Sorry for droning on...

At the time of writing, the Guardian has just run an online story about Obama. It seems he is ready to bypass congress when it comes to his 2014 agenda. Dan Pfeifer, Obama’s senior advisor for strategy appears particularly ‘American’ in the most pejorative European sense of the term: ‘We need to show the American people we can get something done… the President is not going to tell the American people he will wait for Congress.’

Suitably gung-ho for a president who saw a number of high profile gun crimes in 2013 and refused to use the word gun, even in his ‘angry’ and ‘heartfelt’ speech condemning these err, unspeakable, crimes. But then something struck me about this new gung-ho attitude… Where was it for all the various issues Obama spoke of that made us-on-the-left so delighted with the fashionable young black presidential candidate five years ago? Where was this single minded determination when it came to Guantanamo? Or the healthcare reforms? Or the economy? I thought the whole problem was that Obama was essentially a good guy but held up by all those blood-sucking Republicans? Didn’t they shut down the government last October? If Obama had the powers of dictator-elect, why for heaven’s sake (and this is coming from an atheist), didn’t he use them then?

Clearly his plans for 2014 were bigger and better than such minor issues as stopping (direct) US torture or somehow making the efficient private-sector health service in the US better than Cuba’s. Incidentally in 2011, annual government expenditure on healthcare amounted to over 17% of GDP in the US – something like 40 times total Cuban GDP, strangled as it has been for half a century by an economic embargo. What are these plans? We will find out in Obama’s state of the union address on Tuesday (time of writing is Sunday 26th Jan) and needless to say I am breathless in anticipation. Barack the builder, can we fix it? Yes, we can!

Yet bizarrely enough, there seems to be a whole host of other things that Obama has done without the express approval of congress. No doubt many in senate would approve of the two American-backed coups in Honduras and Paraguay since Obama started office, and perhaps they even largely knew about it, but I fail to recall express approval of any such actions reported in the press. Similarly, the assassination of Osama bin Laden without trial was not something trumpeted to the world until after the fact. Who in Senate knew about the numerous murders in Pakistan and Yemen in the deliberate campaign of war waged against farmers and children and other threats to ‘national security’. Well everyone, this civilised practice of modern warfare was approved in the House. But who gets to judge exactly who gets, um, droned? Is there a vote every time a potential drone candidate is found? No; Obama has a ‘constitutional’ right to act as judge, jury and executioner.

For surely, Obama must be acting constitutionally? We may, err, disapprove of some of the more abstract and less appetising moral or ethical consequences of drone attacks, such as: is it really fair for soldiers to be able to kill targets from thousands of miles away without any risks to themselves? Is it surprising when those soldiers, from thousands of miles away, end up killing the ‘wrong’ people? But, I suppose, as I have argued before, ethical considerations are a luxury only affordable to the comfortable, and we shouldn’t let such abstract scruples worry us when our very way of life is at risk from, um, Islamo-fascist fundamentalist evil Jew-demon monster people. Have you not seen Four Lions?

Because, to get back to the point, Obama, as a trained constitutional lawyer and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize must surely be innocent of any crime? Would an American President, the most powerful individual in the world, knowingly commit a crime? Nixon knows better: it is simply ‘impossible’ to commit a crime as American President because that’s the way democracy works. You voted for me so shut-up and quit whining. For four years I, as American President, have a God given right to assassinate, torture, extraordinarily render, and misabuse the English language. Since Clinton, I can even change the meaning of sex.

You see the US, by virtue of being the US, is allowed to kill people in other countries without trial. Especially if they are not white, though the good men and women (wouldn’t want to be sexist – American women have the right to indiscriminately kill Arabs too!) of the CIA can get over their scruples if it is a matter of ‘national security’. These matters transcend such petty things such as constitutional rights, as was clearly shown in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, radical Islamist American-Yemeni Imam suspected of terrorism – though actual evidence directly linking him to a terrorist attack is still forthcoming. Rest assured, he was guilty of thought crimes – he approved of suicide bombing – so he was ‘really’ a terrorist, even if he wasn’t really a terrorist. I thus presume that Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, al-Awlaki’s son killed in a drone attack two weeks later at the age of sixteen while eating in a restaurant with his cousin and friends, was guilty of blood crimes. That is guilty by virtue of being the son of his father. The people criminal justice system will be glad to have found such a sure-fire way of making their jobs that much easier. And don’t worry, even if there was no official backing from the Senate, the Senate’s majority leader assured Candy Crowley on CNN that sixteen year old Abdulrahman got what he deserved.

Before I conclude, there are two things I would like to clarify. Firstly, I wrote about Abdulrahman and Anwar al-Awlaki because Jeremy Scahill has told their story and could do so because they were American citizens. Many of the less fortunate, those born in Pakistan or Yemen, are killed without so much as the tribute of an angry journalist, and certainly lack the exposure of the English language press. While the news can pick up on the tragedies that paint a nice picture about us (the fifteen year old Malala shot by regressive misogynist Islamist fundamentalists in Pakistan and saved in Britain) we are less likely to tell the stories that see us as the guilty party. Secondly, would things be better if the American Senate voted on each drone attack approved? Or more unlikely, if the people of America made the same decision? Do I argue that, while I may not approve of certain actions made by the US government they damn well ought to be democratically approved, constitutional and legal? No I don’t. I can’t imagine anything more stupid.

Alas, with the ineluctable passage of time we have lost the right to target whomever to those brash young Americans. May they bear it responsibly.