[Peace-discuss] "So you've decided to whack a raghead"

[C. G. Estabrook]

[A friend from Brooklyn writes, "It's hit the hipster mainstream,  
even:  <http://gawker.com/5916262/so-youve-decided-to-whack-a- 
raghead>."]


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AMERICA'S SCREAMING CONSCIENCE
JUN 6, 2012 3:16 PM22,683 194SHARE

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So You’ve Decided To Whack A Raghead.
  Mobutu Sese Seko
Last week, the New York Times ran a 5,000-word article on the Obama  
administration's "secret" drone assassination program that might as  
well have been accompanied by the cheery clip art that comes with  
brochures on STDs from the free clinic.

In a more honest universe, the article's sections would've been  
retitled, "So You've Decided to Whack a Raghead" while an  
anthropomorphic death machine, Droney, waved from the margins.  
Clinical and empty positivity practically poured off the pages as it  
described the process through which the Obama administration selects  
members for a "kill list." Drones: they're like antibiotics that  
target the body politic's Muslim cells!

Within a day, some wag started a petition on the White House's  
petition/feedback page asking for a national "Do Not Kill" list. It  
would be incredibly funny if it didn't seem like a really good idea.

What the Times article makes clear is that the Obama administration  
has arrogated to itself both the right to ignore the Fifth Amendment  
and to rewrite people's entire biographies post-mortem. Your right not  
to be killed without due process has been supplanted by the White  
House's ability to have a long talk about you and then write a very  
convincing brief about you that you cannot read—but, trust us, it's  
really good. Meanwhile, if you're a foreigner and have the  
insufferable gall to be standing where a rocket needs to land, simply  
being of military age automatically makes you a militant, and the fact  
that you didn't get out of the way probably makes you a dick.

The article goes on to describe the solemn regularity of the  
administration's weekly Death Club meetings, dubbed "Terror Tuesdays":

Every week or so, more than 100 members of the government's sprawling  
national security apparatus gather, by secure video teleconference, to  
pore over terrorist suspects' biographies and recommend to the  
president who should be the next to die.

Awesome! Whether you're raining hellfire down on the sovereign  
territory of a nation against which you have not declared war and  
terrorizing its citizens, or you're just atomizing an American citizen  
like a frog duct-taped to a dozen bottle rockets, make sure you have a  
checklist. There is no degree of illegality that will not be tolerated  
if you're really serious about it and made a good faith effort to have  
a conversation with a lot of middle-aged white people in chairs.

One wonders how someone like—picking a name out of a hat, here—Barack  
Obama would react to this sort of reasoning if applied to the  
nauseating murders of blacks under Jim Crow. A lynching is the hateful  
and insecure act of an illegal mob, meting out punishment  
extrajudicially. But if they'd had a detailed set of minutes, and if  
it was clear they'd conferred seriously around a conference table  
about the unpleasant but necessary duty to remove a clear and present  
danger to white vaginas....

Such is the state of the United States' contempt for international law  
and the constitution that the black comedy of 2001-2009 feels almost  
beige. Things were supposed to be different: the Democrats were in  
power! WWI and WWII aside, they've somehow became history's pansies,  
and this time they were led by some pinhead constitutional law  
scholar! Amicus briefs for al-Qaeda! Cluster bombs dropping ACLU cards  
all over Waziristan!

Instead, Obama has institutionalized extrajudicial murder and endless,  
undeclared clandestine war by giving it the cheery stamp of bipartisan  
support, inspiring comedy so bleak that it involves soccer moms,  
mallrats, and flyover folks petitioning for the ability to formally  
request not to die. We've reached retro-classic levels of despairing  
comedy about government. This administration could be some political  
hipster's nostalgic paean to Richard Nixon, digging up something  
shitty from the past and making it intensely more dislikable in the  
present. Do you dig secret bombing and secret intelligence abuses?  
Dude, the Bush administration was like the MP3 version of that: it was  
compressed and sounded like hella ass. Check it: Obama dug through  
crates at the secondhand store and found that on vinyl.

What makes this policy both more insidious and more disgusting is how  
reasonable it tries to sound. Nixon's gang of crooks looked like the  
sweaty, least popular members of their league bowling team. But the  
Times article depicts a sober gathering of technocrats. The debate is  
presided over by a man of almost Vedic calm. No paranoid, spitting  
recriminations and rants to Haldeman about "Hot pants! Jesus Christ!"  
When Obama makes an enemies list, there are footnotes. This is a  
baccalaureate committee, and some lucky Muslim is about to graduate a  
threat level. The Obama administration's procedural elements—as well  
as the conspicuously favorable leaks to the press detailing them—are  
designed to convince you that this is killing and malfeasance at its  
most urbane.

It's precisely that sort of calming tone that demands the mordant  
humor of a Do Not Kill list, because only something so absurdly too  
reasonable, too fussily particular, can point out the calm madness it  
confronts.

This petition reveals an attitude that would have been totally  
unthinkable 12 years ago. God only knows what your relationship with  
your spouse or significant other is like, but asking your government— 
even puckishly—to consult a list before murdering you is like saying,  
"Honey, before you plunge the knife down into my helpless, sleeping  
body, please stop to remember all the times I've made you laugh and  
feel joy," then turning out the light. It also points out something  
else very basic: that, Democrat or Republican, big government or  
small, we all consider "not being murdered" the foundation of the  
social contract.

And while that's a welcome step in the right direction, the fact is  
that it took a brick of an article on the front page of the New York  
Times, as well as the assassination of an American citizen to get  
people's attention. Until secret murder policies started redounding on  
American citizens, undeclared war, extrajudicial killing and  
indifference to collateral damage mostly provoked concern among ACLU  
members, Ron Paulbots and bloggers. Until then, this was Someone  
Else's Problem, an unrecorded problem of insufficient weight to even  
become a quandary.

Incidentally, we began drone strikes in the Philippines in February.


"Mobutu Sese Seko" is founder of the blog Et tu, Mr. Destructo?

Image by Jim Cooke. Photo via Gettypic.
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