Think Humanely

Your President has decided that you deserve to be killed; consequently, he is going to send a drone/special forces/mercenaries to come assassinate you – not arrest you, detain you, or even ship you over to one of our black sites to be tortured indefinitely. You’ll simply be murdered. I’m using the plural version of ‘you’ (although I’m not sure if this should make you more or less frightened) since our President has granted himself the authority to assassinate any and all American citizens. There will be no trial. There will be no warrant. There will be no judge, prosecutor and certainly no defense attorney. There will be his word. He will be the Alpha and Omega, and you will be dead.

This isn’t the insane hypothetical of Glenn Beck, all worked up about what the secretly-Muslim/socialist/Marxist/racist Obama wants to do to White America. This is what Obama has actually argued he has the right to do, and it is what he is actively attempting to do to an American citizen. Please see here for a detailed analysis of the particular case in question. The illegality of such a craven, despotic power is not in question (not by reasonable, moral people at least – and certainly not by those familiar with the actual laws in question). Yet it is a power that as of yet remains unchecked. This hasn’t worked its way up to the Supreme Court (and it’s not yet clear if any court will even allow a challenge to this at all), and the media and most political pundits haven’t done much of anything to denounce it. There is, however, one important exception: Dennis Kucinich, a man who is often ridiculed for, of all things, his appearance, as well as the audacity he shows whenever he “foolishly” runs for President.

On July 30, Kucinich introduced HR 6010 “to prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens, and for other purposes.” Let’s pause for just a moment and bask in how immensely ludicrous it is that I am writing an article praising a politician sworn to uphold the Constitution for introducing a bill saying that assassinating American citizens – without anything even remotely resembling a trial – should be illegal…I feel a little nauseas. Moving on: below is a brief excerpt from the bill.

(1) On January 27, 2010, The Washington Post revealed that United States citizens have been included on lists maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to be assassinated.

(2) The January 27 Washington Post article reported that the JSOC and CIA maintain lists of individuals deemed ‘High Value Targets’ and ‘High Value Individuals’, whom they seek to kill or capture, that the lists currently include United States citizens, and that the President has authorized military operations with the express understanding that a United States citizen may be killed.

(3) Admiral Dennis C. Blair, then the Director of National Intelligence, in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence on February 3, 2010, confirmed the policy of including United States citizens on such lists, stating that ‘a decision to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen must get special permission’ before the targeting of a United States citizen can be granted and that ‘being a U.S. citizen will not spare an American from getting assassinated by military or intelligence operatives overseas if the individual is working with terrorists and planning to attack fellow Americans.’

(4) The Obama administration has publicly authorized the extrajudicial killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki, a United States citizen born in New Mexico who is accused of involvement in terrorist organizations abroad, the first confirmed United States citizen to be added to a CIA list of targets for capture or killing.

(5) According to an article published in The Nation in November 2009, the private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide, now Xe Services, is intimately involved with the targeted assassination programs run by the CIA and JSOC in Pakistan.

(6) Department of Defense Instruction 1100.22, issued on April 12, 2010, states that ‘security is inherently governmental’ and that the ‘U.S. Government has exclusive responsibility for discretionary decisions concerning the appropriate, measured use of combat power, including the offensive use of destructive or deadly force on behalf of the United States’, particularly in operations that have virtually no transparency, accountability, or oversight.

(7) United States Attorney General Eric J. Holder recognized that the Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted many terrorism defendants in Federal courts, stating on Friday, November 13, 2009, that ‘for over two hundred years, our nation has relied on a faithful adherence to the rule of law to bring criminals to justice . . . Once again we will ask our legal system to rise to that challenge, and I am confident it will answer the call with fairness and justice’.

(8) Executive Order 12333 (46 Fed. Reg. 59941; relating to United States intelligence activities), issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, stated, ‘No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination’.

(9) Executive Order 11905 (41 Fed. Reg. 7703; relating to United States foreign intelligence activities), issued by President Gerald Ford in 1976, stated, ‘No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination’.

