[D66] American democracy and the “disposition matrix”

[Antid Oto]

American democracy and the “disposition matrix”
31 October 2012

The media and political establishment have responded with near total 
silence to the Washington Post’s revelation last week that the Obama 
administration has transformed extra-judicial assassination into a 
permanent practice of the US government.

What should be immediate grounds for the impeachment of the president 
has been met with indifference, most notably from liberal and “left” 
supporters of Obama’s re-election. If the initial Post article has 
something of the character of a trial balloon—to see to what extent the 
revelation of such measures would be met with official opposition—the 
results are conclusive: there is no significant commitment to democratic 
rights in the media and political establishment.

By any objective account, the Post’s revelations are extraordinary. 
“Targeted killing”—a euphemism for assassination—“is now so routine that 
the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and 
streamlining the processes to sustain it.” The administration has 
transformed “ad hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure 
capable of sustaining permanent war.”

Kill lists “that were regarded as finite emergency measures after the 
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are now fixtures of the national security 
apparatus.” At the same time, it is “a policy so secret that it 
impossible for outsiders to judge whether it complies with the laws of 
war or US values—or even determine the total number of people killed.”

In other words, the administration has systematized a process by which 
the executive branch, with no judicial oversight, kills people—including 
US citizens—routinely all over the world. From a “state of exception,” 
the administration has transformed these powers, without any public 
discussion, into a state of permanence.

The language used by government officials to justify such measures is 
chilling. The list of potential targets has been dubbed a “disposition 
matrix.” One former administration official noted that they faced a 
“disposition problem”—i.e., the government faced the challenge of 
disposing of targets. Wary of a potentially messy legal process, whether 
in civilian courts or before military tribunals, the Obama 
administration has elected more and more to simply kill people.

Writing in the Council of Foreign Relations, Micah Zenko cites one 
military official involved in the targeted killing program: “To 
emphasize how easy targeted killings by special operations forces or 
drones has become, this official flicked his hand back over and over, 
stating, ‘It really is like swatting flies. We can do it forever easily 
and you feel nothing. But how often do you really think about killing a 
fly?’”

Employing a somewhat different analogy, former CIA analyst and Obama 
adviser Bruce Riedel, told the Post, “The problem with the drone is it’s 
like your lawn mower. You’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The 
minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back.”

Thousands have been slaughtered in this way, including many entirely 
innocent civilians. Among those assassinated by the American government 
were US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, accused of propagating Islamic 
fundamentalist ideas. Obama has declared that ordering the killing of 
al-Awlaki was “an easy one.” Robert Gibbs, a top Obama adviser, declared 
in relationship to the killing of al-Awlaki’s 16-year old son, also a US 
citizen, who was accused of nothing, that “he should have had a more 
responsible father.”

It is impossible to speak of the “erosion” of American democracy any 
longer. The situation is far more advanced. Such language reflects a 
political establishment for which the most basic democratic conceptions 
are entirely foreign. It is language befitting a police state.

The implications go far beyond the use of drones. In seeking to justify 
its program of state killings, the Obama administration has in effect 
obliterated the legal basis for all constraints on executive power. The 
core concept of due process is inscribed in the Fifth Amendment of the 
Constitution, which declares that “no person shall…be deprived of life, 
liberty or property, without due process of law.”

The concept of due process traces its roots to the very origins of 
constitutional monarchy and the limitations on arbitrary power in 
Britain—the Magna Carta. In brief: a person cannot be deprived of his 
rights, including his right to life, without a legal and judicial 
process. According to the Obama administration, however, this due 
process requirement is satisfied by the internal deliberations of the 
executive—by the president and his closest advisers.

And if the president can kill anyone, including US citizens, without 
judicial review, what power does he not have? Any but the most formal 
distinction between democracy and presidential dictatorship is swept away.

Such measures will ultimately be used within the United States. 
Particularly since the September 11 attacks, the American government has 
constructed a huge spying apparatus, an apparatus currently overseen by 
the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)—the same body that is at the 
center of the assassination program.

In March, the Justice Department modified guidelines to allow the NCTC 
to collect and “continually assess” information on American citizens for 
up to five years, from 180 days as established under Bush. In July, the 
American Civil Liberties Union remarked that the changes amounted to “a 
reboot of the Total Information Awareness Program” which Bush was forced 
to formally abandon in 2003 after intense public opposition, though it 
was continued in different forms.

The terminal crisis of American democracy is deeply rooted in the 
structure of American capitalism, and in particular the vast growth of 
social inequality. Over the past several decades, a tiny financial 
aristocracy has monopolized enormous resources on the basis of 
speculation and increasingly criminal operations. After creating the 
economic and financial crisis that erupted in 2008, this same social 
layer is determined to pursue unpopular policies at home and abroad.

It is worth noting in this context a column by prominent political 
commentator George Will, appearing in the Washington Post earlier this 
month. Under the headline, “Seeds of Our Dysfunction,” Will complains 
that “America’s public-policy dysfunction exists not because democracy 
isn’t working but because it is.” People are not being sufficiently 
“reasonable,” Will complains, particularly because they do not recognize 
the need for massive cuts in social programs. “People flinch from 
confronting difficult problems until driven by necessity’s lash.”

Will is simply giving voice to conceptions more broadly felt in the 
ruling class. The political system, even under its current 
anti-democratic form, is seen as a hinderance to implementing policies 
that are determined to be “necessary.”

In fact, the two political parties are as united in their commitment to 
a wholesale attack on the working class as they are in supporting the 
policy of extra-judicial assassination abroad. In the aftermath of the 
election, whether Obama or Romney wins, the ruling class is planning 
immediate measures to slash social program upon which millions of people 
depend.

Unending war, social reaction, and the repudiation of legality—this is 
the program of the American ruling class. Democracy is incompatible with 
the continued rule of the financial aristocracy, and the continued 
existence of the social system, capitalism, upon which it rests.

The task of defending and extending democracy, therefore, lies with the 
working class—through its independent political mobilization in the 
fight for socialism.

Joseph Kishore

http://wsws.org/articles/2012/oct2012/pers-o31.shtml