The Executioner’s Opera

The New York Times details how the United States decides to execute someone deemed a threat to our security. The decision is made in the White House, in secret, and the president has final say. There is no legal due process, presentation of evidence or questioning of witnesses, though the administration claims to be painstaking in its analysis.

Then the drones are launched, in Yemen, Libya or the frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, against a single “militant” or group of “militants”, a surgical strike from the air, controlled by people thousands of miles away.

We are assured Herculean efforts are made to avoid civilian casualties in this program of targeted assassination, but miscues happen and innocents are killed, incinerated, blown to bits – women, children, elderly – whoever happens to be in the wrong place at the right time. If our government issues any apology at all, it is only grudgingly, after many denials. We are at war, after all, and remorse is voluntary.

Reading the New York Times story reminds me of Blood Meridian, the novel by Cormac McCarthy, about the scalp hunters who rode with Glanton and the Judge, murdering Apaches and Mexicans with no consequence and no burden on their conscience. Glanton’s men killed at close range and were often splattered with their victims’ blood, shards of bone, or strands of viscera. In that era, killing was intimate and messy.

We have evolved neater methods.

Obama the constitutional scholar and Nobel Peace Prize winner arrogates to himself the powers of an absolute monarch, life and death, guilt or innocence, friend or enemy. At home the monarch spies on his subjects and abroad murders those he deems a threat, real or only potential, even American citizens. Only Obama knows the difference between a militant and a terrorist.

What if the leaders of France or Germany or Sweden decided that they too must assassinate potential enemies in order to safeguard their people? Would the US allow it? Unlikely. The US would demand strict observance of international law and the will of the United Nations, a process to prevent civilian casualties. Other than the US itself, only Israel is allowed to kill with impunity.

The hypocrisy is astounding.

No public outcry follows the Times story, no debate, no doubt, the dual wings of our single political party stand in solidarity. The attacks on 9/11 were terrible, barbaric, the work of the criminally insane, but our response to 9/11 has been as lethal to our civil liberties and moral standing as the attacks themselves. We kidnap and indefinitely detain, we kidnap and torture, we assassinate. The bulwarks and levees of law constructed to curb the abuse of power by our government lay breached.

We have become as barbaric and insane as those who attacked us.