The New York Times has a nice article on the White House’s push to develop a “rule book” to regulate drone strikes. Apparently, during the campaign the Obama White House was scrambling to develop concrete procedures that would regulate how and when a hypothetical Romney administration could use drones. The article quotes an unnamed White House official admitting “There was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands.” Once the election was over, however, such an attempt to institutionalize policies suddenly lost their sense of immediacy. The White House is still working on crafting a “rule book” but seem in no real rush to do so.
The overarching message from all of this seems to be: “there need to be clear standards and procedures in place; just not for us.” Rarely is liberal hypocrisy ever so blatant.
While it is reassuring that the Obama administration at least comprehends that their actions have consequences that will continue after them, they don’t seem willing to change their own behavior accordingly. The NYT article points out the very real possibility that other countries will follow suit in developing and using drones. The fact that the Obama administration sees no problem continuing to use drones that kill a startling number of civilians (including children) without first formulating any kind of institutional regulations for ordering drone strikes shows a contempt for legal procedure that borders on the tyrannical. The fact that the entire drone program remains shrouded in secrecy only adds to the dangerous precedent being set. Set aside what such strikes do to the public perception of America in Yemen and Pakistan; it is this disregard for legal procedure- in effect, disregard for the rule of law- that will come back to haunt America.
All of this reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies (and plays). In Fred Zinnemann’s film adaptation of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More gives one of the most eloquent defenses of constitutionalism and conservatism to ever grace the silver screen.
The Obama administration may think that killing terrorists and protecting America’s security is a worthy enough goal to justify working without specific institutional procedures. But when we begin to cut down the laws that stand between us and whatever Devil we are after, that same law will be utterly unable to protect us from the Devil, as well as ourselves.
Emile
bdouglass
Benjamin David
Chuck O'Shea
Edmund Babbitt
joeptak
Kelse Hillery
Lucie
John David
prsancho
Radagast
The Lancastrian
wmsamuelbradford
Could you elaborate on the logic of the relationship between the clip in the movie and the obama administration’s political machinations. it would seem that a conservative would be able to appreciate the process that is return to normal liberal business that is the obama administration’s glacial pace at which it decides to implement regulations; it’s “conservative” in a crude use of the term. it is not upending or challenging the status quo, but is cautiously deciding on the policies it will implement, how it will implement them and the time frame in which those policies will be implemented. if anything, that movie clip would be a stirring defense of the obama administration’s procedures (so long as we modify it in order to reflect the metaphysical foundations of the modern and 21st century political order. so, you know, take God out of it
). .
The relationship lies in the conservative preference toward institutionalization- including the development of laws and legal procedures. “Cautiously” deciding on particular issues as they come up is still relying upon the wisdom of individuals instead of relying upon the long-term, slow institutional changes inseparable from both conservatism and constitutionalism. It isn’t very likely that conservative can be said to “conserve” anything if no institutions are allowed to build up.
I suppose you could argue that that the Obama administration is conservative in an Aristotelian sense: they are slow to implement new regulations (a generalization I would argue is, by and large, untrue). But it is not as though the choice here is between keeping old institutional procedures intact or replacing them with new procedures: the choice is between institutionalizing, legalizing, constitutionalizing the decision-making process on the one hand and keeping it unfettered from any kind of legal encumberance on the other. The Obama administration, in being willing to play fast and loose with institutional procedures (with “laws,” if you will) is the modern equivalent of young William Roper in this scene: willing to sacrifice legal procedure in order to pursue the Devil.
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From a realist perspective we’ll continue to act in our self-interest of not attaching strings to it until it becomes in our interest to do so. We don’t have to worry about other powers doing it because we’re more powerful than them, and no rational state actor would act against our interests while we are more powerful. Furthermore, regardless of our institutionalization of them, it doesn’t mean other states will voluntarily adopt those norms if they aren’t forced to, especially those states that would work against our interests in the first place.
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