Public acceptance of U.S. foreign excess — searching for monsters to destroy — leads to acceptance of war, and to acceptance of war by other means, writes Andrew P. Napolitano.
President George H.W. Bush displaying what he said was a bag of crack cocaine during a 1989 speech promoting his “war on drugs.” (C-span still)
“America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy …
She might become the dictatress of the world,
But she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.”
— John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)
In the middle of his term as secretary of state, the future president John Quincy Adams addressed a joint session of Congress. What prompted this unusual event?
The United States had just fought Britain to a draw in the War of 1812. It was fought almost entirely in Canada. Some historians believe the British began this war to win back their former colonies. Some believe the U.S. began it to seize Canada from Britain. Adams was worried that the cancer of war was spreading yet again throughout the Washington establishment, and he wanted to squelch it.
He did so successfully, but only for about 20 years, with his argument that offensive foreign wars don’t spread liberty, they spread violence.
Fast forward to 1992, when the U.S. was waging another fruitless foreign war, this one using the C.I.A. and the Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.) — to avoid the statutes that required reporting military conflicts to Congress and the need of a congressional declaration of war. This was the drug war the U.S. was waging against the Mexican government and Mexican civilians.
In the midst of that war, the George H.W. Bush administration decided to kidnap foreigners who had violated American laws elsewhere and hold them accountable here. The theory behind this imperialistic hubris was that these folks had harmed American agents in Mexico by resisting America’s violent drug wars, and in the U.S. by exporting drugs to America.
Never mind that drugs are purchased and taken voluntarily, and never mind that the Supreme Court had already ruled that we each own our bodies and what we do to them in private is none of the federal government’s business.
All this came to a head at the Supreme Court in 1992 where a Mexican physician challenged his violent kidnapping from his medical office in Mexico, which had been orchestrated and financed by the Bush Department of Justice.
The Supreme Court ruled that the kidnapping was lawful because the courts do not concern themselves with how the defendant was brought to the courtroom; they only concern themselves with what happens afterward. Moreover, since the U.S./Mexico extradition treaty is silent on government kidnapping, it is therefore lawful.
Green Light for Violent Kidnappings
U.S. Supreme Court Building. (Christina B Castro, CC BY-NC 2.0)
This twisted understanding of first principles, among which is that government must comply with its own laws, has led to the use of F.B.I., C.I.A. and D.E.A. operatives to kidnap foreigners in foreign countries who allegedly harmed Americans by violating U.S. laws. This is violent kidnapping, often directing the victim to a Third World country for torture and then to the U.S. for trial.
As horrific as all this is, U.S. law has always required an American harm nexus, which mandated that government kidnapping could only be justified as an initial step toward redressing harm caused by the kidnapped person to an American victim.
Until, that is, President Joe Biden joined hands with congressional Republicans to show how tough they are.
Recent congressional legislation extends the authority of federal courts to cover crimes committed by foreign persons in foreign countries against foreign victims or property. By removing the American harm nexus, Congress has permitted the feds to charge whomever they please for foreign crimes committed elsewhere against foreign victims, and it has directed federal courts to hear these cases.
This will open the floodgates to more U.S. government kidnappings and expand radically the power of American presidents to seize political or journalist adversaries abroad just to silence them. It also gives American presidents another tool for war below the radar as they can now legally — but not constitutionally — send small armies of federal agents dressed in military garb and possessing military gear into any countries the president chooses in order to extract someone the president hates or fears.
And if the kidnapped person is eventually acquitted here in a criminal trial, because of the Supreme Court’s recent intellectually dishonest presidential immunity ruling, he cannot sue the president for authorizing his abduction.
Rule of Brute Force
U.S. Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, D.C. (M.V. Jantzen, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
This is not the rule of law. This is the rule of brute force. And because no American need be harmed and no American law need be broken, the president can target literally any foreigner he chooses.
Lest one think my warnings are fanciful, this has already happened.
When former President Barack Obama dispatched drones to kill Americans and their foreign companions in Yemen in 2011 — none of whom had been charged with an American crime, and all of whom were surrounded by 12 U.S. agents during the final 48 hours of their lives — he justified his murders by arguing that he killed fewer folks by his drones than those folks might have killed had they lived.
This tortuous, perverse and authoritarian rationale is a complete rejection of natural law principles and due process, which absolutely prohibit the first use of aggression against others and require jury trials before punishment.
Yet, public acceptance of American foreign excess — searching for monsters to destroy — leads to acceptance of war, and to acceptance of war by other means.
If it is lawful for the U.S. government to enter Mexico and kidnap a Mexican physician for prescribing drugs, is it lawful for the Chinese government to enter Hawaii and kidnap an American tech executive for bribing Chinese officials?
