Abu Anas al-Libi and Obama's Law of War

Dear Mr. President,

Today’s NYT (“U.S. Said to Hold Qaeda Suspect on Navy Ship” p.A1) reports that Abu Anas al-Liby wast taken to the U.S.S. San Antonio in the Mediterranean where he will be questioned “without a lawyer present [which] follows a pattern used successfully by the Obama administration with other terrorist suspects.” The article goes on to recount the case of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame who was held on a U.S. Navy ship in the Gulf of Aden for two months after his capture in 2011 “without being advised of his rights or provided a lawyer… ‘Warsame is the model for this guy’ one American security official said.” A Defense Department statement said Abu Anas was “lawfully detained under the law of war” while the Guardian reports that Kerry said al-Liby was a “legal and appropriate target… I hope the perception is in the world that… [the U.S.] is going to do anything in its power that is legal and appropriate… to enforce the law and to protect our security.” [italics mine] (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/07/obama-al-liby-capture-legal-system) To claim that a raid by U.S. commandos on a country we are not at war with is legal is astounding, Mr. President. Incursions like this have been decried by the U.S. for decades when others do it to our allies. Furthermore, kidnapping a citizen of a foreign country off a street in that country—indicted by a U.S. court or not—rendering him to a U.S. Navy ship and questioning him indefinitely without legal counsel or informing him of his rights, ignores international and domestic law. The law of war? Is this a new law you just made up? The Obama Law of War? To go along with the Obama Doctrine on Foreign Policy? Secret findings, secret courts, secret laws, a secret security state. You have merged Orwell and Kafka to create a New World Order that is nothing like the America I grew up in. When we elected you in 2008, no one expected utopia but no one expected this, either. I now fear my own government far more than Al Qaeda or Al-Shabab. I fear my Congress for the damage they do here at home by funding your wars and defunding our own citizens. I fear the NSA which, by stealth and secrecy, are dismantling, one by one, our privacy protections. I fear our militarized police who kill unarmed mothers driving the streets and are called heroes. And I fear you, Mr. President, far more than Abu Anas al-Liby or Ayman al-Zawahiri, for you are more of a threat to democracy and justice, to peace and freedom than they are.