While the above is plenty disturbing in and of itself, section two of the bill opens with this statement: “due process of law is a fundamental principle in the United States Constitution, the United States has a commitment to the principles included in the Bill of Rights, and no United States citizen, regardless of location, can be ‘deprived of life, liberty, property, without due process of law’, as stated in Article XIV of the Constitution.” The fact that this has to be stated in the actual bill is mind-boggling. What is even worse, however, is that it will likely fall on deaf ears. Due process, the Bill of Rights, these are just words to be disregarded and misrepresented. What matters are to our current crop of politicians and the ignorant Americans who support them are outcomes, and the government has decided that the outcome it wants is one in which it has the authority to kill Americans by fiat. And this is the outcome that both the majority of politicians and the majority of the media, either directly or indirectly, are supporting. The bill has a whopping six co-sponsors, all of whom are Democrats (which is slightly surprising, as you’d think some of those Republicans who fancy themselves libertarians would get on board): John Conyers, Keith Ellison, Bob Filner, Raul Grijalva, Jesse Jackson, and Pete Stark. There are 435 members in the House of Representatives.

The bill has been sent to the House Armed Services Committee, but if you go to Govtrack.us, you’ll find this lovely annotation: “This bill is in the first step in the legislative process. Introduced bills and resolutions first go to committees that deliberate, investigate, and revise them before they go to general debate. The majority of bills and resolutions never make it out of committee.”

There are those who proudly support such a policy, citing their trust in the President to decide who is worthy of life, who is worthy of a criminal trial, and who is worthy of being killed without any legal proceedings whatsoever. This is all perfectly insane, of course, but these people exist nonetheless. Illegality aside, think about the practicality of allowing such a policy.

192 people have been released from prison thanks to DNA testing. This is a staggeringly high number for many reasons. One, DNA is not widely used to help determine whether or not someone in prison is in fact guilty or innocent of the crime that they’ve spent years behind bars for, so the fact that it has been used relatively infrequently has nevertheless lead to this many people being proven falsely convicted is rather astonishing. Two, the vast majority of these innocent people went through a jury trial before a judge and twelve of their peers. They had, at the very least, a public defender. Yet the public defender was unable to establish their innocence. The twelve jurors were confident enough that they harbored no reasonable doubts as to their guilt. The judge found nothing worth setting the verdict aside for, either immediately or on appeal. Yet these men were completely innocent. Three, this figure only includes inmates from the year 2000 and onward.

Now imagine how unbelievably broken a system would be in which all of the above safe guards have been completely removed. There is no defense attorney. There is no judge. There is no jury of one’s peers required to find proof beyond a reasonable doubt. There is only one man – and he makes his decision behind closed doors with absolutely no accountability. There is no appeals process. No hope. If he decides to label you a terrorist/enemy combatant/latest euphemism designed to subvert international and domestic law/scary word, then you have been sentenced to death in absentia. And, according to this man, according to the government he runs, there is absolutely nothing that you or anyone else can do about it. The clock is ticking, and the full force of the American military is ready to rain down upon you. If that many innocent people, despite going through the elaborate process of a police investigation, the district attorney’s office, a grand jury, a jury trial, an appeals process, a governor review, can still be wrongly convicted, how in the hell can we possibly delude ourselves into thinking that an even greater percentage of innocent people won’t just be falsely convicted but murdered under this insane policy?

Perhaps we should ask the other 429 members of the House of Representatives that question.

UPDATED BELOW

On August 31, President Obama sat behind his desk in the oval office and announced the end of the war in Iraq started by his predecessor. “Operation Iraqi Freedom is over. The Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country. This was my pledge to the American people as a candidate for this office.” What a load of propagandistic bullshit, the most glaring example of which is his disgusting reference to the public relations moniker ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom.’ This war was never about the freedom of Iraqis – this is like calling the genocidal wars waged against Native Americans Operation Co-Existence. Obama (and/or his hired writers) carefully and deliberately chose to refer to it not as the ‘Iraq war’ or the ‘war in Iraq’ but rather this cheap designation. Shame on him.

