Author: Eva Ritcher
U.S. drone attacks – attacks carried out by unmanned aerial vehicles – against Pakistan have increased from four attacks in 2007 to 88 attacks so far in 2010. Bush administration war and torture crimes have not been prosecuted. Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp has not been closed. And despite the fact that “the last U.S. combat brigade has pulled out of Iraq,” as MSNBC informs its viewers time and time again, 50,000 Americans are still in Iraq.
But even stranger and more incredible than these contemporary miscarriages of power and justice is the case of Anwar al-Awlaki: a radical Muslim cleric who has advocated jihad against America and is currently thought to be living in hiding in Yemen. He is in hiding because he is one of at least four U.S. citizens to be placed on the CIA “capture-or-kill” list of suspected terrorists, according to the Washington Post.Placement on this list is tantamount to a government-sponsored assassination order – to the targeted killing of a man who has not even been indicted, let alone faced a jury and been convicted. The order can be carried out whenever, wherever and under any circumstances. It was approved by President Barack Obama and the National Security Council.
According to the Washington Post, “The Obama administration urged a federal judge early Saturday [September 25] to dismiss a lawsuit over its targeting of a U.S. citizen [al-Aulaqui] for killing overseas, saying that the case would reveal state secrets.”In 1967, the French political philosopher Guy Debord wrote, “Although the struggles between different powers for control of the same socioeconomic system are officially presented as irreconcilable antagonisms, they actually reflect that system’s fundamental unity, both internationally and within each nation.”
Debord’s statement seems particularly relevant now, when the Obama administration that was going to bring “Hope” and “Change” to Republican-damaged America has just invoked the mantra of “state secrets” to protect itself and its unlawful and unconstitutional actions from the courts, just as the Bush administration did dozens of times.
In fact, this Orwellian über-centralization of power under President Obama seems almost more dangerous because President Obama – unlike President Bush – is a Democrat and a constitutional scholar, struggling against Blue Dog Democrats, oil lobbyists and Republican stalwarts. He was a civil rights attorney in Chicago. He spent two years at Occidental. One of the single most egregious abuses of power in American history could not possibly have occurred under him, could not possibly have been approved by him and could not possibly have been shielded by him under the guise of “state secret.”
But it was.
A state of perpetual warfare and perpetual fear is an excuse for an administration – any administration – to continually amass power: political power, economic power and judicial power Warfare subjugates the people to a continually centralizing government. At no time is this fact more obvious than right now, when, as U.S. citizens, we are content to see another U.S. citizen be targeted for killing in a foreign country for no reason other than The Government said he is a terrorist and needs to be assassinated.
The Washington Post published this statement from the American Civil Liberties Union and Center for Constitutional Rights: “The idea that courts should have no role whatsoever in determining the criteria by which the executive branch can kill its own citizens is unacceptable in a democracy.”That’s true: It is unacceptable. And it is unacceptable under any president, under any administration, in any country, during a time of peace or during a time of war. It is unacceptable because the entire world is not America’s battlefield, and it is not possible for a man or woman to be guilty unless that person has been charged with a crime and been convicted by a jury of his or her peers. And it is unacceptable because wartime does not grant the executive branch the unchecked, unlimited power to secretly kill its own citizens – not only in a democracy, but in any civilized society.
Eva Richter is an undeclared sophomore. She can be reached at richter@oxy.edu.
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