Thread: Note To Eric Holder: Murder Is Illegal

Note To Eric Holder: Murder Is Illegal

March 8, 2012 by ppjg
New World Reporter
by R.F. Goggin /Contributing Author

(NWR) – After reading only a few excerpts of a recent speech by the U.S. Attorney General at Northwestern University law school in Chicago, I find myself at odds with his justifications of the murder of Anwar al-Awlaki (an American citizen), five months ago – via a drone strike by the U.S. Government.

What struck me as being most outrageous and uncomfortable about Holder, was his stating:
“The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process..”

The problem for me with the above statement, even if one doesn’t consider how the Attorney General chose to hair-split the words of the U.S. Constitution, is that ‘due process’ or any legal process for that matter, was not in fact exercised in this case by the Obama administration. And since it is that Congress has not yet to my knowledge declared war on the country of Yemen, then what any fair-minded American must conclude actually took place in this instance was the absolute assassination of an individual of which the Constitution of United States had undoubtedly granted protection to.

According to Webster’s dictionary, ‘due process’ is defined:
1: a course of formal proceedings (as legal proceedings) carried out regularly and in accordance with established rules and principles —called also procedural due process
2: a judicial requirement that enacted laws may not contain provisions that result in the unfair, arbitrary, or unreasonable treatment of an individual —called also substantive due process
Of course, without the three words which the Obama administration has hitherto been so reluctant to utter: ‘War On Terror’, which for all intents and purposes – gives carte blanche these days to the U.S. Government to commit terrorist attacks itself by virtue drone strikes anywhere it sees fit, then Holder’s entire presentation before a throng of law students would not have had a leg to stand on. So, while in my view, even as the Attorney General nonsensically rejected the idea that the Constitution’s due process protections require the President to get permission from a federal court before taking lethal action upon an American citizen, he nonetheless went on to say:
“When such individuals take up arms against this country and join al-Qaida in plotting attacks designed to kill their fellow Americans, there may be only one realistic and appropriate response. We must take steps to stop them in full accordance with the Constitution.”

Although I am admittedly blue-collar and as far as can be from an aspiring lawyer; such as those eagerly in attendance to the patronizing travesty of Holder’s words, at the heart of the man’s argument, I must nonetheless, sadly enough, poignantly arrive at an American legal conundrum for me. That being, how one can both reject the applicability of the Constitution and claim to be in accordance with it at the same time? As far as I can determine at least, the words ‘legally or not’, seem to have been profoundly omitted from such a frighteningly simplistic assessment of the deed in question.

If the U.S. Federal Government does not consider the Constitution (ratified and adopted by 50 American States) to be a binding legal document, as it clearly did not in the case of al-Awlaki, then what if anything is to stop its military drones from also seeking out supposed terrorist targets in the hills of Idaho someday? Shouldn’t it stand to reason that assassinations of American citizens anywhere, might only serve to perpetuate the inevitably of future American born terrorists; or the eventual elimination of suspected American citizen terrorists – on U.S. soil?

What I find equally disturbing as possible drone attacks on American citizens within the U.S. itself, is why it is that the bulk of the American people are content to condone or simply ignore the fact that because of a more than decade-old terrorist attack on our homeland in 2001 (as tragic as it obviously was), that we seemingly have become a nation forever freed from any manner of accountability to commit cowardly acts of murder upon those opposed to our geopolitical policies, or who may be unhappy with our very existence (even before they have committed any crime) to this day? If as Americans, we choose not to hold our government responsible to the very the law of the land, and require our leaders to present evidence for their offenses upon individuals in a separate but equal court of law, then why will the citizens whom they are supposed to represent be inclined to themselves act within the law?

According to Holder: “Some have called such operations ‘assassinations.’ They are not, and the use of that loaded term is misplaced. Assassinations are unlawful killings..”

Despite any public servant whomsoever asserting that there was no assassination which took place under President Obama, once it is that a person (or a country) starts to secretly go after people by name in order to eliminate them, could there be possibly be some other word in the whole of the English language to better define such an act? Small wonder to me at least that it has taken nearly half a year for the Attorney General to speak publicly about this matter, as words are evidently not his forte.

American myself, I clearly understand how uncomfortable it may be for a U.S. citizen to think of their noble commander and chief as a ruthless, cold-blooded killer, but the increasing, preemptive military strategies abroad – being performed by our federal government; involving nothing short of military industrial complex robots, I nevertheless find merely high-tech versions of the same kinds of methods historically used by dictators to eliminate their dissenters or opposition. And so it shall indeed be to such a state where Holder’s misguided resolution and such cut and dry thinking will inevitably, lawlessly and brutally be leading us all in the end. This, because, an American fascist dictatorship is the only end that such governmental criminality and cruelty can lead us to. Simply put, there is no justification defensible for the U.S. Government to murder a U.S. citizen without trial, or as the Constitution explicitly states – without due process of law.

With Iranian nuclear scientists mysteriously dropping dead left and right, it just may be wise of one to forget for a moment about anti-American terrorists wanting to do them harm, to consider instead what the Attorney General is likely to determine or to say for his own sake, his career or his President. Feeding us all doublespeak, hair splits on the law or the technicalities of acts of murder, would be the least of his worries. There is nothing easier or more natural for a human being to do than to acquire some personal gain or objective through another’s fear, it’s something we all learn to do as children.

If you are an American living in 2012, even within the confines of America itself, let there not be any doubt about it that you had better be prepared to concede that due to some currently ambiguous ‘war on terror’ having stretched, self-destructively further than its usefulness, that in all matters of State and country, it has now become you or yours who are destined to be assumed guilty until proven innocent by an accelerating and burgeoning, police state federal government.

