Obama orders assassination of US citizen

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Obama orders assassination of US citizen
8 April 2010

For the first time in history, an American president has officially
ordered the assassination of a US citizen.

President Barack Obama has approved the “targeted killing” of Anwar
al-Awlaki, a US-born Muslim cleric who is reported to be in hiding in
Yemen. No substantial evidence has been brought to bear against
Awlaki, 38, who is accused of terrorism, and he will be afforded no
legal recourse against the death sentence.

Word of Obama’s decision has been intentionally leaked by multiple
intelligence officials to various media sources. Reuters and the Wall
Street Journal published news articles on the story on Tuesday, and
these were confirmed by stories in the Washington Post and New York
Times on Wednesday.

The killing of citizens declared by the executive branch to be
“terrorists” was first announced as state policy by Obama’s director
of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, in February congressional
hearings. “We take direct actions against terrorists in the
intelligence community,” Blair said. “If we think that direct action
will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”

Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico, has been linked by e-mail
communication to Nidal Malik Hasan, the army psychologist who gunned
down 13 soldiers in a November rampage at Ford Hood, Texas. No
evidence has been presented, however, to suggest that Awlaki in any
way planned or ordered the attack.

There have also been allegations, so far entirely unsubstantiated,
linking Awlaki to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian youth who
attempted to blow up an airplane as it approached Detroit on December
25, 2009. The failed attack was, in fact, made possible by the
stand-down of the US intelligence apparatus—or its direct complicity.

Awlaki’s family have defended him. “I am now afraid of what they will
do with my son, he’s not Osama Bin Laden, they want to make something
out of him that he’s not,” said his father, Dr. Nasser al-Awlaki, a
US-trained scientist, in a January interview with CNN. “How can the
American government kill one of their own citizens? This is a legal
issue that needs to be answered.”

The public justification for killing Awlaki is based on bald
assertions and hearsay from intelligence sources who refuse to even
identify themselves. Typical is the following account from the New
York Times: “American counterterrorism officials say Mr. Awlaki is an
operative of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula … They say they believe
that he has become a recruiter for the terrorist network, feeding
prospects into plots aimed at the United States and at Americans
abroad, the officials said.”

The decision to kill Awlaki takes Washington’s lawlessness to a new
level. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drone assassination
program has killed between 400 and 500 “militants,” the vast majority
in countries with which the US is not officially at war. The Bush and
Obama administrations have declared the right to attack or invade
countries Washington deems to be threats to US interests, and have
institutionalized a worldwide regime of kidnappings and indefinite
imprisonment without trial in the so-called “war on terror.”

But while Washington has long flouted the laws of war, there is no
precedent for a president openly ordering the assassination of a US
citizen he declares to be an enemy.

This is, however, a further extension of the claim asserted by Bush
and continued by Obama that the president has the power to declare
individuals, citizens as well as non-citizens, to be “illegal enemy
combatants” and held indefinitely in military detention without being
charged or given access to the courts. The Obama administration is
moving to institutionalize the policy of indefinite detention by
setting up a military prison in Illinois, so-called “Guantánamo
North,” where scores of Guantánamo detainees will be held indefinitely
without trial.

The Obama administration justifies the policy of targeting US citizens
for murder by citing the September 14, 2001 congressional act, the
Authorization to Use Military Force. Passed three days after the
September 11 attacks, the measure allowed the US president, from that
moment forth, “to use all necessary and appropriate force against
those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned,
authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on
September 11, 2001.”

Out of 531 senators and congressmen casting votes, only one opposed
this sweeping measure that is now being invoked by Obama to kill a US
citizen without charge or trial.

The Obama White House is evidently seeking a new pseudo-legal
justification for the policy of state murder. “Officials now argue
privately that Americans who side with the country’s enemies are not
ultimately ‘entitled to special protections’,” the British Telegraph
reported. The “special protections” to be discarded are none other
than the liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, which the
Founding Fathers installed precisely to provide the citizenry
protection from the state.

There has been no evidence that suggests Awlaki represents any
immediate threat to the US people. On the contrary, his killing will
only provide new fodder for terrorist groups. The administration’s
decision to kill Awlaki is largely motivated by the desire to
establish a new precedent.

The implications are chilling. In principle, there is nothing in such
a policy to stop intelligence officials from declaring political
opponents of US imperialism within the 50 states to be terrorists and
put on a list for liquidation. Neither Blair’s initial testimony nor
subsequent media accounts have spelled out any limitations to the
policy of assassinating US citizens beyond assurances that the measure
is to be used only against “terrorists.”

The executive branch arrogates to itself the powers of judge, jury,
and executioner, and those targeted for liquidation have no right to
question the supposed evidence against them.

There is a deeper logic behind the order to kill Awlaki. Under
conditions of economic crisis, the methods of imperialist violence
abroad must inevitably be visited upon the population at home. The
turn toward war and increasingly dictatorial forms of rule both rise
inexorably from the deepening crisis of US and world capitalism.

There has been no opposition within establishment political quarters
to Obama’s order. The New York Times article on the decision reads as
a legal brief defending it.“As a general principle, international law
permits the use of lethal force against individuals and groups that
pose an imminent threat to a country,” the leading organ of US
liberalism writes. “People on the target list are considered to be
military enemies of the United States and therefore not subject to the
ban on political assassination first approved by President Gerald R.
Ford.”

This underscores the fact that no section of the political
establishment retains any serious commitment to the defense of
democratic rights. Only through the independent political mobilization
of the working class against both parties of US capitalism and the
corporate-financial oligarchy which they represent can democratic
rights be defended.

Tom Eley

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/pers-a08.shtml

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