Can the U.S. kidnap Benjamin Netanyahu and try him here for murder and genocide committed in Gaza? Yes, but don’t hold your breath. He’s America’s monster.
Thomas Paine warned that the passion to punish is dangerous to liberty, even the liberty of those doing the punishing. It often makes the law unrecognizable:
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, was the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and hosts the podcast Judging Freedom. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
Published by permission of the author.
COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
“President George H.W. Bush displaying what he said was a bag of crack cocaine during a 1989 speech promoting his “war on drugs.” ”
If Bush was so concerned about cocaine use then he could have simply ordered his friends at the CIA to stop importing it. Not for nothing did the CIA become known as the Cocaine Import Agency.
The previous year, the terrible bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland had occurred. On board were a number of DIA personnel headed by Major Charles McKee who had reportedly clashed with the CIA over the latter’s role in drug promotion.
No, the US used drug lords as freedom fighters in Central America and Afghanistan and getting funding by going around congress and helping themselves to sales in the US and elsewhere.. We may still be trying to shut it off. Just shades of similar methods using opium against China and CIA Air America activity in the Vietnam War.
We also used alcohol and arms sales against Native Americans too Now we are back to using neo-nazis against Russia returning to the WWII disaster ending with loss of Eastern Europe and China too due also to hubris of thinking we would have a nuclear bomb just in time for delivery.
While the United States government detains the likes of Dr. Humberto Alvarez-Machain and denies them a means to pursue restitution, it also enables a succession of Li Mis, Ouane Rattikones, Vang Paos, and Khun Sas, while its intelligence agencies assist in airlifting opium destined for the veins of their desperate servicemembers; provides Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and all of his militant Islamist ilk the resources and wherewithal to make inroads into the narcotics industry, while conspiring to addict Soviet occupation forces in “Opération Moustique,” and mysteriously releasing Yasar Öz, Haji Juma Khan, Bashir Noorzai, and Viktor Bout to continue sustaining that destructive trade (in much the same manner that people such as Charles Taylor and Abdullah Çatli flew their respective coops); and empowers then dispenses with a myriad of corrupt autocrats and thugs in the vein of Manuel Noriega and Juan Orlando Hernández, while drug-connected oligarchs such as the late Miguel Facussé and the Panamanian financial power-brokers in the Endara and Pérez Balladares administrations (and beyond) get off scot-free and profit handsomely (and the man whose transparency organization brought some of that information to light is also extraterritorially persecuted for upwards of thirteen years).
In the meantime, everyone from Don Henry and Kevin Ives to Manuel Buendía and Enrique “Kiki” Camarena lose their lives seemingly for bumbling into such intrigues, whether wittingly or unwittingly, and alternative models at the local level (such as the community response in Cherán, Mexico) and the national level (such as the SYSCOCA program pioneered by Evo Morales’s administration in Bolivia) are rejected in favor of a top-down militaristic approach to transnational counternarcotics selectively applied against disposable dupes and upstarts who have outlived their usefulness, while several of those charged with pursuing that agenda monopolize that racket in between illegally collecting revenues doing everything from skimming Teamster pension funds to diverting allocated Housing and Urban Development investments, all to avoid institutional scrutiny and accountability by citizens and true-believers within the system.
Am glad that Consortium News is publishing a Libertarian viewpoint…Judging Freedom via YouTube worth watching as often includes Ray McGovern as a guest. Thanks Judge Joe for your working for peace, not only in the Middle East, but in Ukraine, where the MSM
and even here on this platform it is rarely covered. blessings on the journey! Cookie from Flatbush
replying to myself…I meant thanks Judge Andrew (not Joe)…anyway following you whenever possible….
Excellent article exposing the dangers of imperialism run amuck. And the point that the precedents we establish can logically and perhaps even morally be used against us based on estoppel related concepts is a clear warning about the “geese and ganders” world we are molding.
The American gangster government is in bed with Netanyahu so if they kidnap and try him, they would have to kidnap and try themselves and we all know that aint gonna happen…
Obama “justified his murders by arguing that he killed fewer folks by his drones than those folks might have killed had they lived.”
A former constitutional law professor, yet.
To the US, the rule of law is “my way or the highway.”
By this logic (which in this case I wholeheartedly agree with) I—or anyone else—would be supremely justified in assassinating the next (or any) US president in order to save the millions s/he would certainly kill.
“he justified his murders by arguing that he killed fewer folks by his drones than those folks might have killed had they lived.”
Which reminds me of one of the tales of the savant Nasreddin:
Nasreddin and a comrade are enforcing a 7 pm curfew in a large town. At 6:50 a figure in a gallabia appears and runs across the square. In an instant Nasreddin raises his rifle and drops him with one shot.
