What Do I think of Obama Snuffing an American?

Some readers want to know my views about Obama ordering the assassination of al-Awlaki, an American citizen.  Basically, I am deeply disquieted by it.  Yeah, yeah.  I know all the rationales.  The guy was an enemy, well, not combatant exactly, but a big noise in the recruiting department.  And he was on foreign soil and impossible to get at by normal juridical means.  And, yep, he was a Bad Guy who sought to kill any American he could.

Got it.  True.  I’m not weeping for the loss of a murderous goon.

But (you knew there’d be one).  When this country was founded, the gravest danger the Founders thought they faced was not individuals who could commit evil, but a State that could hold absolute, unaccountable power of life and death over its citizens.  That’s why we have checks and balances (basically to keep the various government functionaries at cross purposes and to keep anybody from acquiring too much power.  For the same reason, we have a system of justice that is built on the presumption that a man is innocent until proven guilty under the law and that the burden is on the State to make that case before the State is allowed to punish/kill him.

We have, effectively, just abolished those fundamental principles of our Republic and entrusted, to the Executive, the power to kill anybody he deems fit without evidence, arrest, trial, testimony, witnesses, judge or jury.  If the President says you need to be dead, he can kill you now.  It’s all been taken care of in a super-secret decision from… the Executive branch whereby it looked over the law carefully and found that it could authorize itself to murder Americans (but not tell us about it)!  Think of it as an Enabling Act.  The President will only be able to murder whoever he likes for as long as the present crisis (namely, the Eternal War on Terror) exists.  And the way the public knows you need to be dead is that the President informs the public, through a docile and compliant media, that you need to be dead.  We ordinary citizens *presume* that the Executive would never abuse such power because, hey!  It can’t happen here!  But, in fact, we don’t really know if the victim who is slated for death by Royal Decree of the President is a terrorist or just some slob the State needs to off for purposes of its own.  And the reason we will not know is because we have just jettisoned two fundamental mechanisms created by a thousand years of English law and the Founders to safeguard and guarantee our rights against a rogue state.

Now the amazing thing is that the Left and Right are both quiescent about all this.  The left because it’s our God King doing this and they can’t break ranks lest the GOP win.  The Right because the orgasmic power of Presidential studliness killing terrorists is so cool that the End to Evil types don’t mind the tradeoff since, you know, 9/11 Changed Everything.  Besides, soon it will be the Right’s turn to wield unchecked power and that’s cool with them too.  They already love torture as a “tool” for “keeping us safe”. Why not lawless executions of citizens too?  Just another tool in the tool kit as our ruling classes on both sides of the aisle tighten their grip on power and continue to strangle liberty.