Searching for monsters

OPINION:

“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, John Quincy Adams, who would go on to become president, 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, which was fought almost entirely in Canada. Some historians believe the British began this war to win back their former colonies, while others believe the U.S. began it to seize Canada from Britain. Adams was worried that the cancer of war was spreading again through the Washington establishment, and he wanted to squelch it.

He did so, but only for about 20 years, with his argument that offensive foreign wars spread violence rather than liberty.

Fast-forward to 1992, when the U.S. was waging another fruitless foreign war, this one using the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Administration to avoid the statutes that required reporting military conflict to Congress and the need for a congressional declaration of war. This was the drug war the U.S. was waging against the Mexican government and Mexican civilians.

Amid that war, the George H.W. Bush administration decided to kidnap foreigners who had violated U.S. laws elsewhere and hold them accountable here. The theory behind this imperialistic hubris was that these people had harmed American agents in Mexico by resisting America’s violent drug wars and here at home 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 office in Mexico, which had been orchestrated and financed by the 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 concern themselves only with what happens afterward. Moreover, since the U.S.-Mexico extradition treaty is silent on government kidnapping, it is therefore lawful.

This twisted understanding of first principles, among which is that government must comply with its own laws, has led to the use of FBI, CIA and DEA operatives to kidnap foreigners in foreign countries who allegedly harmed Americans by violating U.S. laws. This is violent kidnapping, often directing the target 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 be justified only as an initial step toward redressing harm caused by the kidnapped person to an American.

Until President Biden joined hands with congressional Republicans to show how tough they are.

Recent legislation extends the authority of federal courts to cover crimes committed by foreigners in foreign countries against foreign people or property. By removing the American harm nexus, Congress has permitted the feds to charge whomever they please with foreign crimes committed elsewhere against foreigners, and it has directed federal courts to hear these cases.

This will open the floodgates to more government kidnappings and radically expand the power of U.S. presidents to seize political or journalist adversaries abroad to silence them. It also gives American presidents another tool for war under 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 to extract someone the president dislikes 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.

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 then-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 in the final 48 hours of their lives — he justified the killing by arguing that he killed fewer people with his drones than those people 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.

Suppose 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?

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.”

• To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.