He also dropped in this little gem: “It’s well known that [Bush] and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.” If Obama were not a gifted, perhaps pathological liar, I would have expected him to burst into uncontrollable laughter midway through this wonderful shout-out to the man many historians consider to be the worst president in history and who many thought was deserving of impeachment for his crimes against both the international community and American citizens. For one, this claim that Bush was deeply committed to American security and love of country, and then for Obama to link this commitment to Bush’s decision to start a war of aggression, bears absolutely no correspondence to reality.

Consider this 2006 report by the The Guardian:

An authoritative US intelligence report pooling the views of 16 government agencies concludes America’s campaign in Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism.

The National Intelligence Estimate was completed in April but not made public. Its conclusions, which were first reported by the New York Times, contradict assertions made by President George Bush and White House officials during the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

“It’s a very candid assessment,” said one official who has seen the report. “It’s stating the obvious.”

The report, Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, points out the “centrality” of the US invasion of Iraq in fomenting terrorist cells and attacks. One section of the 30-page report, Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement, describes how the American presence in Iraq has helped spread radical Islam by providing a focal point for anti-Americanism.

There is also this study conducted by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law:

Our study yields one resounding finding: The rate of terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups and the rate of fatalities in those attacks increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the average fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, which accounts for fully half of the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks in the post-Iraq War period. But even excluding Iraq, the average yearly number of jihadist terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities still rose sharply around the world by 265 percent and 58 percent respectively.

And even when attacks in both Afghanistan and Iraq (the two countries that together account for 80 percent of attacks and 67 percent of deaths since the invasion of Iraq) are excluded, there has still been a significant rise in jihadist terrorism elsewhere – a 35 percent increase in the number of jihadist terrorist attacks outside of Afghanistan and Iraq, from 27.6 to 37 a year, with a 12 percent rise in fatalities from 496 to 554 per year.

As the authors of the above study rightly point out, this isn’t definitive prove of causation; one would think, however, that such figures, such facts, would give public officials pause before making ludicrous claims. There are more studies like, more examples of attacks driven – at least in part – by our war and belligerent behavior following the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. But there is another sickening claim made by our Man of Change that deserves to be addressed: the war is not over.

A staggering 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq. We have also been trying to erect permanent military bases in the country. On the following picture, airplanes mark every base currently built or being built in the country:

This report finds twenty-four bases and airports in Iraq as of 2007. There is also the issue of private contractors – a not so-clever euphemism for mercenaries and the outsourcing of war. Kirit Radia reports

the State Department plans to double the number of private security contractors it employs to about 7,000 by the end of 2011. It has also asked the Pentagon to leave behind some of its equipment so that it can safely travel throughout the country.

The department says it has asked the military to provide 25 Blackhawk helicopters and 50 heavily armored MRAP vehicles. Of course, the department plans to hire even more contractors to operate them. It also plans to hire contractors to operate communications equipment, dispose of explosive material, and operate counter rocket/mortar notification systems.

The war – which was never about freedom – is not over. It rages on. It will likely continue to be waged next year, the year after that, the year after that, and so on, especially when the American populace is so willing to accept the charade put on by Obama as accurate and real, as long as Democrats and progressives are willing to swallow this whole, with a smile, because “their guy” is in office. American soldiers will continue to die. Anger, resentment, and even hatred will continue to be fostered amongst communities in the Middle East with every colonizing soldier on the ground, with every civilian – someone’s daughter, someone’s wife – needlessly and unnecessarily murdered, with every building or neighborhood ruined and destroyed. Yet we congratulate ourselves; we congratulate this president despite the fact that he is continuing the same illegal, immoral war that so many on the left supposedly opposed when the man in charge was a Republican.

“This milestone should serve as a reminder to all Americans that the future is ours to shape if we move forward with confidence and commitment” – this non sequitur initially seemed like an appropriate quote to end on. It makes about as much logical and intellectually honest sense as the rest of the drivel that Obama vomited out that night. But then there is this statement by Congressman Dennis Kucinich that expresses the Orwellian state of American discourse and politics:

“A war based on lies continues to be a war based on lies. Today, we have a war that is not a war, with combat troops who are not combat troops. In 2003, President Bush said ‘Mission Accomplished’. In 2010, the White House says combat operations are over in Iraq, but will leave 50,000 troops, many of whom will inevitably be involved in combat-related activities.”

