Earlier this year, the Attorney General of the United States delivered an extraordinary public address with the following message: if you are a US citizen, the President of the United States can issue an order to have you killed without review or approval from any other branch of government.
No other president has ever asserted such authority. The Obama administration has already used this authority. On September 30, Anwar Al-Awlaki, a member of Al Qaeda, born in America, was targeted and killed by American drone airplane strike in Yemen.
Neither holder nor the White House justified the killing as ending an “imminent threat” to the United States “where capture is not feasible”. The killing did not follow “the law of war principles” and no evidence was submitted to a judge for judicial review or congressional approval under “due process” as required under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
Despite the gravity of the issue and departure from the Constitution and past precedents - the nation has been virtually silent on the issues involved - except for John E Sununu, a retired US Republican senator from New Hampshire and that faithful defender of the Constitution, the American Civil Liberties Union.
Both are performing heroic acts by alerting the nation to the increasing erosion of constitutional values and ideals that have systematically chiseled away at basic American freedoms for the last ten years.
Where are the political leaders, Democratic or Republican, fighting to protect the fabled American Constitution with the intensity and commitment expended on military adventure in distant corners of the globe? Thank you Senator Sununu for your non-partisan defense of a basic American value.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
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