Obama: Nobel Peace Prize winning war criminal
Al-Awlaki's death also demonstrates the second problem with Obama's "drone war": Its arbitrariness, secrecy, and lack of legal oversight are an invitation for cover-up and abuse. As Oliver Knox of Yahoo News recently reported, an Obama administration memo lists three criteria that allegedly must be established before a drone attack is launched: First, "an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government" must conclude that the targeted individual is a "senior operational leader" of al-Qaida or "associated forces"; Second, the targeted individual must pose "an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States"; Third, it must be "infeasible" to attempt to capture the targeted individual.
However, in vague and overbroad language typical of self-appointed demigods lusting for unchecked power over life and death, the memo goes on to state that the phrase "imminent threat" does not require "clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future," only that the targeted individual "recently" participated in "activities" that a high-level government official construes as a threat.
Under the auspices of these so-called "criteria," sixteen-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was also killed in a drone attack just two weeks after his father-his extrajudicial murder ordered by a government whose own laws prohibit the execution of juveniles within its borders. Yet, when asked if this teenager was a "senior operational leader" of a terrorist group, White House press secretary Jay Carney, in a duplicitous, cowardly and hypocritical response typical of the political slime he represents, remarked, "I'm not going to talk about individual operations that may or may not have occurred."
In other words, when someone, even an American citizen, is murdered in Obama's "drone war," the American people, if they are informed of the killing at all, are simply being told to obsequiously accept the government's contention that the person was a legitimate target.
Yet it was just a few short years ago that America's corporate-controlled media, and the majority of America's people, were blindly accepting George W. Bush's assertions that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction" and bore some responsibility for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. These assertions turned out to be nothing more than unmitigated lies, disseminated by corrupt politicians who segued the fear and anger over 9/11 into a war designed to enrich their cronies in the military-industrial complex.
Given the secrecy surrounding the "drone wars," who will ever know for sure that the United States government is not simply using "terrorist" as a term of opprobrium to target individuals because of their political or religious beliefs, family connections, demands for human rights, or desires to exercise fundamental freedoms? And, given the dangerous precedent Obama's "drone war" has set, what will prevent corrupt foreign political leaders in the future from granting economic, political, and/or military "favors" to the United States government in exchange for it killing political opposition leaders who have falsely been branded as "terrorists?"
There was a time when America supported the apartheid regime in South Africa. If this happened today, would Nelson Mandela be a "legitimate" drone target? How about members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), the Black Panther Party, the Weather Underground, the anti-war movement, or even individuals like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X?
Before dismissing this argument as far-fetched, it must be remembered that government officials in the past, without the benefit of drones, demonstrated little hesitancy in using any means available, legal or illegal, to target individuals and groups considered to be threats to "national security." Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were extrajudicially executed; Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt was framed for a murder he did not commit; Lee Otis Johnson was sentenced to thirty-years in prison for allegedly passing a marijuana joint to an undercover police officer; Leonard Peltier was extradited from Canada based upon a perjured affidavit; and Weather Underground members and their families were subjected to illegal spying and break-ins. And even when two government officials were convicted for their roles in these break-ins, Ronald Reagan pardoned them.
The third problem with the "drone wars" is the specious arguments about their "legality." In the abovementioned Yahooarticle, Carney is quoted as calling the killing of Americans in drone attacks "legal," "ethical," and "wise."
Carney's argument stirs memories of Martin Luther King Jr.'s excellent analysis of "just" and "unjust" laws. King once noted that everything Adolf Hitler did was "legal" under the laws of the Nazi regime, while everything Mahatma Gandhi did to nonviolently free India from British rule was "illegal." Yet, of these two men, who truly represented the moral high ground?
Although I am not comparing Obama to Hitler, there is no doubt that all Americans should be disturbed by a system where the individuals who create laws and policies are also the ones who determine their "legality".
