(UPDATED BELOW)

Let us hear no more excuses for Barack Obama. Let us hear no more defenses, no more special pleading, no more extenuations. Let us have no more reciting of the "pressures" he is under, of the "many obstacles" that balk him in his quest to do us good, of the "bad advisors" who are swaying him to unworthy acts against his will. Let us be done at last with all these wretched lies, these complicitous self-deceptions that are facilitating atrocity and tyranny on a monstrous scale.

Barack Obama has ordered the murder of an American citizen, without trial, without due process, without the production of any evidence. All it takes to kill any American citizen in this way is Barack Obama's signature on a piece of paper, his arbitrary designation of the target as a "suspected terrorist." In precisely the same way -- precisely the same way -- Josef Stalin would place a mark by a name in a list of "suspected terrorists" or "counterrevolutionaries," and the bearer of that name would die. This is the system we have now, the same as the Soviets had then: a leader with the unchallengeable power to kill citizens without due process.

That this power has not been used on the same scale in the American system as in the Stalinist state -- yet -- does not alter the equivalence of this governing principle. In both cases, the leader signs arbitrary death warrants; the security services carry out the task; and the 'great and good' of society accept this draconian power as necessary and right.

This is what you support when you support Barack Obama. It does not matter if you think his opponents in the factional infighting to control a bloodsoaked empire and its war machine are "worse" than he is in some measure. When you support him, when you defend him, when you excuse him, it is arbitrary murder that you are supporting. It is the absolute negation of every single principle of enlightenment and human rights professed by liberals, progressives -- indeed, by honorable people of every political stripe -- for centuries.

There is nothing particularly remarkable about Obama's order to kill an American citizen without trial or evidence, of course. George W. Bush claimed the same powers. As I have noted here and elsewhere for many years, our American presidents now claim the right to kill any person on earth whom they arbitrarily designate as an enemy -- or even a suspected enemy -- of the United States. Barack Obama embraced this power as soon as he took office, ordering a "surge" in the "targeted killings" on "suspected terrorists" in Pakistan. Hundreds and hundreds of innocent human beings have been murdered in these drone attacks; many thousands more have been driven from their homes, and terrorized into lives of mental anguish, their psyches lamed by trauma, upheaval and the ever-present dread of death raining down on them from the skies.

And of course, thousands of innocent people continue to die in the wars of dominion and profiteering that Obama has so eagerly embraced. In Afghanistan, they die directly at the hands of American forces -- including secret assassins who raid villages by night, often slaughtering civilians, even those cooperating with the military occupation. As Obama's hand-picked commander in the region, Stanley McChrystal, has openly admitted: “We have shot an amazing number of people [at checkpoints and on the roads], but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat." And in Iraq -- the scene of the abominable, Nazi-like war crime of military aggression whose continuation by Bush's "surge" was hailed by Obama as "an extraordinary achievement" -- innocent people continue to die in droves at the hands of the vicious and violent forces unleashed and empowered by the American invasion and occupation, while they wait to see which brutal "hard man" will seize power over their riven and ruined society.

No, the only remarkable thing about Obama's direct order to murder his fellow American citizen, Anwar al-Alwaki, is its openness. A few weeks ago, he sent his intelligence chieftain, Dennis Blair, to Congress to openly proclaim the president's "right" to kill American citizens arbitrarily. Bush had kept this claimed power obscured, letting it out in dribs and drabs of directed leaks, and hints and winks in public statements; but Obama has taken us beyond that, to the open declaration and institutional entrenchment of the principle of death without due process for citizens. This indeed is "change" -- with a vengeance.

(And to think that only a few years ago, capital punishment -- with its vast and cumbersome legal machinery -- was banished in America as too unjust and arbitrary in its application; now a president need not trouble himself with the slightest bit of legal process if he wants to have someone killed. I suppose this too is "progress": more streamlined, more efficient, quicker, more modern -- like wireless broadband. It's simply there all the time at the president's pleasure.)

Now, there can be no shuffling, no waffling on the matter. Obama has made it crystal clear for even the most avidly self-duping progressive: He will murder his fellow citizens without trial or evidence if he sees fit. The state can murder whom it pleases. This is the system we have. This is what you support when you support Barack Obama. You cannot escape this logic, this judgment. If you support Obama now, in this, then there is no crime he can commit that you will not support.

And thus you become one of those people that we all used to puzzle over, the accomodationists to brutal tyranny: "How did all those people go along with the Nazis? Why wasn't there more opposition to Stalin? How could they countenance all those obvious abominations? What kind of people were they?"

