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Battlefield America: The Drone On Drones
BATTLEFIELD AMERICA:
THE DRONE ON DRONES
THE DRONE ON DRONES
Rand Paul, of course, is aware of the possibility of America becoming the new battlefield and illustrated quite well that people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham are out of touch with what Americans are truly thinking about the use of new technology to carry out the task of law enforcement and in some cases war like battles at home.
Quite frankly, any Senator that condones the use of drones as a method of carrying out a new form of mechanized executions should resign. Paul, a critic of Obama’s unmanned drone policy, started his self-described filibuster by demanding the president or Attorney General Eric Holder issue a statement assuring that unmanned aircraft would not be used in the United States to kill terrorism suspects who are U.S. citizens.
However, his wonderful filibuster calling attention to the dangers of drones and to the encroachment of the constitutional right of due process ran into a snag when he appeared on The Rush Limbaugh Show the morning after.
Rather than espousing a zero tolerance policy on drone use all over the world, he rationalized that the use of drones overseas is justified, however they should not be used in the United States.
“We currently do drone strikes overseas, and I am all for them when people are shooting at American soldiers,” he told Limbaugh on his talk show. “I think they are great tool, they are a great weapon, we should use to defend American soldiers and American lives but we are also killing a lot of people who aren’t actively involved.”
Rand Paul continued by saying, “They may be bad people, they may have been involved yesterday or going to be tomorrow, but we kill them at home asleep in café’s etc. Now that standard may be okay overseas I think it’s debatable but at home that standard is not good enough.”
Once again the politician duplicity of life and death and the standards we have about who dies and who lives is in my opinion suspect with regards to drone strikes and should be called out. I believe that Rand Paul would be served well to demand zero tolerance on the issue of drone strikes.
Meanwhile, he continued explain to Rush his stance on the matter, “So if you are in a café and you’ve been emailing your cousin that lives in the middle east and people here in congress say you are an enemy combatant. Well I think you can be accused then of being associated with a terrorist, if that person in the Middle East is a terrorist but you need to be arrested and you need to have a chance to defend yourself.”
Rand Paul then said what I believe shows the obvious political soft peddling and the obvious rationalizing for the elimination of due process when he stated, “If you have a grenade launcher, you don’t get due process, so if you are attacking America inside or out, American or otherwise you don’t get a lawyer or due process if you are setting up a bomb. But you do if you are sitting in a café eating with somebody or sending an e-mail to someone, it needs to be clear that if you are non combatant, if you are not engaged in combat that you get your day in court.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
As I understand it there are two components of due process: fair notice and the opportunity to be heard. The fundamental rationale behind due process is to check against an arbitrary government action.
The Legislative branch writes the laws including the ones that dictate charges available against U.S. citizens that the Executive branch enforces by bringing citizens in violation of the law to be tried before an impartial Judicial branch that the Constitution itself or the Legislative branch has established.
And as we have seen in our present time of national crisis we can see the procedures of due process become more elastic than in times of peace.
However the United States has set aside its “standards” of who deserves a trial or due process after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. I guess that I am bit old fashioned, but I have seen in history people who have done far worse than assembling a bomb or having the intent of using a grenade launcher and they got a fair trial and due process.
The Obama Administration has consistently justified its broad exercise of military powers by pointing out that it is executing what Congress has authorized it to do. Congress’ 2001 Authorization of Military Force “authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” However, it seems that there is a selective form of enforcement of the killing of American citizenry after the ratification of the NDAA.
Americans are now being programmed into believing that if the authorities see a person or organization as a threat, and carries out a drone strike against the so called threat that due process has been forfeited because they appeared to be armed and ready to attack the United States, its military or police forces.
Certainly, terrorism is a global threat not limited to traditional geographic notions of the battlefield. In fact we can go back to 1995 and point out that American terrorism was realized during the Oklahoma City bombing.
American terrorist Timothy McVeigh had his day in court and was executed for his part in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
Going back even further in time we see how the standard of fair trials and due process was vital even when it was already realized that those on trial would be found guilty.
In 1945, the Nuremberg Trials were held in the Palace of Justice in Bavaria. Twenty-four of the most notorious of war criminals behind the Nazi atrocities were given due process even though the evidence was overwhelming that they had committed the most nightmarish crimes during World War II.
It is amazing to look back into history and be proud of the fact that America and its allies were faithfully committed to a Constitution that guarantees due process of law even for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Even the most vile and evil individuals on planet earth were given a trial and were convicted. Back then no one questioned the validity of due process or the expense of a trial that basically seemed like it was an obvious no-brainer that the accused were guilty.
The Nazis were terrified of their trials. I remember watching movies in my history classes as the German war criminals were shaking and terrified at the thought of facing a world jury for the murderous criminal behavior that they employed under the direction of Adolph Hitler.
The Nuremberg trials also set precedence for international criminal law. They influenced The Genocide Convention of 1948, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The Nuremberg Principles and The Convention on the Abolition of the Statute of Limitations on War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. The model set down at Nuremberg set a basic standard.
Standards that now have been ignored as history and tradition are being erased by the technological terror of drones and that it is by the decision of the executive that these miracles of mechanized death are judge jury and executioner at any time even when it looks as if a crime or act of terror is being committed.
As a talk show host and a former news reporter I have seen how the mainstream media is incapable of encouraging critical thinking about what the government proposes and enacts. The media used to be a tool to question authority and keep those who wield power honest. They also were very wise in indicating hypocrisy and duplicity with officials that can easily become media darlings.
