paranoia and conspiracy theories. And as Weigel notes, many-a long and prosperous political career has been built on the back of peddling paranoia and conspiracy. What populist critics don’t like, however, is questioning the context in which the drone policy actually arose.
To refresh: the government’s purpose in launching drone strikes against American citizens is not to kill for the sake of killing. Nor is it to satiate some bloodthirsty Obama desire to establish a totalitarian precedent that the American government can kill its critics without trial. No, the drone policy exists because the United States was attacked by Al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001 and the United States Congress demanded the President “use all necessary and appropriate force” to fight terrorists making war on the United States.
In the years since, Al-Qaeda has proven to be a tricky foe. Their soldiers do not wear uniforms, they operate out of remote locations scattered around the world, they seem to be plotting attacks constantly, and their motive is a fanatical ideology that has proven capable of winning followers of all races and regions — even citizens of the industrialized west. In order to effectively fight these guys, successive presidential administrations have had to resort to ever-more complicated and convoluted tactics, including some that require undermining the constitutional rights of non-terrorist Americans.
If this is all too much, then oppose the war. Demand a unilateral cessation of hostilities with Al-Queda. Seek an immediate repeal of any and all legislation giving the Pentagon or White House the authority to continue fighting them. That’s the root cause of everything, after all.
I don’t support that position, and neither does Rand Paul, who has distinguished himself from his isolationist father, in part, by voicing broad support for the War on Terror in general — if not every little tactic along the way. The same is true of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and all the other mainstream conservative voices suddenly spouting libertarian fears about overreach by the trigger-happy Commander-in-Chief.
It’s much easier to distract and dodge and rally against some convenient straw man of Presidential tyranny than embrace the discomfort — and suffer the political price — of condemning a still-popular war against a still-unpopular enemy.