Now you know. They were you. You are them.

**
NOTE 1: I should make it clear that I do not think that it is somehow more heinous for the American government to target and kill its own citizens, as opposed to killing foreigners by the thousands, which it has done, on a bipartisan basis, for many a year. I am merely laying out the case in this way so that American "progressives" -- almost of all whom are deeply marinated in their own brand of American exceptionalism -- can see that even by the standards of this exceptionalism, which puts American lives and 'values' above all else, Barack Obama is acting -- undeniably -- in a criminal, tyrannical manner.

NOTE 2: While I was writing this piece, I got the welcome news that Arthur Silber was back, after a long hiatus due to his chronic ill health. And, as usual, his insights cut straight to the heart of the matter. As I noted here the other day, Silber was one of the very few writers who saw through the shining cloud that surrounded the Obama campaign to the corroded core within. He also noted the greatest danger of an Obama presidency: that it would confirm, entrench, expand -- and normalize -- the worst aspects of the American imperium, precisely because the system's crimes and atrocities would now be presented in a more pleasing package, with all "progressive" opposition to them completely disarmed by partisan adherence to their standard-bearer.

Ironically, one of Silber's most incisive pieces on this subject was provoked by what many people -- and almost all "progressives" -- still consider Obama's finest moment during the campaign: his speech calling for a "national dialogue on race" -- part of a particularly brutal effort to knife his long-time friend, mentor and pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, deeply and repeatedly in the back.

Go read the new piece now, and follow the links, which provide chilling chapter and verse to underscore the insights. But here is brief excerpt, one of the conclusions that Silber draws today from that early speech:

If one truly and comprehensively understood Obama's speech on race -- the unending, deadly lies on which it was based, and the terrible consequences to which those lies have led and the devastation they will continue to cause -- that speech told you everything you needed to know about Obama.

That is not hyperbole, not if you understood all of that: it told you everything. .. And what has already occurred during the Obama presidency is very far from all or the worst of the destruction that can reasonably be expected to transpire over the coming years.

 

UPDATE: David Swanson at Counterpunch nails the situation well: "Murder is the new torture," indeed. As Swanson notes, now that torture -- always with us, but previously shrouded -- has been mainstreamed, acceptance of outright murder is the logical next step. And as Swanson observes, it is actually a much more efficient tool of imperial policy:

President Obama has ordered the murder of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Like the innocent but tortured Abu Zubayda (innocent at least of any of the crimes he was accused of), Awlaki is now the mastermind terrorist of the universe. And once he's dead, who's to say he wasn't? Who can demand a trail or access to documents? He'll be dead. See the beauty of it?

If the top mastermind is in Yemen, what the hell are we doing building a quagmire in Afghanistan? Don't ask. But notice this: we have dramatically increased the use of missile strikes to assassinate in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And we have increased the use of murderous night-time raids to such an extent that we now kill more civilians in that way than we do with drones. They're the "wrong people," or neighbors who came to help, or family members clinging to loved ones. Sometimes they're young students with their hands tied behind their backs. Accidents will happen. But no U.S. officials' future book tours are going to be interrupted by protesters, since there's no torture involved. Civilization is on the march!

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Sean O'Neil said:

	... Muy bueno!
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April 08, 2010
Votes: +5

derekmann said:

	"Bloody Barack" Obama, was the epithet I stole from someone, they had applied it to Bill Kristol, who I am sure will have no problem with this policy. I felt just that little bit guilty using such a term to refer to our President, but then I guess I was wrong; not the first, nor the last. Once again, the only appeal I can think of is to our elected officials, lot of good that will do.
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April 08, 2010
Votes: +6

john kelley said:

	... I think the only quandary left is when does 'soft' fascism become 'hard' fascism? .... Viva la revoluciòn!
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April 08, 2010
Votes: +7

jo6pac said:

	... deeply marinated They're still with him no matter what, more of Eric Hoffers True Believers and that on both sides palin/o. John Kelly your guess as good as mine but we do get closer every day to the hard side F. State
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April 08, 2010
Votes: +3

Hopey McChange said:

