In the August issue, Tom Junod examines an entirely new application of power on the part of the president — the targeted killing of individuals deemed to be threats to the country. So far, thousands have been killed, most prominent among them Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki. The decisions to target are made and the lethal missions are carried out without any public accountability, even when those targeted are Americans and even when, on one occasion, one of those Americans was a teenager. Over the course of this week, Junod considers five of the larger implications of his story on The Politics Blog. —Eds.

By almost any objective measure, it is not as bad as war.

It is not as indiscriminate, not as likely to cause unintended consequences, not as blindly brutal, not as dumb. It does not involve whole populations. It does not require occupation, or even boots on the ground. Compared to the kind of war that involves the mobilization of armies, it is almost merciful.

And so, the person on the phone wanted to know, why are people uncomfortable with targeted killing?

He was a source with intimate knowledge of the executive counter-terror policies of the Obama administration, and he'd called to talk about my story about "The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama." He'd specifically called to explain the forces keeping the Obama Administration from attaining its goals of transparency regarding its targeted killing programs. But he kept going back to what he called "the big question" that my story raised:

Why are people more troubled by the killing of individuals than they are by the killing of armies?

In early 2001 and 2002, when the Army was in Tora Bora shooting missiles at caves, no one was screaming about it, he said. Now they raise the issue of signature strikes — the strikes that are directed at nameless men who fit a profile rather than at someone specifically identified by intelligence. Well, how is a signature strike different from shooting missiles at Tora Bora? How is it different from the way war has always been fought?

Even in the matter of secrecy, lethal operations tend to be more open than traditional warfare, not less, he said. The DOD and every armed force in the world has elaborate rules of engagement which are hardly ever revealed. The only time they are revealed is when something happens and there is an adjudication. The only time they are revealed is when there is My Lai — when there is a war crime.

So why do we look past what happens every day in armed conflicts all around the world but not this? Why is this more disturbing and not less?

As it happens, the source was not so unusual in this regard. Sure, he was unusual in his expertise and his exposure. But he wanted to talk about what everybody wanted to talk about, and to ask the questions everybody wanted to ask. I talked about my story on four TV spots this past week, and the question that I kept hearing was some version of the question of whether the difference between targeting armies and killing individuals was also the difference between war and murder. Indeed, when I talked to CNN's Brooke Baldwin, she ended the interview with this telegenic bombshell:

"Do you, Tom, believe that the President Obama, through his control of the drone program, murdered [Abdulrahman al-Awlaki]?"

I did not provide a yes or no answer to her question. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was, of course, the 16-year-old boy — the American citizen and son of Anwar al-Awlaki — killed last October in an American drone strike. The Obama administration has never said a word about the circumstances of his killing, but from the point of view it has propounded to defend targeted killing he wasn't the victim of murder but rather a casualty of war: a new kind of war, to be sure, one that Andrew Sullivan believes is "more moral, more lethal, less casualty-ridden," but war nevertheless, with all its dire and unintended consequence. So I answered that the president killled Abdulrahman al-Awlaki "in a program that has expanded the use of killing in a reckless manner."

I wish I hadn't used the word "reckless," because President Obama's expansion of his new kind of war — his war that is better than war — has been anything but. It has been determined, purposeful, resolute, relentless, and, alas, inexorable. And it's the last part that has always concerned me. The chief executive of the United States has committed himself to making himself the ultimate arbiter for the use of the ultimate power, and to substitute his own deliberations — and the deliberations that go on within the executive branch — for due process. It may be argued that most of the people it kills are not owed due process; they are foreign citizens who are killed for fighting against the United States. But the president has authorized the killing — and claimed the power to kill — American citizens under the same kind of secret authority, and it's the spectacle of secret authority that has inspired such concern. It's not just that secret authority, once invoked, seems likely to expand its dominion; it's that, in the case of the Lethal Presidency, it already has.

The source wondered about this, when I talked to him on the phone. He wondered if people are uncomfortable with targeted killing because it's invisible to them — because they think that they can see war, with the naked eye, and they can't see the war of individualized enemies and targeted killing. They can't really see war, he said, but they can see at least some of it, through the eyes of a reporter or a TV camera, and so they think they can. They know that they can never see the new kind of war, by definition, and so it makes them suspicious.

But people aren't suspicious of targeted killing because they don't know anything about it, I said; they're suspicious of it because they know themselves. They have no idea what it would be like to send an army to war; but they do know what it's like to want someone dead. They know that in the privacy of their own hearts, and minds, and souls they indulge in something like targeted killing on a regular basis, and they know that to elevate their basic human urges into a power would be a dangerous thing indeed.

Of course, the Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama is better than that, and tells us so. It's not indulging in idle daydreams about getting rid of meddling co-workers, nor is it plotting to remove its political rivals. It's protecting the country from its enemies. It's engaging in a necessity, and it is both asking for our trust and offering us moral assurances. But President Obama is not the first leader to make either such an argument or such a plea, and we are not the first country to hear it. What makes this different is that we live in a country with a Constitution expressly designed to resist the siren call of moral men, to prevent them from turning into murderous ones.

MORE ON THE LETHAL PRESIDENCY OF BARACK OBAMA:

• PART 1: The Administration Killed a 16-Year-Old and Didn't Say Anything About It

• PART 2: America Targets People to Kill. Why Is Congress AWOL?

• PART 3: Secrets and World Ties: Obama's Killer Contradiction

• PART 4: What Happens When Assassination Replaces Torture?

• FROM THE MAGAZINE: The Full Story

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