09 Apr 2010

It’s Official: Your President Can Kill You At Will

Foreign Policy, Law 5 Comments

Think I’m exaggerating? Think I’ve been duped by a paranoid blogger? From the newspaper of record:

The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and spent years in the United States as an imam, is in hiding in Yemen. He has been the focus of intense scrutiny since he was linked to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in November, and then to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25.

American counterterrorism officials say Mr. Awlaki is an operative of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate of the terror network in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. They say they believe that he has become a recruiter for the terrorist network, feeding prospects into plots aimed at the United States and at Americans abroad, the officials said.

It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president.

I was originally going to leave it at that, thinking it would be self-evident why this is insane and the epitome of tyranny. But let’s not leave it to chance; let’s quote Glenn Greenwald:

No due process is accorded.  No charges or trials are necessary.  No evidence is offered, nor any opportunity for him to deny these accusations (which he has done vehemently through his family).  None of that.

Instead, in Barack Obama’s America, the way guilt is determined for American citizens — and a death penalty imposed — is that the President, like the King he thinks he is, secretly decrees someone’s guilt as a Terrorist.  He then dispatches his aides to run to America’s newspapers — cowardly hiding behind the shield of anonymity which they’re granted — to proclaim that the Guilty One shall be killed on sight because the Leader has decreed him to be a Terrorist.  It is simply asserted that Awlaki has converted from a cleric who expresses anti-American views and advocates attacks on American military targets (advocacy which happens to be Constitutionally protected) to Actual Terrorist “involved in plots.”  These newspapers then print this Executive Verdict with no questioning, no opposition, no investigation, no refutation as to its truth.  And the punishment is thus decreed:  this American citizen will now be murdered by the CIA because Barack Obama has ordered that it be done.  What kind of person could possibly justify this or think that this is a legitimate government power?

5 Responses to “It’s Official: Your President Can Kill You At Will”

  1. Jason says:

    It’s a shame. Most people will accept this, because the media says he’s participating in terrorism. The precedent will be established, and soon it will be “militia” people.

    I have some catching up to do on your blog. Unfortunately, I lost track when you switched your platform. Keep up the good work.

  2. fundamentalist says:

    Socialists wen berzerk when Bush authorized wire taps on US citizens. Now it’s OK to murder them?

  3. Robert says:

    I don’t even know what to say anymore. The only thing more depressing than the stark reality of this fact, is interacting with the people of this world whom go to extraordinary lengths to somehow convince themselves that this, like all the other atrocities before it, is somehow acceptable.

    There has been a rather significant trend developing the past 10 years or so, and it is only accelerating in pace now. I’d like to believe the future will be better, but I don’t see how one can do anything but predict much more of the same based on the data currently available to us.

  4. JimS says:

    This guy already kills me, everytime he opens his mouth.

  5. Aristos says:

    The contrast between what the socialists say that they stand for and the reality/consequences of their actions is astounding. Just look at the gulf between the adoration of Che Guevara as a so-called idealist (e.g. “The Motorcycle Diaries”) versus the homicidal mania of his actions in Cuba and elsewhere.

    Obama is of the same ilk because violence is the necessary corollary to socialism. All of these new “reforms” translate into greater federal control–control that is maintained through the threat (and actuality) of violence. As the regulations increase, so increases the violence.