Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Friday, September 30, 2011

State-Sanctioned Murder

If one person can be assassinated--killed without due process of law--then anyone can be assassinated.

10 comments:

HMDK said...

Yeah, I've been trying to make that point on Steve Benen's blog, but hey, it seems like a lot of people are all for it when their side does.

Anatole David said...

"then" not "than"--pardon, pet peeve.

Once the US started Extra-Judicially executing "enemy combatants"(anyone deemed a "Terrorist) with Drone strikes it only took a small step to doing it to anyone, anywhere. Yes, it's a terrible precedent that a US Citizen has to suffer due process free execution(two US citizens were killed in that drone strike),but the War on Terror has been based on the premise of denying all legal rights to those labelled "terrorists" and many infringements upon those ostensibly being defended from them.

Nice you overlook partisan point scoring and note the troubling precedent. Obama's War on Terror doesn't bother with the messiness of torture, it just proliferates the assassination(execution) by drone strike policy.

Sad to say President Obama practically sides with Douthat's defense of systemic failure in executing innocents to better uphold the formal purity of justice when the overwhelming majority killed in these drone strikes are innocent civilians(many women and children).

Have a wonderful week-end!

DocAmazing said...

Yeah, the Sensible Democrats over at Lawyers Guns & Money are on board with the assassination as well, except that calling it an "assassination" is inflammatory.

The frog's pot keeps warming up.

atat said...

Greenwald asks how people would feel about Perry or Bachmann having the power to assassinate U.S. citizens.

And somehow that still didn't shut up the "progressives" cheering this on.

Susan of Texas said...

Thanks, Anatole David.

It's okay if my party does it--the authoritarian motto.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

AT&T, I asked the same question over at Media Matters.

Some of my erstwhile friends promptly accused me of being a wingnut (note the 13 downthumbs).
~

Pete said...

I am getting very, very tired of blogs involving people who think they are progressive and then ... endorse assassination. (Also, discount the experience of racism, reflexively support the police, applaud the profit motive, accept inequality ...) So it's always nice to drop in here.

DocA: Have you not read Fallows on the subject of frogs? Eschew the metaphor, if only for Fallows' sake.

DocAmazing said...

Pete--

Sorry. You're right, of course: frogs are smarter than to let incremental changes overwhelm them.

fish said...

I am with Anatole David on this one. While there are some bonus legal lines crossed by executing an overseas American, the executions have been going on for a long time to those not lucky enough to be American, and drone wars are expanding throughout Africa. Sociopathy seems to be not just for breakfast anymore.

nate said...

I had to quit reading L,G&M because, as witty and snarky as they can be at times, they are just go-along Dems for the most part. Charli Carpenter could pivot on a dime from talking about the morality of torture and aggressive war to gushing over Battlestar Galactica. I don't know if it was her defense of the former or the latter that disgusted me more.

No wonder those assholes support targeted assassination of American citizens. I'm sure they have a nice academic rationale for it as well.