Showing posts with label Assassination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Assassination. Show all posts
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Torture Then, Assassination Now
Predator drones firing Hellfire missiles killed Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen on September 30, 2011. Al-Awlaki was a U.S. citizen born in Las Cruces, NM in 1971. This was part of the vast collective insanity that plays out in the skies above us while down here all seems normal in up-scale Grosse Pointe Farms. Sunshine. Children going to school accompanied by parents weekdays. Down the street a lawn was dug up a couple of weeks ago to replace a defective sewer line. Now, thanks to Tocco Mannino Landscaping services, a new lawn completely hides the devastation. In the sky unspeakable madness. Some years ago I studied lawyerly documents showing why we could engage in torturing people. Today’s news tells me that the Obama administration evidently ordered al-Awlaki’s killing based on another lawyerly document justifying the event—provided that al-Awlaki could not be taken alive. It turns out that he might have been—taken alive. He and three companions were traveling by car and had stopped for breakfast. Helicopters might have landed and surrounded him. We’re not at war with Yemen, to be sure. Nor were we at war with Pakistan when we landed copters to grab bin Laden. I wonder. Was there also a lawyerly memo justifying military action in Pakistan before we landed?
Friday, May 14, 2010
A Trailer for the Dark Ages
Trailers are misnamed—because they’re really previews. Having just recently noted virginal Miranda under assault by our AG, today the New York Times leads a front page story (bottom left corner) with: “The Obama administration’s decision to authorize the killing by the Central Intelligence Agency of a terrorism suspect who is an American citizen has set off a debate over the legal and political limits of drone missile strikes…”
“Killing” is a refreshingly direct expression—and shorter than “assassination.” Now I sort of wonder when, precisely, it became a shrug-off to kill or assassinate non-citizens? When, precisely, did “regime change” become a legitimate enterprise, used almost with the same causally neutral tonality as “changing my underwear”? When Saddam Hussein decided on “regime change” in Kuwait, why the global uproar? Or is “regime change” only the prerogative of the most powerful?
When and how did the concept of human rights morph into a more nuanced, delicate, shall we say sophisticated distinction between citizen rights and those of “lesser people”? And only briefly. Because our concept of citizenship is itself involved in an eye-blurringly rapid transformation, under which citizenship is in the eye of the beholder, namely the eye of the cop on the beat, say in the State of Arizona or in a CIA-eye staring at a screen in one of the Carolinas as it directs a drone over the wastes of Yemen.
But if the trailer thrills you—be assured that there is much, much more to come. To a theater near you. Or even right at you, right through the door, unannounced, innocently cybernetic, unaware of its own explosive nose.
Trailers were named that because, although previews of coming attractions, they were spliced to the tail of movies.
Added Later:
Brigitte points out, having read the above, that these matters are calmly, seriously, learnedly, analytically discussed on C-Span and PBS with nary a sign of emotion. Sometimes the measured, scholarly tone is jarringly out of place. All this is madness. Really. This is not a case of developing the “policy implications,” the “international reactions,” the “political consequences” of the obvious and scary incoherence of slashing amorality everywhere. These matters are actually and seriously dangerous. They are.
“Killing” is a refreshingly direct expression—and shorter than “assassination.” Now I sort of wonder when, precisely, it became a shrug-off to kill or assassinate non-citizens? When, precisely, did “regime change” become a legitimate enterprise, used almost with the same causally neutral tonality as “changing my underwear”? When Saddam Hussein decided on “regime change” in Kuwait, why the global uproar? Or is “regime change” only the prerogative of the most powerful?
When and how did the concept of human rights morph into a more nuanced, delicate, shall we say sophisticated distinction between citizen rights and those of “lesser people”? And only briefly. Because our concept of citizenship is itself involved in an eye-blurringly rapid transformation, under which citizenship is in the eye of the beholder, namely the eye of the cop on the beat, say in the State of Arizona or in a CIA-eye staring at a screen in one of the Carolinas as it directs a drone over the wastes of Yemen.
But if the trailer thrills you—be assured that there is much, much more to come. To a theater near you. Or even right at you, right through the door, unannounced, innocently cybernetic, unaware of its own explosive nose.
Trailers were named that because, although previews of coming attractions, they were spliced to the tail of movies.
Added Later:
Brigitte points out, having read the above, that these matters are calmly, seriously, learnedly, analytically discussed on C-Span and PBS with nary a sign of emotion. Sometimes the measured, scholarly tone is jarringly out of place. All this is madness. Really. This is not a case of developing the “policy implications,” the “international reactions,” the “political consequences” of the obvious and scary incoherence of slashing amorality everywhere. These matters are actually and seriously dangerous. They are.
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