Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Bush Redux: The Obama Assassination Memos


Michael Isikoff from NBC News was granted  had leaked to him a 16 page "white paper" last night, carefully prepared by the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ).  This paper was a summation of the arguments made in an official Office of Legal Council (OLC) memo (which itself inexplicably remains a top-secret document) used to justify the due process-free, unilaterally-determined assassination of American citizens by Presidential decree.

Libertarians like Glenn Greenwald, Marcy Wheeler, Connor Friedersdorf and Adam Serwer have elegantly deconstructed the absurdity of it all (with special emphases on the redefinition of "imminent threats", the idea that "Al Qaeda-affiliated" is so broad a phrase as to include, potentially, anyone who may harbor sentiments or thoughts that could be construed as "anti-American", and the frightening implications of a permanent Global Battlefield)  with far more expertise and eloquence than I could ever muster.  Please read them all. 

But the bottom line is this:

Without oversight, transparency or accountability, the Obama Administration, in a move that amplifies unprecedented seizures of Executive Power exemplified during the Bush/Cheney regime(indefinite detention, torture), has determined that it has the legal power to identify, convict, and execute an American citizen, by executive fiat, in complete secrecy, without any interference from inconveniences like due process, habeus corpus, and trial by jury.  We are to simply take on faith alone that our Good Noble Protective Leaders will make good decisions and only kill those Americans who are traitors or, worse, "terrorists".

This is a reckless, heedless, fear-driven, reactionary response to an event that occured over a decade ago when nihilists hijacked several planes with plastic weapons and flew them into tall buildings.  Slowly, the rot seeps deeper.  We lose a little bit more of our core national indentity, self inflictingly, with each passing year. 

2 comments:

Frank Drackman said...

Quit your whining...he's, I mean "He's" Your President..
And just think, we're a Small Cell Carcinoma away from a President Joe Biden...

Frank

johnmfisk said...

Well said.

Like you, I'm deeply concerned that fear mongering has taken us to places that we, as Americans, vowed in times past to never go...

Special Rendition, Black Houses, Secret Prisons, Enhanced Interrogation, Water Boarding (which, BTW, is not "simulated" drowning - it IS drowning by asphyxiation)

To concentrate such powers into the hands of such a small group of individuals - or a single individual - is dangerous.

Anonymous Pathologist in Upstate NY