U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric
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.
Who cares? He's a bad guy. Right?
Until that bad guy is you, that is ... What do I care, I have nothing to hide?
We are no longer a society ruled by law, but sheep ruled by men.
A Government of Laws, Not Men
Americans, this is what arbitrary government looks like. As a simple matter of fact, even George III was never this arbitrary. Even he didn’t make individual colonists’ lives depend merely on an act of his own will.
Indeed, if I wanted a perfect example of what a government of men, not laws, looked like, I could just glance at the newspapers today and see what our government is doing right at this moment.
Do not respond that this power will only be used wisely and sparingly. Doing so just admits my basic point, namely that we now depend purely on the wisdom and restraint of our individual leaders. We depend on their wisdom and restraint — to check their own worst impulses. All power, both for and against, is contained in one individual. No legal processes, and no guarantees, separate us from them. And the stakes are life or death.
Likewise, do not respond that this power will only be used against very bad people. Again, doing so just admits that we now depend on an unreviewable judgment of character, not on a legal system with formal procedures and safeguards. Even in the dark days of the Cold War — even during the Revolution itself — we never ceded so much power to so few.
Yeah, I know, I know ... We "trust" our masters. Politicians are born with special DNA, causing them to live a benevolent life, free of sin. Besides, "we can vote!"
Yeah, that'll show 'em.
Excuses. Principles be damned.
Awlaki makes the CIA hit list
Like Andy McCarthy, I wonder whether the announcement by the Obama administration that it has approved an American traitor for the CIA’s approved assassination list for the first time will create a stir among those who criticized Barack Obama’s predecessor for human-rights violations.
People who conduct war against the US should not expect the criminal-prosecution treatment, but a military approach to their destruction.
If Aulaqi traveled back to the US and was captured, that would be different. That would not be a military jurisdiction, and as a US citizen, he would handled by civilian authority with the protections of the Constitution. But his citizenship gives him no special shield while abroad and conducting war against the United States, nor should it. If he chooses to put himself on the battlefield by conspiring with al-Qaeda, then he shares their status and their vulnerability to the same kinds of operations we put in place for all other AQ targets.
There's always a reason to give politicians more power. Always.
The 9/14 Presidency
If you believe the president’s Republican critics, Barack Obama takes a law enforcement approach to terrorism.
It’s true that the president’s speeches and some of his administration’s policy rollouts have emphasized a break from the Bush era.
But these differences in style mask a sameness in substance that should worry civil libertarians. When it comes to the legal framework for confronting terrorism, President Obama is acting in no meaningful sense any different than President Bush after 2006, when the Supreme Court overturned the view that the president’s war time powers were effectively unlimited. As the Obama administration itself is quick to point out, the Bush administration also tried terrorists apprehended on U.S. soil in criminal courts, most notably “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid. More important, President Obama has embraced and at times defended the same expansive view of a global war against Al Qaeda as President Bush.
The U.S. still reserves the right to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely without charge, try them via military tribunal, keep them imprisoned even if they are acquitted, and kill them in foreign countries with which America is not formally at war (including Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan). When Obama closed the secret CIA prisons known as “black sites,” he specifically allowed for temporary detention facilities where a suspect could be taken before being sent to a foreign or domestic prison, a practice known as “rendition.” And even where the Obama White House has made a show of how it has broken with the Bush administration, such as outlawing enhanced interrogation techniques, it has done so through executive order, which can be reversed at any time by the sitting president.
The United States of Dependency, where our "leaders" are "good" and "wise." So much so, they can target for assassination, whomever the hell they desire.
Confirmed: Obama authorizes assassination of U.S. citizen
[I]n 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?
Gasp! Did I quote a lefty? Put me on trial!
It's not like Tea Partiers, or anything like that, have ever been labelled "terrorists."
Homeland Security document targets most conservatives and libertarians in the country
No slippery slope here. Politicians are pure, benevolent beings. They're "saving" us!
