No
administration official since 2001 has put it quite that way, of course, but it
is a fair summary of the country's fear-based endless war against an
abstraction, terrorism, that is made more palpable by the very actions taken to
fight it.
Another
way to summarize a dozen years of pre-emptive war is that the United States is
within its rights to defend itself against all enemies, real and imagined.
What Do You Call It When One Man Decides Who
Lives or Dies?
Since
American terror policy is contradictory and semi-secret, it appears
incoherent. In March 2012 on CNN,
Attorney General Eris Holder expressed the administration's point of view in a
manner suitable to Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass." Here, rendered in the quasi-poetic form
it deserves, is Holder's explanation of lethal drone strikes:
Some have
called such operations "assassinations.'
They are
not. And the use of that loaded
term is misplaced.
"Assassinations'
are "unlawful killings.'
Here, for the
reasons that I have given,
the US
Government's use of lethal force
in
self-defense against a leader of al Qaeda
or an
associated force
who presents
an imminent threat of violent attack
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