The We-Are-At-War! mentality

[MNBrewer]

<http://www.salon.com/2011/12/03/the_we_are_at_war_mentality/>

"Two significant events happened on Thursday: (1) the Democratic-led Senate rejuvenated and expanded the War on Terror by, among other things, passing a law authorizing military detention on U.S. soil and expanding the formal scope of the War; and (2) Obama lawyers, for the first time, publicly justified the President’s asserted (and seized) power to target U.S. citizens for assassination without any transparency or due process."

snip

"When Obama lawyers refer to “U.S. citizens who take up arms with al-Qaida,” what they mean is this: those whom the President accuses (in secret, with no due process or evidence presented) of having taken up arms with al-Qaida. When they refer to “battlefield targeting decisions,” they do not mean a place where there is active fighting, but rather: anywhere in the world an accused Terrorist is found (leaving no doubt about that, Johnson decreed that the limits of “battlefield v. non battlefield is a distinction that is growing stale“). In other words: the whole world is the battlefield, a claim Obama officials have long embraced, and someone is a Terrorist the minute the President declares him to be one: the President is the sole judge, the sole jury, and now even the sole executioner.

So my question to defenders of Obama’s assassination powers is this: which of those four core Bush/Cheney War on Terror premises do you reject, if any? Given the theories used to justify Bush/Cheney powers — ones that were just repeated almost verbatim by Obama lawyers when asked about the Awlaki assassination — how can anyone coherently have objected to the Bush/Cheney Guantanamo detention system but support Obama’s assassination powers now? Indeed, if anything, the Obama assassination powers are more extremist than the Guantanamo detention system"

[nineteen50]

1. Rhetoric seems to be the only difference between the Bush and obama

administrations.

[MNBrewer]

2. A gap that narrows daily

[zeemike]

3. I agree with most of that

except about the president being the executioner....the executioner is the system...and some times the system just tells the president what to do when the system becomes all powerful.
And that is why Ike warned us about the power of the military industrial complex.

[treestar]

4. Would you have objected to even Bush taking out OBL and

Awlaki?

Republicans overdo the "we are at war" mentality, but some on the left overdo it the other way, to a point where we couldn't defend ourselves.

[MNBrewer]

5. I would have expected extrajudicial means from Bush

I objected to Bush's power grabs then, I object to Obama's continuation of Bush's power grabs.

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". - Benjamin Franklin

[treestar]

6. Bush's power grabs

Even those were legislated and challenged in the courts, and some not upheld.

So the same powers remain to all subsequent presidents until the courts decide they aren't constitutional.

There's a line to be drawn somewhere - we aren't just going to lay down and let OBL or the like continue to plan those attacks and try to stop them only when we have trial level evidence.

Surely there is some point where you allow for us to defend ourselves?