William A. Jacobson
Legal Insurrection
5/29/2012
The NY Times has a lengthy article about how Obama personally is directing and approving targeted drone strikes with great frequency. The article appears to be rich in cooperation from the administration, suggesting it is part of Obama’s image making and part of the “He got bin Laden” campaign strategy.
But the revelations have many on the left wondering what monster they have created…
…Glenn Greenwald (emphasis in original):
Earlier today, I wrote about one specific revelation from the article that I most wanted to highlight — the way in which Obama, in order to conceal the civilian casualties he causes and justify the raining down of death he orders, has re-defined “militant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone” – but there are numerous other revealing passages in this article meriting attention.
[On David Axelrod attending meetings at which kill decisions were made] In other words, the person in charge of Obama’s political fortunes attends the meetings where the Leader decrees who lives and dies. Just think about how warped that is, or what progressives would be saying if Karl Rove did that with George Bush….
They count someone as a “militant” — worthy of death — based purely on the happenstance of where they are and the proximity they’re in to someone else they suspect is a Bad Person. If such a person is killed by a U.S. missile, then, by definition, they are “militants,” not “civilians” — even if we don’t know the first thing about them, including their name.
That’s official Obama policy. It won’t even be reported on most MSNBC shows, and won’t even be acknowledged, let alone denounced, by the vast majority of Democrats, including progressives. That’s the Obama legacy…
Read the complete article at Legal Insurrection.
Related: Judge Napolitano on Obama’s “Kill List”: ‘Congress Should Do Something About It’ “Look, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would be turning in their graves if they thought that the Constitution that they brought forth permitted the president to become a killer.”
Also by Judge Napolitano, The president’s private war.
Did you know that the United States government is using drones to kill innocent people in Pakistan? Did you know that the Pakistani government has asked President Obama to stop it and he won’t? Did you know that Pakistan is a sovereign country that has nuclear weapons and is an American ally?…
Update: The Vetting: Obama Decried ‘Spread of Militarism,’ Lauded Anti-Selective Service Group at Columbia.
In late 2008—long after the election—the media revealed a long-forgotten article written by Barack Obama while at Columbia. Obama wrote the March 1983 article, “Breaking the War Mentality,” about two campus groups, Arms Race Alternatives (ARA) and Student Against Militarism (SAM). Ben Smith of Politico (now at Buzzfeed) told readers that Obama’s views reflected the “very conventional campus liberalism of the time.”
Wrong. Smith and the media failed to investigate what the activists at SAM were actually doing: encouraging students to break the law by not registering for the Selective Service and harassing military recruiters…
Update 2: Read Some of the Best Parts of the New York Times Expose on Obama‘s ’Kill List’
Update 3: Why would Obama’s campaign strategist attend Obama’s Kill List Meetings
