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255 5 Obama’s Dilemma: Balancing Security and Human Rights From the time of George Washington to that of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the American president has faced a dilemma not very different from the kind that confronted President Musharraf in Pakistan or the leaders of other countries. At its heart, the problem has been how to maintain the writ of the center while ensuring that marginal and peripheral groups are fully included as citizens of the state and their rights and privileges firmly safeguarded. But the United States has tackled it quite differently from the rest of the world. America’s approach has been anchored in the clarity and unequivocal resolution that its Founding Fathers arrived at after grappling with the same issue. Their vision gave form and content to the world’s first democratic state. It also created high standards that succeeding American leaders could aspire to but not always attain. As the Founding Fathers of the United States were acutely aware, a government ’s security interests must be kept in balance with those of human rights, civil liberties, and democracy. That is why they underwrote the supremacy of the latter in their founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. However, the exigencies of the state—dealing with civil wars, world wars, and terrorist attacks on the homeland—have consistently challenged that balance, tilting it toward security, which is precisely what happened in the United States after 9/11. American presidents and administrators increasingly favored security over human rights. Not to do so was considered not only weak but also anti-American. As security gained precedence, the use of the drone was almost a logical next step for nations equipped with the tools of globalization. This and other aspects of the imbalance between security and human rights are having enormous consequences for the tribal societies that are the subject of this book. The use of the drone overturned notions of justice and the rule of law laid out in America’s founding documents, which themselves were based on centuries of precedents in Western legal practice and thought. The right to a trial by jury is at the core of the U.S. judicial system and enshrined in the Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. The power of the president to extrajudicially execute anyone, Ahmed.indb 255 2/12/13 8:34 PM 256 Obama’s Dilemma even U.S. citizens, with a drone strike from his “kill list,” the details of which are unknown, is a clear violation of the right to trial under both U.S. and international law. The actions become even murkier when there is no international agreement on what constitutes a crime. Yet the drone strikes and their violation of the law seem justified to Americans because the deadly weapon is thought to keep America safe. This is contrary to the ideals on which the United States was founded. Paramount among these ideals were the concepts of justice, equality, and rule of law—the formula for liberty. In his first Inaugural Address as president, Thomas Jefferson stated that the “essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration” must begin with “equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political .”1 The antithesis of this conception of law and civilization was torture. Jefferson believed government “shall not have power . . . to prescribe torture in any case whatever.”2 These ideals were absolute and could not be compromised, even for the sake of security. Benjamin Franklin, the sage of Philadelphia, warned his countrymen, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”3 George Washington, in outlining what he saw as America’s mission at home and abroad, declared, “The bosom of America [was to be] open to receive . . . the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions.”4 Indeed, Washington’s words would be echoed in the message displayed on one of the main symbols of America, the Statue of Liberty, which has inspired millions of people all over the world. Until recently this vision of Washington and the other Founding Fathers had wide appeal among the tribesmen of the Muslim world, who viewed the United States as a nation that would challenge the tyranny of their central governments and as a sanctuary within which they could find peace and dignity. In 1946, for example, the renowned Kurdish leader Mustafa...

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