America's Ongoing Shame

Every once in a while, when I'm feeling ready for some self-flagellation, I read me some Glenn Greenwald.  This week's post reminds us again about the Obama administration's use of extra-judicial killings in the War on Terror.

There are many evils in the world, but extinguishing people’s lives with targeted, extra-judicial killings, when you don’t even know their names, based on “patterns” of behavior judged from thousands of miles away, definitely ranks high on the list.

The Obama administration claims the right to use drones to kill people, even American citizens, in faraway places based on intelligence gathered by the CIA and NSA, subject to no review whatsoever.  The logical extension of this argument is that an American administration can kill any person at any time that it believes is a threat.  How do we know they're a threat?  We just have to trust the government to decide.

And on this topic there's no meaningful debate in the US at all.  As Greenwald reminds us, liberals and Democrats support this policy too.  Obama has taken Bush's evisceration of civil liberties in the War on Terror and doubled down on them in a rank display of presidential power.  And there's no opposition except on the fringes of American politics.

Since I'm easily accused of being an Obama toady, let me just say that on the topic of drone attacks and military actions in the Global War on Terror, the administration is outrageously and sickeningly wrong.  It's too bad there's no way to express that in our current system, in which Obama's opposition criticize his actions..... as being too peacenik.

Is It Only Called Terror When Someone Does It To Us?

This is just so disturbing:

On December 30 of last year, ABC News reported on a 16-year-old Pakistani boy, Tariq Khan, who was killed with his 12-year-old cousin when a car in which he was riding was hit with a missile fired by a U.S. drone. As I noted at the time, the report contained this extraordinary passage buried in the middle:

Asked for documentation of Tariq and Waheed’s deaths, Akbar did not provide pictures of the missile strike scene. Virtually none exist, since drones often target people who show up at the scene of an attack.

What made that sentence so amazing was that it basically amounts to a report that the U.S. first kills people with drones, then fires on the rescuers and others who arrive at the scene where the new corpses and injured victims lie.
In a just-released, richly documented report, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, on behalf of the Sunday Times, documents that this is exactly what the U.S. is doing — and worse...

Greenwald goes on to describe in intimate and devestating detail how our US government is guilty of war crimes, right now, in our ongoing drone campaign.  He later laments the fact that current public opinion, even among Liberals, continues to favor drone attacks in spite of the overwhelming opinion against such attacks when undertaken by the Bush campaign.

I can't really add much to Greenwald's analysis, but I'm struck as he is by how alienated from mainstream opinion one is when opposing torture and terror actions by our own government.

Imagine if you can that you are an innocent citizen of the US, minding your own business, when a missile launched by another government lands in your front yard and kills your whole family.  We actually don't have to try very hard to imagine it, as it's not too far away from what happened on 9/11 to us.  We are perpetrating terror attacks via drone that are experienced in exactly the same way by citizens of the countries who are victimized by these actions.  Our only justification is that we're the most powerful country in the world and therefore nobody can stop us.  There's just nothing else there.

President Obama, like President Bush before him, is guilty of War Crimes.  And since nobody in a position of power here is willing to say so, it's going to continue.  Ron Paul is the only person speaking against this to whom anyone is listening.  It's shameful.  In November, I'll be forced to choose between Obama, whom I see as a war criminal, and Romney, whose criticism in these areas is that he's not tough enough.  Awful.

Terrorism Lurks?

This Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in the US sounds scary (Iran's denials notwithstanding).... and then I read Glenn Greenwald here.

He points out that the US has shown no evidence that this plot goes anywhere up in the Iranian government, and suggests that what we have is another situation in which the FBI sets up and entraps some hapless loser who has no means to carry out any attack, and then trumpets how it has saved us all yet again from another 9/11.

It does sound a little odd to hire a Mexican drug cartel to do the deed, doesn't it?  I would think Iran has a big enough national security establishment to employ a few of its own assassins.

Greenwald also sarcastically points out the double standard of our nation, appalled that Iran would plan a killing on our soil while we launch drone attacks anywhere we want, no matter what the government of the host country thinks, without thinking twice about the legality of such a move.

Food for thought anyway.  I don't know whether this plan was legitimately dangerous or not.  But if I've learned nothing else, I know that governments (even our own) are quite willing to lie and mislead.  We shouldn't accept things at face value.

UPDATE 10/13/2011: I see very little on the news that picks up on Greenwald's theme.  The more I think about it, the more I lean toward this view: Iran is being set up.  Hey, they kind of deserve it I guess, they're certainly not my favorite theocracy, but it's s setup nevertheless.