He is lightyears more dangerous than Bush/Cheney The "progressives" love the fool cuz' he's black, and therefore automaically "one of us". The dupes in "progressive" western Europe buy his shit because they WANT to. The uninformed in the ME buy into his crap he's "African", etc. But right from day one he's been an onvious shill for empire. Promises of "change" after a nightmare eight years of blood-letting? How could he lose? The fact is the USA in incapable of "change". It's an Empire - who else would spend 70% of government revenue on the military and "intelligence"? Then beg borrow and steal from every "Harvard educated" central banker on earth, every "Harvard educated" minster of finance in half the world supposedly representing the interests of their Own country, conving them them to finance this murderous empire... Things will Change only when the empire gets their credit card cancelled. But even then, in a last ditch effort to save it's vampire self, it will unleash, with complete abandon, it's military upon the world: because, if "we go down, then we're taking everyone else with us". That is the strategy of both the USA and Zionist Occupied Palestine: the Sampson Option. Ordering a hit on a citizen? That's small potatoes, not even an after thought. And certainly not anything to even hide from a media that is part and parcel of the establishment that is entirely down with the whole empire project - not to mention an utterly dazed and confused and propagandized general public too pre-occupied with bankruptcy, Dancing With The Stars, dieting 'cuz they've been turned into walking Walruses by GMO high-fructose corn syrup diets supplied by Monsanto/DuPont/BASF/Syngenta/etc, and/or poisined by same, etc, etc, etc. These clowns are going to revolt and change things??? I think not. I will 50 this year. I have ZERO doubt that I will live to see global nuclear war started by either Zionist Occupied Palestine or the US empire. I pray for humanity that both of them are quickly destroyed and defeated, never to return.

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April 09, 2010
Votes: +27

Jimmy Montague said:

For me, it's like sleeping with a bomb -- Every morning I wake up and wonder if today is the day the bomb goes off. Every night I go to bed expecting it will go off before morning. It's like that Steve McQueen line from "The Magnificent Seven," where he tells about the guy who jumped off a tall building just to see if he'd get hurt. Every time he fell past a window, people inside the building heard him say: "So far, so good." We're somewhere between the top and the bottom of a mighty long drop. Our velocity increases daily and with it, our paranoid anticipation, but we won't feel any real pain until we hit the pavement. WHEN we hit the pavement, I wonder if we'll survive long enough to feel it even then. So far, so good.

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April 09, 2010
Votes: +7

Greg Johnson said:

Where did all the good people go? I cannot figure out if the American citizens just do not care what is going on or have been so drugged down and leveled off that they just cannot conceive. I voted for Obama, supported him, and consider this one of my most ignorant moves in my life--partially a reaction to what I then thought were Bush/Cheney excesses. I don't believe that our problems can be answered by politicizing them though. This problem is the American peoples' problem; it will only be solved when "enough" becomes the motto and the basis for action and reform. To think, we cannot even get a response to what is going on in America (and being done by America) the likes of that for the Viet Nam "war." Where did all the good people go?

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April 09, 2010
Votes: +8

Dan Stevenson III said:

they are lost ....... Greg you hit the nail on the head! The American People! I have always believed that the American people would stand against anything that they finally saw that was not in their self interest. The Viet Nam war only ended when enough of the citizenry got tired of that mess. It took them long enough but they finally put their collective foot down. But once I watched the banksters come in and take the money right out of the public’s pockets right up front of all of us and no one said much of anything. And once the government gave the bankster more public money and nobody went to the streets I knew that the American public was lost as any kind of counter force to government and corporate plunder at any level. If the citizen isn’t riled to revolt when they are robbed of their money (the foundation of an American’s existence for living) then all else is easy pick’ens! To even think that the public would notice that we are killing people "over there someplace", no matter how it is done, when they just couldn't get up off the couch to demand protection for their own money tells it all. BlackBush rides again.

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April 09, 2010 | url
Votes: +7

Bill Jones said:

Americans are often criticized for having a seven second attention span. My, how things have changed. When the Conservatives abandoned Habeus Corpus they were taking an eight hundred year view and conserving the values that existed prior to 1215. When the progressives decided it was just fine for the President to kill anybody any where any time they had such a long term view of progress that they went back to the future all the way around until we were as far progressed as the Twelfth Century. In only 800 short years we might be as far advanced as we were in 1970.

