Trump’s ‘Extrajudicial’ Killings Aren’t New
Former Top Pentagon Lawyer Jeh Johnson thinks targeted killings were fine before Trump came along
Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon’s top lawyer in the first Obama administration, isn’t happy with the Trump administration’s open-seas shooting gallery.
“Not all Targeted Killings are the Same,” ran the headline over his recent Op-ed piece in the New York Times. “Hegseth’s Boat Strikes Are Illegal.”
Johnson, one of the principal architects of the Obama administration’s lethal force policies during his 2009-2012 term as the Defense Department’s general counsel, argued that his administration’s “signature” drone strikes on terrorist suspects across the Middle East and Southwest Asia, were legal. If Congress approves it, he says, and if there is no other way to get the bad guys, and if you can say you’re acting in service to protecting American lives, then it’s perfectly okay.
