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GEORGE W. BUSH, WARLORD A
Presidential Impostor Turns Political Assassin
NEW YORK--First he appointed himself President.
Now George W. Bush has declared himself God.
As Americans begin their third year of Supreme
Court-ordered political occupation, Bush has just signed an
impressive new executive order. You may be surprised to learn that
it grants him the right to order your execution. No judge, jury or
lawyer. No chance to prove your innocence. One stroke of Bush's pen,
and bang--you're dead.
Not even your American citizenship, according to
Bush, will save your life if and when he decides to kill you. The
only reason you're reading this right now--instead of meeting the
Entity Formerly Known as God--is that neither Bush nor one of his
"high-level officials" has yet signed a piece of paper declaring you
an "enemy combatant." Once they do the paperwork, Administration
officials assert, they have the right to murder you.
Bush's secret assassination directive surfaced
on Dec. 3, when reporters asked about the Nov. 3 Central
Intelligence Agency rub-out of alleged Al Qaeda operatives riding in
a car in Yemen. Langley fired a Hellfire missile from a
remote-controlled Predator drone into the vehicle, blowing up
several men. The CIA later discovered that an American citizen,
Kamal Derwish, had inadvertently been killed in the inferno.
"No constitutional questions are raised here,"
asserted National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, stretching
credulity more than usual. Officials claim that a loophole in Bush's
order authorizing the CIA to "covertly attack Al Qaeda all over the
world" validates Derwish's murder. Since this sneaky directive makes
exception neither for Americans nor American soil, these guys say,
you and I have no more rights than the now-deceased,
not-presumed-innocent Kamal Derwish.
Your life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
are now officially subject to George W. Bush's personal
judgement--or whim.
The war on terrorism isn't a war, it's a cheesy
public service announcement, like the "war on poverty" and the "war
on drugs." Like those old un-won campaigns, it involves no
declaration of war, no defined enemy, no front. And like them it
will gradually fade into embarrassing irrelevance. "Can you believe
it?" future citizens will marvel. "People actually took this stuff
seriously!" In the meantime, America's Gang of Four--Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft--have brilliantly exploited the
nebulousness of nullity. Having no enemy means that anyone can be
declared the enemy. Having no battleground means that the
battleground is anywhere and everywhere. "The Bush Administration
and Al Qaeda together have defined the entire world as a
battlefield," writes the Associated Press' John J. Lumpkin.
While the CIA has targeted U.S. citizens in the
past, those killings were officially sanctioned only when the person
in question was considered an immediate threat to American lives.
Scott L. Silliman, director of the Duke University Center on Law,
Ethics and National Security asks: "Could you put a Hellfire missile
into a car in Washington, D.C. under the same theory? The answer is
yes, you could."
Never mind that anyone driving on the Beltway
could just as easily be pulled over by the cops. Like the medieval
lords who wielded the right of life and death over their subjects,
our Texan warlord now claims the droit du seigneur over the
American people.
Under his legalized assassination mandate, Bush
could theoretically declare the 2004 Democratic nominee an "enemy
combatant," Hellfire his campaign bus and coast to reelection
unopposed. It would be a heck of a lot easier than preparing for
debates.
Granted, it's unlikely that CIA missiles will
begin raining down on Berkeley or other liberal burgs anytime soon.
Killing Muslims, even those with U.S. citizenship, is one thing;
offing "ordinary" Americans is another. As has been the case with
previous Bushie infringements on fundamental civil
rights--electronic eavesdropping, jailing people without trial or a
visit by a lawyer--most citizens believe themselves safe simply by
virtue of their not being terrorists.
They may be right. They might be wrong. It's all
in the hands of the executioner-in-chief now.
(Ted Rall is editor of "Attitude: The New
Subversive Political Cartoonists," an anthology of cartoons,
ephemera and interviews with 21 of America's best editorial
cartoonists. Ordering and review-copy information are available at
nbmpub.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2002 TED RALL
RALL 12/10/02
Originally
Published on December-10-2002
;) December 2002
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