Lastly, I would ask my fellow American citizen to ask of themselves whether or not some lethal U.S. drone attack on a suspected terrorist thousands of miles away from the American homeland, might possibly have some political aspiration or motive behind it? This notion, for reasons which hardly surprise me, has yet to see the light of day within the mainstream press, so I’m inclined to illuminate it myself. It simply should not go without saying anymore nor anywhere, that if a politician or public servant were to be cast as weak or be deemed insufficient with respect to the so-called war on terrorism, then that would likely cost them their job and/or be useful ammunition to employ against some political rival. The latter, most especially, of course, while in conjunction with a national election process.

Note To Eric Holder: Murder Is Illegal « The PPJ Gazette

We Take Care of Our Own: Eric Holder and the End of Rights Posted: 03/ 6/2012 6:15 pm

Historians of the future, if they are not imprisoned for saying so, will trace the end of America's democratic experiment to the fearful days immediately after 9/11, what Bruce Springsteen called the days of the empty sky, when frightened, small men named Bush and Cheney made the first decisions to abandon the Constitution in the name of freedom and created a new version of the security state with the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, secret prisons and sanctioned torture by the U.S. government. They proceeded carefully, making sure that lawyers in their employ sanctioned each dark act, much as kings in old Europe used the church to justify their own actions.

Those same historians will remark from exile on the irony that such horrendous policies were not only upheld by Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and professor of Constitutional law, but added to until we came to the place we sadly occupy today: the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, publicly stating that the American Government may murder one of its own citizens when it wishes to do so, and that the requirements of due process enshrined in the Constitution's Fifth Amendment, itself drawn from the Magna Carta that was the first reflowering of basic human rights since the Greeks, can be satisfied simply by a decision by that same president.

Yesterday will thus be remembered as the day we gave up. No more clever wordplay (enhanced interrogations, "patriot" act, targeted killing, kinetic operations) but a simple declaration that the U.S. government will kill its own citizens when it wishes to, via a secret process we, and our victims, are not allowed to know or contest.

Brevity in Our Freedom
Like most of the Bill of Rights, the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution is beautiful in its brevity and clarity. When you are saying something true, pure, clean and right, you often do not need many words: "... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

There are no footnotes in the Fifth Amendment, no caveats, no secret memos, no exceptions for war, terrorism, mass rape, creation of concentration camps, acts of genocide, child torture or any evil. Those things are unnecessary, because in the beauty of what Lincoln offered to his audience as "a government of the people, by the people, for the people," the government would be made up of us, the purpose of government was to serve us, and the government would be beholden to us. Such a government would be incapable of killing its own citizens without care and debate and open trial.

With the excuse all tyrants proclaim, protecting the nation, on or about September 30, 2011 a U.S. drone fired a missile in Yemen and killed American Citizen Anwar al Awlaki, born in the United States and tragically devoted to al Qaeda. About a week later, the U.S. murdered al Awaki's 16 year old son. The U.S. had shot at the elder al Awlaki before, on May 7, 2011 under Obama's orders, and under the Bush administration. Before the U.S. government killed his son, attorneys for al Awlaki's father tried to persuade a U.S. District Court to issue an injunction preventing the government killing of al Awlaki. A judge dismissed the case, ruling the father did not have standing to sue. This was the first time in our nation's history that a father sought to sue to prevent the government from extra-legally killing his son. The judge in the case surrendered to his post-9/11 fear and wrote that it was up to the elected branches of government, not the courts, to determine whether the United States has the authority to murder its own citizens by decree.

Fear Shaped by Lies to Compel Compliance
In his speech, Attorney General Holder said things no honest man would ever believe would be said by the highest law officer in the United States.

Holder said "that a careful and thorough executive branch review of the facts in a case amounts to 'due process' and that the Constitution's Fifth Amendment protection against depriving a citizen of his or her life without due process of law does not mandate a 'judicial process.'"

Holder thus also declaimed that the victim also has no right to a defense, no right to speak on his behalf, no right to examine and refute the evidence against him and no right even to know his life will be taken under the decision of a few men in Washington. Indeed, Holder made clear that the government's decision to kill overshadowed the right to self-defense in saying "An individual's interest in making sure that the government does not target him erroneously could not be more significant. Yet it is imperative for the government to counter threats posed by senior operational leaders of al Qaeda, and to protect the innocent people whose lives could be lost in their attacks."

Holder said he rejected any attempt to label such operations assassinations, invoking the same airbrush of lawfulness that fueled the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials and the Holocaust. "Assassinations are unlawful killings. The U.S. government's use of lethal force in self-defense against a leader of al Qaeda or an associated force who presents an imminent threat of violent attack would not be unlawful."

Sluts All
So while the popular media remembers yesterday as the day Rush apologized for calling someone a slut and Republican candidates ignored the wave of history to carp about birth control, historians will look back on March 5, 2012 as the day America gave up on its experiment with unalienable rights, rights that are natural, not given, rights independent of governments, what our Declaration explained to an unsure forming nation as "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

And that is the saddest part of a very sad day: the majority of Americans -- the consent of the governed -- seemingly do not care what Holder said, and are even now bleating on internet forums and likely in comments below to this article about the need to kill more terrorists, adding terrified, empty justifications to Holder's clever Newspeak. We did not have our freedom taken from us, we gave it away.

Peter Van Buren: We Take Care of Our Own: Eric Holder and the End of Rights