"How is it that judicial approval is required when the United States decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for electronic surveillance, but ... judicial scrutiny is prohibited when the United States decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for death?"
That's just one of many intriguing questions raised -- but not answered -- by the D.C. District Court today in its decision dismissing the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, a challenge to the government's authorization to kill a U.S. citizen allegedly tied to Al Qaeda overseas. Ultimately, the court won't answer any of these critical questions because it decided that Al-Awlaki's father lacks standing to sue, since he's not directly harmed by the U.S. action.
Significantly, though, Judge John Bates did not dismiss the case on the merits. Instead, he went out of his way to write that the case raises important legal questions regarding whether the government can target its own citizen for death in a foreign country without so much as a hearing to determine that he's done anything wrong.
Franz Kafka's book "The Trial" begins "Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning." There follow many thousands of words describing the ordeal of someone denied the right to know the charges against him, to face his accusers, to be given a fair and speedy trial by a jury of his peers, and so forth. We have read thousands of stories of such "Kafkan" experiences since the advent of the Global War of Terror. But we need a different kind of story now.
Murder seems to be advancing in the U.S. toolkit as a replacement for torture. Both tools, murder and torture, produce exactly the same amount of useful intelligence. Both tools scare the hell out of people abroad and at home. Both tools serve to teach a domestic audience that certain types of people are not fully people and cannot be dealt with humanely. Both tools help to advance the further stripping away of civil liberties through fear and terror. The goals of torture that the CIA has advanced for decades of eliminating a person's entire consciousness and identity, the mission of placing barbarians completely under control of the empire, what accomplishes this better than murder?
"The family of Dr. George Tiller announces that effective immediately, Women's Health Care Services, Inc., will be permanently closed. Notice is being given today to all concerned that the Tiller family is ceasing operation of the clinic and any involvement by family members in any other similar clinic. ..."
The week following Tiller's May 31st assassination by a 'pro-life' terrorist, the Obama administration appointed someone who doesn't believe in contraception or maternal health exemptions from late term abortion bans to help administer the office that advises faith-based organizations on how to secure government funding for their work. Though he did wait a whole four days, which means he must like reproductive health advocates at least four times as much as the abortion opponents in whose honor he waited an extra day to repeal the global gag rule.
Bruce Wilson, of Talk2Action, [aka "Troutfishing"] has a diary at DKos, "Clinton & Campaign Float Assassinate-Obama-Kennedy X5 ?" that's a good deal more than just expressing outrage. It presents a timeline of assasination remarks related to Barack Obama-a timeline including FIVE separate incidents involving Hillary Clinton's campaign. The point of the timeline is not so much to point the finger at Clinton as the instigator as it is to call attenion, to clearly illuminate what is going on, and her failure to act responsibly.
Some may think it is even more sinister than that. But all can agree that this should have no place in our politics. And yet it does. In fact, the assasination talk attached to Obama's candidacy are just one manifestation of a much broader sickness afflicting our political culture, a sickness known as eliminationism, which pioneering blogger David Neiwert described thus in his 10-part series "Eliminationism in America":
What, really, is eliminationism?
It's a fairly self-explanatory term: it describes a kind of politics and culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas for the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through complete suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination.
More on this below. But first, to Bruce's timeline....
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