True Believers

I doubt if the oppressed ever fight for freedom.
They fight for pride and for power --
power to oppress others.
The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors;
they want to retaliate
--The True Believer, Eric Hoffer

Any time you want to
You can turn me on to
Anything you want to
Any time at all
--Groovy Kind of Love,
Carole Bayer
__________________

The great nation of America has been reduced to issuing fatwas in its Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), so inscrutable are our foes.

So nefarious we must trounce the very documents which made us a great nation. So dangerous that our President must authorize the non-judicial killing of a U.S. citizen "believed" to be involved in attacks upon the U.S.:

"The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday (U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of U.S. Cleric)"

When the U.S. legal code has been so mangled that the U.S. President can issue a fatwa on a belief, rather than subjecting the individual to proof presented in a court of law, we have fallen. The President of the U.S. should neither be an executioner, nor an issuer of orders to executioners.

"American counterterrorism officials say Mr. Awlaki is an operative of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate of the terror network in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. They say they believe that he has become a recruiter for the terrorist network, feeding prospects into plots aimed at the United States and at Americans abroad, the officials said."

Reuters reported Tuesday that the cleric was approved for "capture or killing". It is correct to capture al-Awlaki, but not to assassinate him. If he resists arrest and is killed in that process, that is a much different matter. If he is that dangerous, send in a Ranger Battalion -- they should be able to capture a terrorist.

While it is "extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing," director of national intelligence Dennis C. Blair said it was possible.

Speaking to a House hearing in February Blair said, “We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community,” he said. “If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.” Mr. Awlaki was not mentioned as a target.

It is illegal for law enforcement officers to kill suspects, so why is it legal for U.S. intel types to do so?

"As a general principle, international law permits the use of lethal force against individuals and groups that pose an imminent threat to a country, and officials said that was the standard used in adding names to the list of targets. In addition, Congress approved the use of military force against Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. People on the target list are considered to be military enemies of the United States and therefore not subject to the ban on political assassination first approved by President Gerald R. Ford."

U.S. policy labels Al-Awlaki as a military enemy, even though none of his activity has been military in nature. All of his actions are criminal, even the alleged conspiracy that led to the Ft. Hood killings.

Also, no one has proven that he presents an imminent threat. How can someone hiding out in Yemen or the wilds of Afghanistan or Pakistan be an imminent threat to anything? These threats are grossly overplayed.

In fact, the Ft. Hood shootings would not have occurred is Army leadership were to have been doing their force protection jobs. This act was blatantly impending before the first shots were fired. The same can be said for the events of 9-11-01. Civilian intelligence was negligent on post.

The real criminality is the laxity of our response rather than the nature of the threat. The threat posed by those supposedly animated by Imam al-Awlaki, like Ft. Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and crotch rocket [not] Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was clearly evident. In the former case, it was in his reports; in the latter, the urgent warnings from his father to an embassy.

Yet despite all the warning signs, hysterics like Representative Jane Harman (D-CA), chairwoman of a House subcommittee on homeland security, calls Mr. Awlaki “probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us.”

Well of course -- what's a homeland security committee without a terrorist, right?

[Soon -- report on Hague Convention and special targeting of individuals.]