DOJ Not Bringing Civil Rights Charges in Michael Brown Case

Attorney General Eric Holder (Huffington Post)

After no indictment was handed down in Missouri in the case of Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown, many people turned to Washington. A hope existed that Attorney General Eric Holder's comments about his own experience with America's police would help guide the Department of Justice toward bringing civil rights charges against Wilson. This was misguided for many reasons.

Obama Doesn't Want You Breaking the Law, But Won't Tell You What It Is

Don't break the laws that I just made up and won't tell you about. (NYTimes)

While I was swiping through the New York Times on a recent train trip I clicked on an article about the feds looking into who leaked the details of a recently uncovered Al Qaeda plot to blow up a plane via their underwear. Titled "F.B.I. Chief Says Leak on Qaeda Plot is Being Investigated," the article went over the details and mentioned the Obama administration's willingness to go after those who leak classified information to the press. But the last three paragraphs, which seemingly had nothing to do with the article, were the most interesting. Given their stand-alone nature, I reproduce them below:

In another sign of the Obama administration’s increasing focus on Yemen, President Obama issued an executive order on Wednesday giving the Treasury Department authority to freeze the United States-based assets of anyone who seeks to “undermine” the American-backed political transition in Yemen. 

The order is unusual because unlike similar measures authorizing terrorist designations and sanctions, it does not include a list of names or organizations already determined to be in violation. Instead, administration officials said, it is designed to deter individuals who could threaten Yemen’s fragile security and political stability by undermining the transition agreement reached last November that paved the way for the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the election in February of a new president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. 

“It is definitely meant today as a message to those who are trying to block a transition that we have this tool to use against them and that they should think again about the policies that they are pursuing,” the State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said.

For all of Obama's talk of transparency, there seems to be little of it here. I'm sure there is a list of organizations or individuals with whom it would be illegal to conduct business with, but for whatever reason, Treasury and the executive branch do not want to release it. This is not that surprising, coming from an administration whose Attorney General does not believe that "due process" means "judicial process."

Why these details were deposited into the back of a New York Times article, instead of in an op-ed or in a wider expose of a baffling executive order escapes me. How can someone break the law if the authorities refuse to tell people what it is? Maybe we will just have to wait for someone to leak the details of blacklisted Yemeni names to find out who to avoid to stay within the letter of the law.

Obama Administration Repeating Mistakes of 1980s Afghanistan Conflict

Yesterday's New York Times had an article entitled alluding to a "shadow war" being fought by the U.S. in Yemen and northern Africa. As I read the article my mind was having flashbacks to literature about the Soviet-Afghan War and our involvement in that conflict. In the 1980s we wanted to fight the Soviets without actually fighting them: we paid others (mujahedeen) to do the work and ran covert operations through the CIA to accomplish our goal of bringing down the Soviets. It worked, but the resulting consequences 20 years later were devastating.

The details of what the American government is doing in places like Yemen are disappointing to anyone hoping that this country would avoid, at nearly all costs, another Soviet-Afghan War situation. To begin with, the CIA is becoming more militant and the Pentagon is focusing more on covert operations dictated by secret Executive Orders. Combine this with that fact that the government is using military contractors in "territory hostile to the military" (which, I have to imagine, is pretty substantive in the Middle East) and the utter erosion of oversight is disturbing. Look at the death of Marib Province's deputy governor in an American strike intended for Al Qaeda: Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh took the blame. There is simply little to no accountability for these "covert ops."

Anwar Al-Awlaki Assassination Would Be Erosion of Constitutional Rights

Anwar al-Awlaki (Wikipedia)

Today the New York Times has a story about pending litigation involving the targeted killing of an American citizen overseas in Yemen for ties to Al Qaeda. The Obama Administration wants to assassinate Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric born in New Mexico in 1971 who became a radical when he moved to Yemen in 2004. His name entered the government's consciousness following the Fort Hood massacre after Al-Awlaki praised the shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, and was brought up again during interrogations of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the now testicle-less Christmas Day bomber of 2009, and Times Square bomber Faisel Shahzad. Adbulmutallab allegedly received training in Yemen from Al-Awlaki and Shahzad had allegedly been in contact with Al-Awlaki prior to his failed bombing attempt.