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April 09, 2010
Votes: +2

Sean O'Neil said:

	... "The Viet Nam war only ended when enough of the citizenry got tired of that mess. It took them long enough but they finally put their collective foot down." Really? That's not how I remember it.
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April 09, 2010
Votes: +3

Dan Stevenson III said:

	Go For it, Sean ......... Ok Sean. How do you remember it? I was trying to encapsulate the entire issue in a short overview so as not to go on about it. We may be more in agreement when we get into detail. So lay it on me and we can see if any smoke clears.
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April 09, 2010 | url
Votes: +0

Hopey McChange said:

	... Vietnam ended because the US lost 4,000 aircraft, 60,000 troops, the war was costing shitloads of money the US didn't have, and the world economy was going tits up. Never mind the fact that is was utterly unwinnable anyway. Popular opposition had nothing to do with it - has it ever?
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April 09, 2010
Votes: +5

Sean O'Neil said:

	... Hopey McChange is on point. Sorry, Trey. I don't feel like "going for it" right now, despite your apparent desire for such a childish game.
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April 09, 2010
Votes: +0

Debbie(aussie) said:

	anger/frustration I don't know what to say. Things just get keep going from hell to ?, how do you describe it. How can we(people of the 'civilized' west) put tup with shit?
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April 10, 2010
Votes: +1

Hopey McChange said:

To clarify: The tipping point was losing the aircraft, NOT the working class suckers who traded an almost guaranteed life behind bars for smoking pot or shooting an opium derivative to a life of having no life at all. The empire doesn't give a shit about casualties - on either side. The fact is MiG's and Soviet air defence/anti-aircraft systems were logarythmically superior to US dogshit (as they are today) - in spite of the complete fucking retroactice horseshit of a "history" presented weekly on the "History Channel" (Pentagon Channel - that is who funds the History Channel, if you didn't know already). Of course the Empire repaid Russia in kind in Afghanistan, but one (especially one who considers themselves informed - as i suspect people here DO - the Soviet Union did NOT "invade" Afghanistan: they were DEFENDING a SECULAR regime that overthrew a psychotic dictatorship. A secular regime that instituted, within days of taking power, Equal Rights For Women; Free Universal Healthcare; Free Universal Education; and the Right To Vote on it. Those are the irrefutable facts. But those facts have been lost, on both the "right" and the "left" - there is NO left in the US, BTW - by some kind of weird fucking synthesis of rewriting of history and triumphalism and/or an irrantional Reactionism of Envy for the better aspects of Communism (minus the Zionist Stalin's madness). That prejudice towards the working class's position - by the working class THEMSELVES - in the heirachy of the Caste System that has predominated Western thinking since at least the Roman Empire, is the essence of the control/propaganda that the ruling class has imposed for, perhaps several thousand years. None of this new. Politics/power naturally attracts the Criminal Class. Of this class type there two distinct variants: 1. The ignorant/royal/concieted class: sons of privelege, those to whom power and prestige are Literal conciets - kings, rulers, generals with swollen heads. They are who the "history" books talk about. They are utterly irrelevant. 2. The Power Behind The "Power": they stay in the shadows and direct and interpret. They fund the wars; they extract Favours form the supposed "kings"; they previously were not after Fame, they were only interested in directing the course of events - while making a very tidy profit - towards a future all-encompassing Kingdom. Today they WALLOW in Fame. But Fame is not enough for them now. They must rub the noses of the uninformed into the literal bullshit of concocted history; into a vision of depravity that has become our cultural NORM. And when someone, like Hugo Chavez for example, disrupts their wheelbarrow of debt, and reinterprets "democracy" as actual power of the people, and infers governement Powers to Them....well, they are non-plussed. Their only reaction is Violence and Disinformation. The point is: if you buy a SINGLE one of their lies, then you are FINISHED as a functioning sentient being. But, I digress.

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April 10, 2010
Votes: +15

Sean O'Neil said:

	... I salute Hopey!
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April 10, 2010
Votes: +0

Sean O'Neil said:

... Point of detail: Two reasons for manufacturing hatred of Muslims, and maybe a third. (1) Islam doesn't like interest when money is loaned. Finance capitalism is premised on the concept of interest; most of the domestic "growth" since Vietnam ended has been based on manipulations of "interest" as a form of money. (2) Islamic people happen to live atop oil reserves. and the "maybe" third, which probably is actually more like (1)(a) and (2)(a), is that Islam is the "odd man out" in the Middle East where Israeli interests are concerned. Ironical reCAPTCHA words I'm asked to enter: Ben-Gurion dieguez

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April 10, 2010
Votes: +4

James Ruhnke said:

When We Became Barbarians That a president can kill an individual citizen is actually small potatoes. It was our terror bombing in World War II that was the real watershed. Before that, our tendency to mass murder was hidden in far away places inhabited by small, brown and yellow people. But the outright slaughters in Germany and Japan were proudly displayed for all to see. After all, we were at war and the other guys did it first. Then came the A-bomb. We could have simply demonstrated it by dropping one well out to sea off of Tokyo Bay but we devatated two major cities instead. So, obviously, the demonstration was not just that we HAD a bomb but that we would actually USE it. Its use was cheered not condemned. So, what's the big deal about a few thousand assasinations? Americans have been the bad guys for a long time now. But like I always say, watch how your future fiance treats a waiter or a cab driver. Sooner or later that is the way she will treat you.