UPDATE: From the always insightful John Pilger: “They [soldiers] have not left. At least 50,000 troops will continue to operate from 94 bases. American air assaults are unchanged, as are special forces’ assassinations. The number of “military contractors” is 100,000 and rising. Most Iraqi oil is now under direct foreign control.” His whole article is worth reading and can be found here .

I recently wrote about the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend unlimited funds on behalf of political candidates here, and the desire on the part of the American government to assassinate its own citizens without charge or trial here. Below you’ll find a discussion on these subjects between Representative Dennis Kucinich and constitutional lawyer and writer Glenn Greenwald. The discussion is conducted by Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow!

From DemocracyNow!:

White House lawyers are debating whether the US can legally assassinate a US citizen in Yemen. Anwar al-Awlaki is a US-born cleric who has been accused of having ties to the failed Christmas Day airline bombing and the shooting at Fort Hood. ABC reports US officials fear the possibility of criminal prosecution without approval in advance from the White House for a targeted strike against Awlaki. Awlaki has not been charged with any crimes under US law.

The same government that Republicans do not trust to run a public option, that Democrats do not trust to craft meaningful health care reform, and the same intelligence and justice communities that gave us lie after lie about Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, failed to catch the person(s) responsible for the anthrax attacks and – shall I go on? – now want the power and legal authority to assasinate Americans anywhere in the world based on their say-so. Anwar al-Awlaki might very well be guilty. But we don’t know. Why? Because he hasn’t been found guilty in a court of law. Why hasn’t he been found guilty? Because he hasn’t been tried. Why hasn’t he been tried? Because he hasn’t even been charged with a crime. He is “suspected.”

Do you know who else was “suspected” of being a terrorist or having ties to terrorism? Maher Arar, a Canadian who was tortured for almost a year. There is also German citizen Khaled al-Masri, who was allegedly beaten and sodomized after he was imprisoned indefinitely “because his name was the same as that of another man suspected of terrorist links.” What of the men, women and children imprisoned it our Guantanamo Bay base? From a press release by the Department of Justice:

Since 2002, more than 550 detainees have departed Guantanamo Bay for other destinations, including Albania, Algeria, Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belgium, Bermuda, Chad, Denmark, Egypt, France, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Palau, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom and Yemen.

We were told that these were the “worst of the worst.” They want to kill your children. Et cetera. Et cetera. Why were they freed? Largely because there was no reliable or credible evidence to support their incarceration. None, which would explain why there were no charges for hundreds of prisoners. No trials. No convictions. Innocent people were imprisoned for years. Innocent people were tortured. Now the government wants to play god and be allowed, with impunity, to declare people, not only in abstentia, but without any legal proceeding whatsoever, not guilty (because, after all, they haven’t been charged with anything) but deserving of death. They want to be able to send assassins (or drones or whatever new killing toy our $700+ billion defense budget can come up with) after Americans anywhere in the world, and “neutralize” them. But we should just trust the government, right? After all, the White House, Congress, Department of Justice, and intelligence agencies have proven themselves to be perfectly credible. They definitely won’t make any mistakes. And they certainly won’t abuse this power.

Our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president has not only continued the same savage foreign policies of his rightfully maligned and disgraced predecessor, he has actually escalated and expanded them. He has defended Bush’s policies in both the federal and Supreme Courts. He has continued the war in Iraq (and to his followers who would like to argue that he has promised to end it – is it over yet? What about the tens of thousands of troops that he’s clearly said will remain and the tens of thousands of “private contractors” who will join them? What of the several permanent military bases?) and escalated the war in Afghanistan. Glenn Greenwald concisely writes

if you count our occupation of Iraq, our twice-escalated war in Afghanistan, our rapidly escalating bombing campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen, and various forms of covert war involvement in Somalia, one could reasonably say that we’re fighting five different wars in Muslim countries.

