Boston Lawyer Stephen H. Oleskey Says President Obama Willing to Go Public with Targeted Assassinations of Extremists

I came across an interesting editorial in the Bangor Daily News, in which Boston lawyer Stephen H. Oleskey says President Barack Obama has gone public with his desire to see targeted assassinations of Islamic radicals via drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. He says this new mindset is a far cry from President John F. Kennedy's secret order authorizing covert efforts to kill Cuba's Fidel Castro. Er, I think it's safe to say that no-one will argue that these extremists need to be taken out before they inflict more harm on the U.S.A. Here's an excerpt from the editorial:

A Boston lawyer told an audience of Maine law students and judges in Portland last week that President Barack Obama seems to have changed the rules and gone public with state assassination attempts through the use of drones not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and Yemen, “where we are not at war, at least not in any accepted sense.”

The speaker was Stephen H. Oleskey, a Boston lawyer best known as co-leader of a successful pro bono habeas corpus challenge on behalf of six Bosnian detainees held indefinitely and tortured, they say, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He delivered the annual Frank M. Coffin lecture named for the late longtime member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Mr. Oleskey said there was a “major and disturbing difference between past assassinations of public officials and what is happening today.”

He went on: “Today, President Obama appears willing to have it publicly known that he (a former professor of constitutional law at one of this country’s legal law schools) has personally and directly authorized such extreme actions.”

Mr. Oleskey focused on the targeted radical American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, accused of inciting Maj. Nidal Hassan’s killing of 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, a year ago and Nigerian Umar Abdulmuttala’s failed Christmas Day 2009 plane bombing en route to Detroit.

Assuming that Mr. Awlaki did incite those terrible actions, Mr. Oleskey concluded that he might well be convicted in a criminal trial of being an accessory and possibly an accomplice to multiple counts of murder and attempted murder. “His assassination would undoubtedly be the only quick and expedient way to subject him to the most extreme penalty our federal law allows for acts of terrorism: the death penalty. But that ultimate penalty under our laws can otherwise only be authorized by statute and imposed after public trial before a federal judge and civilian jury, with a public sentencing, together with all the attendant due process protections that our system provides.” Source: Bangor Daily News

Sorry, but there won't be anyone in the U.S. holding the mindset that we must tiptoe gingerly around these extremists. Take them out with the drones if you have to. Who cares? Isn't our security important?