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April 10, 2010
Votes: +5

Jimmy Montague said:

	Women ? I always get my women to pay for the meals and the cabs, etc. As long as they're willing to do that, I don't care how they treat me. Dude, you are late to the party. 8-)
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April 10, 2010
Votes: -2

Hopey McChange said:

	women... That's why stick to high class call girls. I don't need the fucking aggravation.
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April 10, 2010
Votes: -3

john kelley said:

	... Addendum to the military defeat suffered by the Americans in Vietnam... Within a year after the last gringo hightailed it out of Vietnam the north and south reunited. They have basically, though certainly with difficulties, prospered ever since. Isn't there another lesson here?
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April 10, 2010
Votes: +7

James Ruhnke said:

Why Vietnam Ended...or did it? The Vietnam war did not end in 1975. We continue with economic and political war to this day. The actual fighting ended because the elite of America decided that the pot was no longer worth calling another raise....especially when we were holding deuces. Our empire uses many means to achieve its ends. War is usually the last resort. It is simply too expensive and too destructive. We use economic embargoes, "sanctions", The U.N.(which is actually us in foreign clothing), trade with enemies of our enemies, etc. Anyway, now it is time to turn on their own citizenship. Remember a movie with James Caan titled, "Rollerball"? A very prophetic story, I guess.

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April 10, 2010
Votes: +4

Geoffrey Transom said:

Poetic. "And thus you become one of those people that we all used to puzzle over, the accomodationists to brutal tyranny: "How did all those people go along with the Nazis? Why wasn't there more opposition to Stalin? How could they countenance all those obvious abominations? What kind of people were they?" Now you know. They were you. You are them." Word. As an anarchist (actually, I'm an AKRATIST), i would point out that, even if Hobbes was right (and he wasn't), having to put up with bands of marauders under anarchy would seem to be less costly that having to put up with the rapine of the parasite political class. And that's before you take account of the fact that only the State builds battleships, cruise missiles and attack helicopters. Cheerio GT

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April 15, 2010 | url
Votes: +0

Leslie Fish said:

Time to join Considering how libertarians on both the political "left" and "right" object equally to Obama's shameless power-grabs, merry disregard for the Constitution and global aspirations (not to mention his treatment of the economy), I think it's time to drop the old categories and assumptions and join together. Yes, let's ignore the media's engineered slanders of the Tea Party Movement, the Downsize DC group, etc., and go look at these libertarians for ourselves. I believe we'd find, under the rhetoric, that we have a lot more in common than we realize. If we could get together, we truly could put an end to the imperial government. Joke: "What's the difference between a Libertarian and an Anarchist?" "About $20,000 a year." --Leslie <

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April 15, 2010 | url
Votes: +1

Geoffrey Transom said:

Left and Right are Shibboleths... @Leslie Fish - whenever I see someone speak of the 'left' and'right' of politics, I think in terms of the left and right of a point on the left-hand (anti-liberty) side of a contimuum that has Liberty at its extreme right (for the 'molly-dookers' amongst us, you can reverse the handedness without loss of explanatory power). Autrement dit: Churchill, Roosevelt and Obama are closer to Stalin, Lenin and Hitler than they are to genuine libertarians (e.g., me, Nock, Rothbard and Spooner). The terms 'left' and 'right' originated in the Assemblée Nationale in France - the same post-Revolutionary Assemblée that voted to condemn to death the venerable Thomas Paine (one of the intellectual inspirations for both the French AND US Revolutions). In otehr words: political office will, always and everywhere, attract the most despicable scum ever to occupy and apparently-human form. And finally - to paraphrase Diderot (updating him for the end of church hegemony): Man will be free when the last politician is bludgeoned to death with the severed arm of thelast police sniper. Cheerio GT

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April 15, 2010 | url
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Geoffrey Transom said:

	... Gah - wish I could re-write that last comment with no typos (and/or with the benefit of sobriety). To wit: (1) contimuum = continuum; and (2) AND apparently-human form = AN apparently-human form. "In vino veritas" is indisputable, but from time to time it would be nce to write an entire comment without a typo. Chin chin GT "Gazed sanitationmen" seems odd. even for a Captcha doodad.
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April 15, 2010 | url
Votes: +0