Obama Steps Into Bush's Boots

From an article in Salon by Glenn Greenwald, here's how Obama is trying on the same nutty policies as Bush in the "war on terrorism"...

Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration's policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges -- based solely on the President's claim that they were Terrorists -- produced intense controversy for years. That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn't Obama's policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind -- not imprisoned, but killed -- produce at least as much controversy?

Bad guys are bad guys. But there is a reason why there are institutions and rules to control how you deal with bad guys. Without them you are back into the days of absolute kings with their star chambers that could target "enemies of the state" using 'court sessions' held in secret, with no indictments, no right of appeal, no juries, and no witnesses.

I'm all for bad guys being treated severely as their crimes merit. But I'm also a guy who worries about abuse of power. History is replete with fanatics getting their hands on the instruments of state and running amuck. You want to slow down their ability to run roughshod over rights. The writers of the US Constitution put a lot of "checks and balances" into the structure of US government to prevent this very thing. This is why police forces and military forces has rules and regulations that cover how they apprehend and treat the bad guys. Bush -- especially Dick Cheney -- had contempt for the rule of law and now Obama is treading down the same path.

Greenwald adds this update to his article that is well worth pondering:

James Joyner argues that this "hit list" policy is not much different than our drone attacks in Pakistan, which Obama has substantially escalated, and that "no one seems to be complaining about the President's authority" to kill suspected Terrorists there. Actually, there are substantial questions about the legality of those drone attacks, though the complete secrecy behind which the program operates makes those questions very difficult to address. Beyond that, though, there's a substantial difference between a government which (a) targets foreign nationals whom it claims are part of a enemy organization and (b) targets its own citizens for assassination without any due process. They both have substantial legal and moral problems, and killing innocent foreigners is obviously no better than killing one's own innocent citizens, but (a) is at least a fairly common act of war, whereas (b) -- as the U.S. Government itself has long argued -- is a hallmark of tyranny. There's a much greater danger from allowing a government to target its own citizens for extra-judicial killings.