Obama is now engaged in two illegal wars -- in Libya and in Yemen. There was no Congressional debate or vote on these wars -- and one is being waged by the CIA with unmanned drones. I think we have learned a little about what happens when you give the CIA carte blanche to run a war with no accountability except to a president who has a vested interest in covering up errors.



So to sum up, Obama has implemented a global killing program with zero checks and balances; he's operated it out of the CIA rather than the Department of Defense; he invokes the state-secrets privilege to avoid defending it in court, even as he brags about its efficacy; it includes killing people whose identities we don't even know; all military-aged males we kill are presumed to be "militants"; the Pakistani government reportedly gets to pick some of the targets; at minimum, hundreds of innocents have been killed, including rescuers and funeral-goers;was among those killed; and Sullivan, having been exposed many times to all the information I've just included, thinks its accurate to call Obama's drone program "scrupulous," thoughWhat really gets me is that, in addition to arguing that Obama has run this program scrupulously (something implied in Sullivan's question, and explicitly argued in threads like this one ), Sullivan has also himself articulated almost all of the reasons why the program has been unscrupulous -- that is to say, why Obama's drone policy "disregards, or has contempt for, laws of right or justice with which he is perfectly well acquainted, and which should restrain his actions.""One thing I've learned this past decade is that the CIA is pretty much its own judge, jury and executioner," Sullivan wrote. "It is much less accountable to the public, more likely to break the laws of war and destroy the evidence, more likely to do things that could escalate rather than ameliorate a conflict." Is it scrupulous to pick an organization like that to run your drone program?Says Sullivan's post from June of 2011 (emphasis added):Said Sullivan on another occasion , "Put drones in the hands of an executive who is empowered to do anything without any input from the other branches of government ... and we have a problem indeed." He is also on record stating that "counting every military-age man in the vicinity of a Jihadist as a terrorist is a total cop-out," and he even wrote that "if the CIA, based on its own intelligence, can launch a war or wars with weapons that can incur no US fatalities, the propensity to be permanently at war, permanently making America enemies, permanently requiring more wars to put out the flames previous wars started, then. I think it's a duty to make sure their vision survives this twenty-first century test."So let's get back to Sullivan's debate night question. "You think Romney would be as scrupulous in drone warfare as Obama?" My best guess is that, on drone warfare, their policies would be about the same -- that is to say, alarmingly unscrupulous, with unpredictable consequences. That's what happens when you give someone the power to kill without checks in secret.I have no reason to think one or the other would predictably kill more innocent people with drones. Does Sullivan? If Romney wins, what odds would Sullivan give on the proposition that Romney ultimately kills more civilians with drones than Obama has? Based on what evidence? Obama has already killed an American citizen without trial and conducted drone strikes in a country where no war has been declared, so I don't see how Romney would set any precedents that are. (What precedent would that be?) Overall, I have no idea whose drone war would be more damaging. Having watched Sullivan strongly denounce and other times defend Obama's drone war in posts that cannot be reconciled with one another, I don't think he knows either.So what if Romney is elected and turns out to be much worse on drones? It could totally happen. I wouldn't be surprised. I'll be opposing his unaccountable killing policy from day one regardless, just as I've opposed Obama's policy due to its manifold flaws. And if Romney's drone policy turns out to have all sorts of catastrophic consequences? I hope Sullivan remembers that Obama established the bipartisan consensus behind a worldwide drone-strike strategy and set all the necessary precedents without losing the support of backers like Sullivan. (He didn't even lose support for continuing his current drone policy itself.) A Romney drone fleet, operating in numerous countries with zero oversight from the judiciary or Congress, with American citizens in the crosshairs? Obama and his supporters built that. It would be ready for President Romney on day one.