吃瓜大本营

Perhaps Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.鈥檚 most prescient and powerful speech was one he gave in 1967, called 鈥�.鈥� In that speech, during a generation-defining civil rights struggle, Dr. King explained that he could not raise his voice for nonviolence at home 鈥渨ithout having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.鈥�

He illuminated the consequences of the Vietnam War from the perspective of victims 鈥� the Vietnamese people whose lives, families, crops, and villages our country destroyed. He connected 鈥渢he giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism鈥� and said we could not defeat them if we put machines, profit, and property rights above people. And he warned that unless Americans had a 鈥渢rue revolution of values,鈥� which required us to question the fairness and justice of our past and present policies, we would have endless war in multiple countries 鈥渂eyond Vietnam,鈥� with all the harms to human rights that war entails.

It is, in no small part, with homage to these principles that the ACLU has worked for years to provide transparency and accountability for America鈥檚 lethal force policies abroad. As part of that work, we filed a lawsuit today to force disclosure of the Trump administration鈥檚 new, secret killing rules. These new rules an Obama-era policy that helped entrench a new reality of secret, lethal American operations, but still sought to minimize civilian deaths and injuries.

For too long, our nation鈥檚 institutions 鈥� the executive branch, Congress, and the courts 鈥� have failed to heed Dr. King鈥檚 call to restrain war and provide meaningful accountability and reparations to victims. Now, the Trump administration is , with strikes taking place at a virtually unprecedented rate鈥攊n some countries, the number has doubled or tripled in Trump鈥檚 first year in office. The U.S. is conducting strikes in recognized wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, but also in operations governed by the secret rules whose public release our new lawsuit demands 鈥� those conducted outside 鈥渁reas of active hostilities鈥� in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and elsewhere. Untold, officially unrecognized numbers of civilians have died and continue to die at . Most strikes take place in majority-Muslim countries, and most of the civilians killed are brown or Black.

Many of the countries in which our government is killing people are also subject to the Muslim ban 鈥� meaning, the Trump administration is cruelly excluding people fleeing violence it has helped cause. At the same time, it refuses to officially disclose critically important information about where it is conducting strikes, against whom, and with what consequences. Unlike in the Vietnam War, when we had a military draft and troops on the ground, our nation now often kills people remotely and in secret with machines 鈥� drones 鈥� that pose less risk to our own forces.

Perhaps that鈥檚 why there is no end in sight to the human suffering our government is causing to so many of our fellow human beings. Perhaps we need to learn anew Dr. King鈥檚 lesson:

[T]he privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation鈥檚 self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls 鈥渆nemy,鈥� for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers [and sisters].

Two recent must-read articles help us. The first is a groundbreaking New York Times by Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal, who reviewed U.S. airstrikes in Iraq from 2014, when the war against ISIS began, to December 2016. They found that the U.S. military killed civilians 31 times more often than it admitted. Khan and Gopal illuminate their investigation with the heart-wrenching account of Bassim Razzo, whose house the U.S. military deliberately and wrongly targeted, killing his wife and daughter, and to whom the army then offered an insultingly low amount as compensation. It is hard to read the article without feeling rage and grief at what our nation has wrought.

In the , Robert Malley and Stephen Pomper, national security officials in the Obama administration, respond to the New York Times investigation, grappling with that administration's killing policies and their role in implementing them. They admit that even as the Obama administration stopped using the 鈥済lobal war on terror鈥� nomenclature, it nevertheless kept its infrastructure in place, and safeguards to protect civilians were not enough. Nor were its pledges to provide transparency and reparations adequate. It is all-too-rare for government officials to admit they fell short. Malley and Pomper鈥檚 analysis and recommendations are important for that reason and because they acknowledge that without change, 鈥渁n increasing number of innocent lives will suffer.鈥�

We remain far from where we must be.

Back in 1967, Dr. King spoke with moral clarity in 鈥淏eyond Vietnam,鈥� even though he knew it would be controversial among his allies, and even though he risked alienating President Johnson, whose support he needed in the ongoing civil rights struggle. For Dr. King, there was an imperative: 鈥淚f we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.鈥� These were the words of an American Nobel Peace Prize winner, during a time of war.

In 2009, President Obama accepted his Nobel Peace Prize. Four years later, he secretly approved rules 鈥� which became public only in response to ACLU litigation 鈥� that wrongly used legal standards that apply in actual wars to kill terrorism suspects in places where the U.S. was not at war, with an overlay of policy safeguards to protect against civilian harm. He committed this country to ever more militaristic responses in ever more countries, regardless of whatever reluctance he might have felt. Wrongful killings and civilian deaths were the inevitable result.

As I鈥檝e detailed before, Trump鈥檚 new secret killing rules take us further down the 鈥渓ong, dark, and shameful corridors鈥� of which Dr. King spoke, where the limits of war as we know it could virtually dissolve, and more civilians will certainly die. These new rules must be made public so we can all better grapple with the harm our government is causing 鈥� and bring an end to it.