The President Can Use Lethal Force On American Citizens On American Soil

consortiumnews |  “the final element of the plan concerns insurgency leadership” before going on to criticize Trump’s unwillingness to accept his own defeat.

It’s that last — unspoken — part of Grenier’s plan that I believe is so dangerous and un-American.  What he means when he warns that we may be headed into a period of political violence “not seen since Reconstruction” is that the government needs to start cracking heads. 

In a subsequent interview with NPR, Grenier opened by saying that he’s not predicting that the U.S. is going to go the way of Iraq or Afghanistan.  But that’s exactly what he’s implying.  And it’s what he implied in his Times op-ed.

After all, what does a CIA-style counterinsurgency campaign look like?  Just use Iraq and Afghanistan as a model.  What it looks like is teams of military or paramilitary forces going around, blowing the doors off of houses, and killing everybody inside — killing them before they can commit a crime against the United States.

It also means a robust drone program.  Remember Anwar al-Awlaki?  The Obama administration accused him of being a major recruiter for al-Qaeda in Yemen.  They executed him by drone, and then a week later they executed his 16-year-old son and 16-year-old nephew.  The problem, though, is that the Awlakis were all American citizens.  They had Constitutional rights, including the right to face their accusers in a court of law and a right to a trial by jury.  The Awlakis had never been charged with a crime.  The government just decided to murder them without due process.

Recall also former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder who, in response to a question from Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) in 2013, said that the president had a constitutional right to use lethal force against American citizens on American soil, even if those Americans had never been convicted of a crime.

That is what Grenier is recommending.  He’s supposed to be one of the “moderates,” one of those Americans who is so concerned about America’s future and wants to offer a solution to ensure it.  His recommendation is that we should be prepared to kill Americans whose politics we disagree with.  All we need to do is declare that they’re “extremists” or “insurgents.”