“Are you crazy??” his partner exclaims, “it is not yet the curfew!”
“Yes!” Replies Nasreddin, “but I know EXACTLY where he lives and he never would have made it!”
Thank you Judge Napolitano for an insightful discussion. I have been watching the US empire evolve since the 1970s, when I was old enough to understand what the government was doing. After decades of watching their actions I have come to the conclusion that the two political parties in the US have devolved into two clashing organized crime syndicates; the Red and Blue Teams. Their actions have been increasingly unlawful, as far as I can tell from my reading, since the end of WWII. Their illegal actions have only accelerated over time, to the point where our government is acting completely lawlessly in places like Gaza and Ukraine. If you want to stop a crime syndicate, you need to arrest, try and convict the crime bosses. You can’t just negotiate your way back to compliance with the laws and constitution.
Though the views expressed here are solely of those of the author I fully agree with his take on these matters.
Near the end here the Judge writes, ” Thomas Paine warned the passion to punish is dangerous to liberty, even the liberty of those doing the punishing. It often makes law unrecognizable.”
I would suggest here President Obama’s ordered extrajudical killing of these Americans in Yemen in 2011 was birthed in the minds of our out of control, national security / intelligence apparatus.
The CIA a perfect example of an agency gone rogue during it’s infancy. The one government agency which has engaged in this type of activity since it’s inception, becoming one with other rogue organizations that currently bedevil global humanity.
Americans need not look any further to recognize and identify publicly this intelligence agency as the first of the enforcers for American Zionists. A group which has made the law unrecognizable.
It’s just a thought, a very chilling thought!
Thanks Yer Honor!
Always grateful of heretofore unknown facts of former presidents. Where are our John Quincy Adams today?
Obama’s enchantment with power and his evasion of using it respectfully in service of law and justice echoes his talented rhetorical gifts – all air and fire – floating into the ethers while his deeds parade in equal measure the emptiness of his essential fidelity to the ultimately ephemeral magic of his rhetoric. So many ethic-less leaders! How do we citizens grasp the moral/ethical nature of our leaders before they become our leaders? I vaguely remember a piece about Illinois state senator Obama that he was absent for big votes frequently and when he was head of Harvard Law Review no none knew where he stood. Telling.Another wind-sock like Kamala.
This is what happens when vast amounts of wealth are allowed to be used to purchase government officials and institutions. All of the higher ideals required to establish and maintain a government of, by and for the people are pushed aside by power grabs by mediocrities doing the bidding of wealthy people with no regard for the public interest. Until we get the money out of the system, the abuses will only get worse.
I couldn’t agree more. Allowing individuals, who may have mental health problems, to accumulate 10s or 100s of billions of dollars that they can throw at government officials and candidates, at purchasing whole news networks, and manipulating elections is going to guarantee lawlessness.
The recent US collusion in the kidnapping of Mexican national and drug dealer Ismael Zamada is another example of what Judge Napolitano is talking about. Not only was the FBI and DEA involved in the kidnapping of Zambada they were also neck deep in the murder of 4 more Mexican citizens who were killed during the kidnapping. The FBI and DEA colluded with another Mexican drug dealer, one of Chapo Guzman’s sons, in the kidnapping and murder of Mexican citizens in Mexico.
Yes, Zambada is a drug trafficker, one of the biggest, but that does not excuse the US involvement in murder and kidnapping. The US did this not because Mexican law enforcement is too corrupt to work with, but to avoid dealing with Mexican laws especially their laws on extradition. The US could of worked with Mexican Marines, who are well known for their trustworthiness and aversion to corruption, in order to capture Zambada. After all the Mexican Marines have been involved in taking down about 85% of Mexican drug cartel leaders.
I was shocked to hear this happened, but even more shocked that no American politician or journalist has even talked about such dangerous despicable actions by the US government and its agents.What is so scary about this crime is no one seems to be bothered by it.
“What is so scary about this crime is no one seems to be bothered by it.”
And sadly, i believe Joe, no-one is bothered. It’s a “dog eat dog” society these days. And the higher up the food chain you are, the more you get away with. (And the more bones you get, on which to sharpen your canines.)
Joe – “no one seems to be bothered about it.” Reminds me of the citizen apathy described by Wolin as an aspect of our “managed democracy” or inverted totalitarianism.”” Inverted totalitarianism is a system where economic powers like corporations exert subtle but substantial power over a system that superficially seems democratic. Over time, this theory predicts a sense of powerlessness and political apathy, continuing a slide away from political egalitarianism.” Wikipedia
What I want to see are good minds naming the manifestations of “corporate subtle but substantial power” that put us into a trance like the Pied Piper’s – that character that led the rats and then the children out of town to disappear forever.!!!