In the bit above about "fighting dirty", what I meant was that if we have to compromise our system of justice and politics in order to 'win the war on terrorism', then we can't really win it at all. Maybe that's a stock line.
But, to quote
Adam Serwer:
Quote:
Awlaki's killing can't be viewed as a one-off situation; what we're talking about is the establishment of a precedent by which a US president can secretly order the death of an American citizen unchecked by any outside process. Rules that get established on the basis that they only apply to the "bad guys" tend to be ripe for abuse, particularly when they're secret.
[...]
Uncritically endorsing the administration's authority to kill Awlaki on the basis that he was likely guilty, or an obviously terrible human being, is short-sighted. Because what we're talking about here is not whether Awlaki in particular deserved to die. What we're talking about is trusting the president with the authority to decide, with the minor bureaucratic burden of asking "specific permission," whether an American citizen is or isn't a terrorist and then quietly rendering a lethal sanction against them.
|
Refresh my memory of an instance where we dialed back extreme policies -- something to stand as counterpoint to the TSA, the PATRIOT Act, drone strikes, 'enhanced interrogations.'
It seems to me that this is the root tragedy of American policy on terrorism today: you can never turn it off. Any slight shift towards a more relaxed stance on terrorism is "weakness."
Maybe I'm paranoid, maybe I'm cynical, maybe this is all just an unwarranted vomiting of knee-jerk bleeding heart liberalism. I hope it is. But, to my eyes, our recent history is mostly an ever-lengthening list of terrifying things which American citizens are absolutely okay with having done in their names.