Bill McGurn wrote a revealing editorial in Tuesday's edition of the Wall Street Journal concerning Harold Koh, the Secretary of State's legal advisor.
Koh is being justly pilloried for inconsistent, yes, even hypocritical behavior with regard to how the US fights terrorism.
In brief, Koh, a former Yale law school dean, one of whose students was John Yoo, went to great lengths to persecute and prosecute his former student when Yoo was George Bush's Justice Department Counsel. Yoo defended waterboarding. For that, he has been pursued by the left ever since the mid-years of Bush's administration. Koh-led efforts attempted to disbar Yoo.
Now Koh is justifying the use of Predator drones to kill terrorism targets from a distance, often also killing innocent, unknown bystanders.
All this, apparently, to avoide capturing and, then, having to deal with the discomfort of how to handle such prisoners.
McGurn observes that Koh called Yoo's memos defending enhanced interrogation techniques "torture memos," and, thus, refers to Koh's "execution speech," wherein he defended those drone kills of innocents.
As with so much of Wonderboy's foreign and anti-terrorism policy, this administration refuses to acknowledge how it has, in fact, backed away from its prior, incendiary rhetoric, often continuing and even expanding George Bush's original policies.
McGurn suggests that Koh should, in good conscience, either publicly apologize to Yoo for his past persecution of the latter, or maintain his honor and resign over the principles involved in the Predator strikes.
Instead, Koh does neither. So much for the most ethical administration ever and the continued misbehavior of its members.
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