The American people are unaware of the dictatorship creep and are most certain that America will dig itself out of the morass of political, economic and social dangers that are seen as potential problems and not serious handicaps that will render us helpless.
I have been accused in the blogosphere of saying that the world is ending soon and that we are witnessing the apocalypse. I am merely contending that the spirit of the apocalypse, World War III and the police state is becoming so gratifying for most Americans that the argument of guns, money and social ills are forcing us to ignore the hidden hypocrisy that is always being spewed out of Washington with regard to the trust we put into technology that is being programmed for kill by the militarized police dragnet.
Many people say they are against it, however the mainstream narrative rules the thoughts of the people and soon their zero tolerance of police state machinations wane when they here of fugitives who are combative with police, or so called terrorists that are shooting at troops.
Our ability to demand due process fades when we hear about a renegade police officer who stands accused of murder shooting at police officers. We are made to feel that the end justifies the means and when the shooter is burned to death in a cabin we forget that only one side of the story will be heard and the other side was told well by the police to the media.
We then rationalize that the perpetrator had it coming. We decide that a trial is needless because the media has painted to picture of what they are told by the authorities. We do not understand that the media will always side with authority and not with the accused.
Research suggests that the media marginalizes and delegitimizes the less powerful. The media today will malign anyone who advocates rebellion or real change in the way government does its business.
The media will take the side of the powerful and will always malign anything that even appears to be a regular citizen defending his right to life, to property and freedom. They illustrate that there are many Americans disenfranchised with how government treats them. However they also look down on the disenfranchised attempting to take a stand, whether it is by harmless protest or in extreme cases violent acts of aggression that under the law are punishable after a court hearing.
The new media now allows for the court of public opinion to taint the fair trial process and many people are falling into the trap of demanding that all cases of criminality be handled right at the scene of the crime with deadly force.
Do we not wonder or even suspect that criminality exists in the highest positions of the country? On one hand we talk about the corruption and criminality of the police, FBI, CIA and other alphabet agencies and yet we trust their resolve in carrying out an execution when we think or allege that they were caught red handed with “evidence” that indicates that they should be at the business end of drone firing from the sky?
With truth pretty well compromised, it is important to use caution with information coming from your government. It is important to understand that the controllers of information are trying to create false leads and are attempting to create turmoil within the United States.
The real enemy in America is the conditioned citizen who by lack of interest accepts and decides that the rule of law is only supposed to be given by those who deserve it and not all people. This is why the mechanized response of most Americans is by design and while they can safely complain about the oppression they receive and the agendas they see as dangerous they forget that their attitudes and ideas may one day be a threat to the establishment and may result in a trip to a concentration camp for re-education or a mass grave that has to be dug because of an unfortunate event where a drone just happened to be dispatched to break up an alleged “terrorist threat” at an NRA meeting.
Think of it: They all could be gathered in a room. They all could have guns. All that has to be reported is that their intent was to take over government building and immediately the court of public opinion would say, “They deserved it because the authorities believed that they were armed and dangerous and were plotting to take over a government building.”
The meeting could be harmless. It could be lawful gun owners in one place. However the public media coached court would question the validity of “harmless” and the justification of the drone strike because of appearances.
We have such a love for convenient and air tight cases produced by people like Nancy Grace and Piers Morgan that we forget that real people are the targets and that people’s intentions can all be made up by authorities.
We forget that corrupt police officers have been known to plant evidence, fabricate stories and even commit crimes in order to cover up indiscretions. It is awfully frightening that even with this knowledge there are people who are willing to hand over their trust and protection to a technological terror like a drone.
It is time for us to realize that with the advent of the robotic policing of the planet we need to be extremely vigilant and realize that there should be NO TOLERANCE for any mechanized threats to freedom.
In what seems to be a dying democratic country, I would present a challenge to people like Rand Paul. I would suggest that he should take his stand further by stating that we do not need in any situation the use of drones that are loaded for the sole purpose of taking human life that stands accused of any criminal activity.
I would say that rules of engagement should be left to the discretion of the military and the police however, there must also be the challenge of taking a perpetrator as a prisoner and utilizing due process in order to show that we have morals and values and that the criminal or war criminal when convicted most certainly doesn’t.
It is unequivocally the responsibility of every citizen to set aside and try to erase any and all conditioning about what you assume about criminal activity. There are many sides to all criminal activity and appearances do not warrant conviction. Do we really believe that in this country a person of interest or suspect of any crime is innocent until proven guilty by a court of law?
Have we fallen for the trap that if someone winds up in jail or is being trailed by the authorities that this automatically means that the party that is sought after is guilty?
It is a challenge for America to find a way to prepare and inform themselves about the encroachment of constitutional liberties.
We no longer have an excuse to defend the tyrannous acts of government. It must be said that the gradual plan of keeping America in constant state of surveillance is being embraced by all parties in power and should not be turned into a partisan attack for the benefit of putting faith in a new candidate for President. We have gone thus far through two different presidents of different parties paving the way for despotism in the United States.
It’s still your individual responsibility as an American citizen to uphold the principles of democracy on which this nation is founded. Law enforcement officials and the military also have the responsibility to erase the programming and stand for morality and justice as they, too, have been given the charge to defend the constitution both foreign and domestic.
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