Violating international borders, stalking an individual and blowing him up without the benefit of accusation or trial -- most people would call that premeditated murder. If the person being murdered is an important public figure, we think of it as an assassination. But "murder" and "assassination" are problematic, because both are illegal under U.S and international law. Only under strict circumstances of imminent threat does U.S. law give the president authorization to actively pursue and kill an "enemy".
The Obama administration, taking a page straight out of the Cheney/Bush playbook, is claiming a blanket authorization cloaked in the vagaries of their war on terror even though they no longer call it the war on terror. We are supposed to trust that they will only righteously strike the truly bad.
Under the tutelage of the national security state, the press and the American public have been trained to make some crucial substitutions in their utterances. Murder and assassination have been changed to "strikes", preferably surgical ones. Young boys become "militants", which dehumanizes and militarizes them at the same time.
The president, meanwhile, is not a murderer, or even a noble assassin. No, he is our protector, our guardian, our kick-ass-we're-number-one-in-
Our adversaries of the moment, whether they are fanatic religious terrorists, uniformed troops from the wrong country, or simply people taking up arms against a foreign occupation or a corrupt domestic regime, have all been lumped together as "bad guys."
It makes everything so simple, like a John Wayne western.
In print and on line, editors will change "drone murder" to "drone strike." Why does death by arbitrary government fiat get a pass on being called murder? Why are attempts to refer to the president as "Predator O'Drona" edited and sanitized? Does our respect for the office of the presidency supersede our respect for the Constitution and the rule of law? Today, we scoff at President Nixon's assertions that "If the President does it, it isn't illegal". But how is giving Obama a free pass on playing God with peoples' lives without any accountability any different?
Amazingly, commentators, politicians and patriots alike still summon the supercilious gesture and tut tut about the inhumane violent acts of untrained Afghan soldiers, or Turks, or Pakistanis etc. At the same time, these same voices are calmly debating the value of intelligence that may have come from U.S. torture techniques, which for the purpose of these discussion, are politely referred to as "harsh interrogation" or even better, "enhanced interrogation".
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