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| Bloom off the Rose? |
“When president does it… it’s not illegal” is a lie ─ at
home and abroad, U.S. risks loss of credibility, legitimacy
Editing and comment by
Carolyn Bennett
The U.S. president’s Thursday speech at the National Defense
University in Washington, D.C. read as if he were not responsible for the atrocious
foreign relations method and model that is being inflicted upon the peoples of the
world, including Americans.
The Obama speech, writes political analyst Joseph Kishore, “expresses
the deep crisis of the American State ─
…as it carries out a violent and
definitive break with bourgeois democracy.
…there is fear, within sections of
the ruling class, that the state as a whole risks losing any legitimacy in the
eyes of the population of the United States, and of the world.
Guilty but not responsible
“Within a week” of September 11, 2001, the president, easing
out from under, said, “Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force.” Furthermore,
he said, “my administration began briefing all strikes outside of Iraq and
Afghanistan to the appropriate committees of Congress. … Not only did Congress
authorize the use of force, it is briefed on every strike that America takes;
every strike. That includes the one instance when we targeted an American
citizen, Anwar al- Awlaki …”; but, the president said, “I do not believe it
would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S.
citizen—with a drone or with a shotgun—without due process. Nor should any
president deploy armed drones over U.S. soil.”
But this is precisely what the Obama government is doing and has
been doing for the course of its tenure.
Kishore points out that the “Constitution requires that charges of illegal activity
be proven in a court of law [but] no court has ever determined the validity of any of the (government
officials’ or media’s) claims against (al-Awlaki); and therefore, the killing
of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in September 2011 was unconstitutional.”
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But,
if the president does it,
|
it’s not a crime, eh? Where did that pomposity come from? Ah,
yes, U.S. President 37, Richard Milhous Nixon: May 20, 1977, television interview with
David Frost: “Nixon – ‘When the president does it, that
means that it is not illegal’” He was into his second term too.
Nixon held the presidency from 1969 until 1974; and when caught in the Watergate Scandal,
his Excellency tearfully and with sweating lip chose resignation over certain
impeachment. Forty-four exceeds thirty-seven’s Watergate.
JUDGE JURY EXECUTIONER
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| Global War of Terror |
“In the attempt to fit his defense of (extrajudicial, unconstitutional,
lawless) killings, the current president tap-dances as in the musical “Chicago”,
Richard Gere playing the crafty lawyer. In Kishore’s words, the president “chooses
his words carefully”: instead of referring to “‘due process OF LAW,’ as
specified in the Constitution,” the president uses the terms “due process” alone,
leaving a hole which frees the president and his team ─ (rubber-stamping) “internal
deliberations of the executive branch, the president and his closest advisers (without requisite) intervention of the courts” ─ to manufacture what
constitutes “due process,”
Kishore says. |
I
|
llegality twists retroactively into “legality”: Kishore observes
also that in his Thursday speech President 44 tries “to give his actions
greater legal cover” by suggesting “that Congress might consider establishing
some mechanism to oversee the decisions of the president and attempt to
legalize what has been done ex post facto.”
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| Muslims protest USA |
That means retroactively, after the administration has broken
domestic and international law (“When the president does it, that means that
it is not illegal” – but of course it is illegal) ─ and everybody
who’s paying attention knows they have broken the law ─ U.S. lawmakers go back
and make what was criminal not criminal for the president and his team.
Sweet deal, eh? A new immigrant slaving in an apple orchard
or in hotel toilet or an Afghan, Iraqi, a Pakistani or Yemeni in their own
country couldn’t get a deal like that. But there is an air of restlessness in
the land. The mask is slipping and the bloom is off the rose.
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| Okinawans protest USA |
Skating on very thin ice
Kishore notes that President 44 in his extrajudicial killing
and illegal detention speech emitted “a tone of nervousness and defensiveness.”
The tone “pervaded” the speech, the Kishore said,
…reflecting awareness within the
ruling class that what they are doing is not only illegal but also increasingly
unpopular.
Significantly, the speech was
repeatedly interrupted by a woman who denounced the administration’s policy on
drone assassinations and the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
Crisis self-inflicted
“The actions of the State, particularly those of the Obama
administration,” Kishore says, “have changed American society and called into
question the viability of democratic forms of rule.”
While U.S. officials in federal Washington are exporting “democracy”
and brutally imposing it on selective Arab and Muslim countries, they are demolishing
any remnants “democracy” in the United States.
These people taking the rest of us for fools are graduates of America’s top-notch
academies: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago; and if the situation were not so
serious, it would be laughable. So president number 44, taking a breather from
lecturing other countries and their leaders, romanticizes our fourth president:
“America is at a crossroads,” he says.
More like a
self-inflicted crisis.
“We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or
else it will define us. We have to be mindful of James Madison’s warning that
no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare,” the president said.
Tell me
again who is waging endless wars of terror against the world including the United States of America.
|
T
|
he Obama speech “expresses the deep crisis of the American
state as it carries out a violent and definitive break with bourgeois democracy,”
Kishore concludes. “At least within sections of the ruling class, there is a
fear ─ entirely justified ─ that the state as a whole risks losing any
legitimacy (indeed this erosion is well under way and deepening every day) in
the eyes of the population of the United States and of the world.”
Indeed.
Sources and notes
“Obama offers tortured defense of targeted killings ─ In his
speech yesterday at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, U.S.
President Barack Obama offered a tortured defense of extra-judicial
assassinations, for the first time publicly acknowledging the killing of Anwar
al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, in September 2011” (Joseph Kishore), May 24, 2013, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/24/dron-m24.html
President 37
Richard Milhous Nixon (b. January 9, 1913, Yorba Linda,
Calif., U.S.; d. April 22, 1994, New York, N.Y.: 37th president of the United
States (1969–74); faced with almost certain impeachment for his role in the
Watergate Scandal, Nixon became the first American president to resign from
office. He was also vice president (1953–1961) under President Dwight D.
Eisenhower.
Richard
M. Nixon, television interview with David Frost, May 20, 1977: Nixon – “When
the president does it, that means that it is not illegal, “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejvyDn1TPr8
Nixon quote: History Commons, http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a040677nixonnotillegal
Joseph Kishore
Joseph Kishore is a senior political analyst with the World
Socialist Web Site.
His memberships, affiliations, contributions include Socialist
Equality Party National Secretary and board member. http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Joseph-Kishore/1309816212
The World Socialist
Web Site based in Buffalo, New York, is a media organization that features
daily news and analysis written from a socialist perspective; and commentary on
the arts, culture, history, and politics. http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Joseph-Kishore/1309816212
World Socialist Web Site (WSWS)
According to its website, “the World Socialist Web Site is
published by the International Committee of the Fourth International, the
leadership of the world socialist movement, the Fourth International founded by
Leon Trotsky in 1938.
“The WSWS aims to meet the need, felt widely today, for an
intelligent appraisal of the problems of contemporary society. It addresses
itself to the masses of people who are dissatisfied with the present state of
social life, as well as its cynical and reactionary treatment by the
establishment media.
“[The] web site provides a source of political perspective
to those troubled by the monstrous level of social inequality, which has
produced an ever-widening chasm between the wealthy few and the mass of the
world's people. As great events, from financial crises to eruptions of
militarism and war, break up the present state of class relations, the WSWS
will provide a political orientation for the growing ranks of working people
thrown into struggle.”
http://www.wsws.org/en/special/about.html
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