Selective Progressive Outrage? Extra-judicial Killings or
Water-boarding, Take Your Pick
By Kent Clizbe
Originally appeared in BigPeace; Dec.
9, 2010
Newsweek first revealed that the Bush administration used
harsh interrogation tactics to obtain intelligence from terrorist masterminds
in 2004. American Progressives leapt at the chance to attack the evil,
war-mongering, Halliburton-loving, Cheney-controlled Bush. Their pious,
humanitarian tinged caterwauling was heard non-stop, coast to coast, on every
Progressive media outlet, from every college campus, and from Hollywood.
Progressive hand-wringing over the horror of water-boarding
grew to epic proportions. They called for war crimes tribunals for the
unrepentant fascist scum working to keep them safe from Al Qaeda. Hazing of
prisoners at Abu Ghraib—in which helpless prisoners were stripped naked and
forced to wear demeaning clothing—became, in the fevered Progressive
imagination, tantamount to Auschwitz.
When I attended the International Ethics in Intelligence
conference in 2006, the Progressive academics in attendance were mainly interested
in discussing one topic—torture. Of the hundreds in attendance, I only ran
across two other members who had ever been intelligence officers in the field.
Few of the presenters on Torture, or the myriad related “ethical” issues had
ever been at the pointy end of the spear. They lectured on “Just War Theory”
and Hegelian ethics as applied to an Aristotelian world view, or other
pseudo-intellectual rot. To a person, they condemned the Bush administration’s
use of harsh interrogation tactics. The Guantanamo Bay prison camp was another
popular target of revulsion.
Fast forward just four years later. Torture is out of the
news. Gitmo remains open. The media quietly reports that CIA “drone strikes”
(missile attacks from an unmanned aerial vehicles) and associated “targeted
killings” have sky-rocketed since Obama gained control of the covert action
elements of the U.S. Government.
Our new President, the Progressive hero, rules the Executive
Branch. The Executive controls the CIA, and all law enforcement and
intelligence, including covert action. Covert killings, including UAV targeted
killings, require a “finding” to be signed by the President.
In 2006 there were a reported total of two drone attacks in
Pakistan, which killed a reported 23 people. In the first 11 months of 2010 the
Obama administration is reportedly carried out 106 attacks in Pakistan, with a
death toll of up to 857. Evidently, Obama’s left hand has been quite busy
signing findings between rounds of golf and elbow-banging sessions on the
hardwood court.
The faux outrage over water-boarding was over the top.
Progressives vowed revenge on the Bush administration members who had reviewed
and approved the harsh methods. The Progressive reaction to low-level, untrained
jailers playing pranks on defenseless prisoners at Abu Ghraib created
world-wide ill-will against the U.S. and our interests. In response, Americans
were taken hostage and brutally tortured. Terrorists sawed and hacked the heads
off of American and other allied hostages. They shared their gory work online.
The Progressive outrage machine seems to have run out of
steam. Where is the outrage over the extra-judicial killings of 857 people, in
Pakistan alone? We are not at war with Pakistan. The Obama administration
waffles on whether we are still at war or not, and if so, with whom. People,
including American and allied citizens, are alleged to be members of terrorist
organizations. They are alleged to be planning terrorist attacks.
The Obama administration made a public vow to use legal and
defensible approaches to combating “man-caused contingencies,” or whatever
their political commissars have decided to call terrorism. They vowed to close
Gitmo. They vowed to bring clarity to dealing with the poor innocents the bad
Bushies had snatched from their cradles and sent to the prison on Cuba.
Their vain, self-congratulatory certainty of moral
superiority was, and is, a sham. Now that Obama and his minions control the
covert action apparatus, it has shifted into high gear. They operate in ways
that were not even conceivable during the Bush administration. American,
international, and local laws be damned.
While we surely need to have counter-terrorist operations,
we also need to consider American and international law when we take those
actions. A German legislator, a member of the Left party (leftovers from East
Germany), pointed out that “Obama is not God,” after a German was killed. Maybe
the understatement of the century, but I believe that unrepentant communist is
quite prescient. It is possible that Obama’s extra-judicial killings could be
his Watergate. Who knew what and when?
Anwar al-Awlaki is certainly affiliated with terrorism. He
clearly inspires al Qaeda wannabes, including the Ft Hood terrorist, Nidal
Hassan, and the hapless Christmas 2009 Panties Bomber.
It appears that Obama’s policy is to target for
extra-judicial killing by a UAV missile American citizens who inspire
terrorists to plan attacks. Considering the actual, armed attack on the
Discovery Channel by eco-terrorist (“humans are filth”) James Lee, Al Gore
should probably check in with the White House regularly.
BigPeace.com article--Selective Progressive Outrage? Water-boarding or Extra-judicial Killings? Take your pick.
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