I wrote last week that President Barack Obama’s push to reduce the role of nuclear weapons is an obvious no-brainer, despite whatever macho conservatives are clamoring about. Nonetheless, I feel I should speak now to the fact that Obama is not all that much different from other politicians. He’s still just part of the system.
The most recent example of this fact is his ordering of a U.S. citizen, suspected-terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, to be assassinated without a trial.
To prove how insane this is, we could look no further than Keith Olbermann, the TV host whose extremely leftist views have narrowed his role to the monstrosity that is MSNBC after he worshipped Obama during the new president’s inauguration speech. Even Olbermann is blasting Obama for using his power to assassinate an American citizen on the flimsy basis that U.S. intelligence experts say the man’s a terrorist.
“President Obama has reportedly authorized the death penalty for an American citizen who has not been convicted of any crime, the evidence against whom has yet to see the light of day, who denies his guilt, who has not been given the due process, including trial guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States,” Olbermann reported on his April 7 telecast. “It is a power not even claimed by the Bush/Cheney administration.”
The New York Times reported American counterterrorism officials “say they believe” al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, to be a recruiter for al-Qaida. This, according to the actions of Obama and his cohorts, justifies targeted killing.
While Obama and the left justly criticized Bush for wiretapping, authorizing torture and using Guantanamo Bay as a way to prevent fair trials, the president is doing something of which the Bush Administration was not even guilty.
The source of this authority to assassinate American citizens (including those not in a warzone) comes primarily from the so-called “9/14 resolution,” the congressional resolution passed three days after Sept. 11, 2001, which gave the president the permission “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
Glenn Greenwald, a Salon blogger who has been warning about this issue for months before Obama authorized the assassination, points out that this ability is “unbelievably Orwellian and tyrannical.” And the reason has to do with the fact that the reason for al-Awlaki’s assassination is based only on the observations of government officials. Without a trial, we cannot know for sure if these accusations are true. It is so ironic that Obama has gone out of his way to score political points by giving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a trial in federal court but nonchalantly orders the assassination of an American citizen.
Of course, the reason this is important is not only because al-Awlaki might be innocent. It’s important because it affects all U.S. citizens. Should the president really be allowed to assassinate whoever he “determines” is a terrorist?
Increasingly, political points and recognition seem to be the only motivations behind politicians and all their talk of change and reform. Obama’s foreign policy changes mostly seem like rhetoric. He may be slightly reducing the role of our nuclear weapons, but he has yet to prove he was worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Matt Watson is a graduate student majoring in Spanish. He can be contacted at [email protected].