Obama’s ‘Kill List’ Grows

We are now witnessing the expansion of Obama’s “kill list.” The list began under the Bush regime as a rationale for murdering suspect citizens of countries with which the United States was not at war. The Obama regime expanded the scope of the list to include the execution, without due process of law, of U.S. citizens accused, without evidence presented in court, of association with terrorism. The list quickly expanded to include the American teenage son of a cleric accused of preaching jihad against the West. The son’s “association” with terrorism apparently was his blood relationship to his father.

On February 10, The Wall Street Journal revealed that the Obama dictatorship now intends to expand the kill list to include those accused of acting against foreign governments. Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an “Algerian militant” accused of planning the January attack on an Algerian natural gas facility, has been chosen as the threat that is being used to expand Obama’s kill list to include participants in the internal disputes and civil wars of every country.

If the Obama regime is on the side of the government, as in Algeria, it will kill the rebels opposing the government. If the Obama regime is on the side of the rebels, as in Libya, it will kill the government’s leaders. Whether Washington sends a drone to murder Putin and president of China Hu Jintao remains to be seen. But don’t be surprised if Washington has targeted the president of Iran.

The elasticity of the kill list and its easy expansion makes it certain that Washington will be involved in extrajudicial executions of those “associated with terrorism” over much of the world. Americans themselves should be alarmed, because the term “association with terrorism” is very elastic. Federal prosecutors have interpreted the term to include charitable contributions to Palestinians.

The next time former Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) gets on an aid ship to Palestine, will D.C. give the green light to Israel to kill her as a terrorist agent for her association with aid to Gaza, ruled by the “terrorist organization,” Hamas?

Two  years ago, the director of Homeland Security said that the federal police agency’s focus had shifted from terrorists to “domestic extremists,” another elastic and undefined term. A domestic extremist will be all who disagree with Washington. DHS has labeled Tea Party organizers and peace activist as “domestic extremists.” They also are headed for the kill list.

Where is the government going with this? The most likely outcome is that everyone disliked or distrusted by those who have the power to add to the kill list will find themselves on the list. As the Founding Fathers knew and the American people have forgotten, no one is safe in a dictatorship. Clearly, the American public lacks sufficient comprehension to remain a free people. All indications are that the large majority of Americans fear alleged terrorists in distant lands more than they fear their government’s acquisition of dictatorial powers over them—powers that allow government to place itself above the law and to be unaccountable to law. This is despite the fact that 99.999% of all Americans will never, ever, experience any terrorism except that of their own government.

According to a recent poll of registered American voters, 75% approve of Washington’s assassination of foreign citizens abroad based on suspicion that they might be terrorists, despite the fact that the vast majority of the Gitmo detainees, declared by the U.S. government to be the most dangerous men on Earth, turned out to be totally innocent. Only 13% of registered voters disapprove of the extrajudicial murders carried out by Washington against foreign citizens, whether based on wrong intelligence, hearsay or actual deeds.

Registered voters have a different view of the extrajudicial murder of U.S. citizens. In what the rest of the world will see as further evidence of American double standards, 48% believe it is illegal for Washington to murder U.S. citizens without due process of law. However, 24% agree with the Obama regime that it is permissible for the government to murder its own citizens without trial.

Are we to be reassured or alarmed that 24% of registered voters believe that the terrorist threat is so great that suspicion alone, without evidence, trial and conviction, is sufficient for Washington to terminate U.S. citizens? Should we not be disturbed that a quarter of registered voters, despite overwhelming evidence that Washington’s wars are based on conscious lies—“weapons of mass destruction,” “al Qaeda connections”—are still prepared to believe the government’s claim that the person it just murdered was a terrorist? Why are so many willing to believe a proven liar?

If we add up all the costs of the “war on terror,” it is obvious that the costs are many magnitudes greater than the terror threat that the war is alleged to contain. If terrorists were really a threat to Americans, shopping centers and electric substations would be blowing up constantly. Airport security would be a sham, because terrorists would set off the bombs in the crowded lines waiting to clear security. Traffic would be continually tied up from roofing nails dispensed on all main roads in cities across the country for each rush hour. Water supplies would be poisoned. Police stations would be bombed and police officers routinely terminated. Instead, nothing has happened, despite Washington’s killing and displacement of huge numbers of Muslims over the past 11 years.

The cost of the “war on terror” is not merely the multitrillion-dollar financial bill documented by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. The cost of Washington’s wars is the main reason for the large national debt, the threat of which politicians are using to destroy the social safety net. This is a huge cost for a pointless war that pleases Israel and enriches the armament companies.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former assistant undersecretary of the U.S. Treasury and former associate editor of The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of many books including The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Alienation and the Soviet Economy, How the Economy Was Lost and others.