{"id":35037,"date":"2012-12-01T12:59:16","date_gmt":"2012-12-01T18:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?p=35037"},"modified":"2012-12-01T12:36:43","modified_gmt":"2012-12-01T18:36:43","slug":"rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/12\/01\/rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

From David Cole<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

What would President Romney do with a drone?\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0Sunday that this question apparently haunted the White House so much that in the weeks before the election it raced to establish \u201cexplicit rules\u201d and \u201cclear standards and procedures\u201d for the use of unmanned drones for targeted killings. It should not be surprising, I suppose, that the administration was less comfortable with someone else pushing buttons to kill people than with its own exercise of that authority. As one candid, though anonymous, official stated, \u201cThere was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

The content of the rules remains a tightly-held mystery. Apparently they are so secret that they are toted around from office to office in a single \u201cplaybook,\u201d and not even shared on the government\u2019s secure email reserved for classified material.<\/p>\n

But what is most disturbing is the news that it took a possible transfer of power to push the White House to establish such rules. We\u2019ve been assured by multiple Obama administration spokespersons over the years that its targeted killing program is fully lawful, and subject to \u201crigorous standards and process of review,\u201d as Obama\u2019s chief counterterrorism adviser John Brennan put it in a\u00a0speech<\/a>\u00a0at the Woodrow Wilson Center in April. Yet only on the eve of a potential transition did the administration think to reduce these rigorous standards and procedures to writing?\u2026<\/p>\n

But a possible transition from Obama to Romney was not the only, or even the most important, deadline in play. What about each and every decision over the past four years to authorize a remote-control execution, without trial, without charges, without a defense? Surely each of those actions presented the decision makers with an even more urgent deadline: one would think that before giving the green light to such a momentous act, you would want the \u201cclear rules and procedures\u201d to be in place. Yet the Obama administration has evidently seen fit to make hundreds of such life-or-death decisions, and to authorize more than three hundred strikes,\u00a0without<\/em>\u00a0first developing \u201cexplicit rules\u201d or \u201cclear standards and procedures.\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

The real problem is not that there are no guidelines written down\u2014though the administration itself seems now to acknowledge that what it has is insufficient\u2014but that\u00a0we the people don\u2019t know what they are<\/em>. The idea that the president can authorize the killing of a human being far from any traditional battlefield without any publically accessible set of constraints, conditions, or requirements is unacceptable in a country committed to the rule of law.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From David Cole: What would President Romney do with a drone?\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0reported\u00a0Sunday that this question apparently haunted the White House so much that in the weeks before the election it raced to establish \u201cexplicit rules\u201d and \u201cclear standards and procedures\u201d for the use of unmanned drones for targeted killings. It should not be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nRules<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From David Cole: What would President Romney do with a drone?\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0reported\u00a0Sunday that this question apparently haunted the White House so\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/12\/01\/rules\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rules\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From David Cole: What would President Romney do with a drone?\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0reported\u00a0Sunday that this question apparently haunted the White House so\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/12\/01\/rules\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-12-01T18:59:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-12-01T18:36:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/12\/01\/rules\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/12\/01\/rules\/\",\"name\":\"Rules\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-12-01T18:59:16+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-12-01T18:36:43+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\"},\"description\":\"From David Cole: What would President Romney do with a drone?\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0reported\u00a0Sunday that this question apparently haunted the White House so\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/12\/01\/rules\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/12\/01\/rules\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/12\/01\/rules\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Rules\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\",\"name\":\"Jesus Creed\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith in the 21st century\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\",\"name\":\"Scot McKnight\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. 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