…

Add to those five fronts the “crippling” sanctions on Iran many Democratic Party luminaries are now advocating, combined with the chest-besting threats from our Middle East client state that the next wars they fight against Muslims will be even “harsher” than the prior ones, and it’s almost easier to count the Muslim countries we’re not attacking or threatening than to count the ones we are.

Aside from the inherent abhorrence of these actions, there is another, more disgusting and dangerous aspect to what the President is doing. Greenwald has previously cited an article in The Independent written by Johann Hari. In it, Hari interviews a number of former religious extremists who came to renounce their jihadist-leanings. He writes

Seventeen former radical Islamists have “come out” in the past 12 months and have begun to fight back. Would they be able to tell me the reasons that pulled them into jihadism, and out again? Could they be the key to understanding – and defusing – Western jihadism?

…

The most famous former Islamist fanatic in Britain is Maajid Nawaz . . . He started to recruit other students, as he had done so many times before. But it was harder. “Everyone hated the [unelected] government [of Hosni Mubarak], and the US for backing it,” he says. But there was an inhibiting sympathy for the victims of 9/11 – until the Bush administration began to respond with Guantanamo Bay and bombs. “That made it much easier. After that, I could persuade people a lot faster.”

After having spent significant time with a number of ex-fanatics, Hari concludes

To my surprise, the ex-jihadis said their rage about Western foreign policy – which was real, and burning – emerged only after their identity crises, and as a result of it. They identified with the story of oppressed Muslims abroad because it seemed to mirror the oppressive disorientation they felt in their own minds. Usman Raja, a bluff, buff boxer who begged to become a suicide bomber in the mid-1990s, tells me: “Your inner life is chaotic and you feel under threat the whole time. And then you’re told by Islamists that life for Muslims everywhere is chaotic and under threat. It becomes bigger than you. It’s about the world – and that’s an amazing relief. The answer isn’t inside your confused self. It’s out there in the world.”

But once they had made that leap to identify with the Umma – the global Muslim community – they got angrier the more abusive our foreign policy came. Every one of them said the Bush administration’s response to 9/11 – from Guantanamo to Iraq – made jihadism seem more like an accurate description of the world. Hadiya Masieh, a tiny female former HT organiser, tells me: “You’d see Bush on the television building torture camps and bombing Muslims and you think – anything is justified to stop this. What are we meant to do, just stand still and let him cut our throats?”

But the converse was – they stressed – also true. When they saw ordinary Westerners trying to uphold human rights, their jihadism began to stutter. Almost all of them said that they doubted their Islamism when they saw a million non-Muslims march in London to oppose the Iraq War: “How could we demonise people who obviously opposed aggression against Muslims?” asks Hadiya.

These “Bush” policies, as so many liberals like to think of them, are now Obama policies. He defends them, uses them, and expands upon them. We continue to bomb foreign, sovereign nations and, due largely to the way we indiscriminately attack and the weapons that we use, innocent civilians inevitably are murdered. The result?:

Protesters took to the streets in Afghanistan on Wednesday, burning an effigy of the US president and shouting “death to Obama” to slam civilian deaths during Western military operations.

…

“The government must prevent such unilateral operations otherwise we will take guns instead of pens and fight against them (foreign forces),” students from the University of Nangahar’s education faculty said in a statement.

Marching through the main street of Jalalabad, the students chanted “death to Obama” and “death to foreign forces”, witnesses said.

The protesters torched a US flag and an effigy of US President Barack Obama in a public square in central Jalalabad, before dispersing.

“Our demonstration is against those foreigners who have come to our country,” Safiullah Aminzai, a student organiser, told AFP.

“They have not brought democracy to Afghanistan but they are killing our religious scholars and children,” he added.

If the goal is to minimize terrorism and the recruitment of terrorists, then Obama and this country aren’t simply taking the wrong course of action, they’re taking the exact course of action that makes such a goal absolutely impossible to attain. There will be no minimization. Recruitment will not decline. Terrorism will continue and it will increase. Those willing to join a jihad against belligerent, murderous superpower will continue to grow. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our government claims that those crazy Muslims are incredibly dangerous, that they “want to kill our children,” and “hate us for our freedoms.” Yet it is our actions that continue to allow such danger to not only exist, but grow.