I loves me some Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Earlier this week, he was talking about Obama’s new Orwellian white paper that authorizes drone strikes on American citizens.  The title of this posts is Mr. Coates’ final thought on the subject.

The domestic policies of Obama and Bush are vastly different.  Obama has done a pretty darn good job on the domestic front whereas Bush’s lower taxes and higher spending caused a recession.  As far as foreign policy goes, though, Obama is likely even worse than Bush was.  That is not an easy accomplishment.

Now we have this white paper that gives the President almost carte blanche in the killing of American citizens.  Obama has already targeted and killed two citizens that we know about.  Anwar al-Aliki and Samir Khan.  Neither were charged with any crimes.  Neither were considered high ranking members of al-Qaeda.  From what I can find, neither were considered to be actively plotting the deaths of Americans.  What they were good at was spreading propaganda.  So apparently, the U. S. government can now kill you for spreading propaganda.

I am not under any delusions that these people weren’t bad guys.  They almost certainly were.  That does not give our government the right to kill them in a non-combat area without due process.  The President should, at minimum, be required to publicly present all evidence in court before being allowed to target a U.S. citizen.  There is no such thing a state secrets if you think a citizen is worth killing.  If the secrets are worth keeping, the citizen is worth keeping alive.  Simple as that.

Not following our own laws is just fodder for al-Qaeda recruitment.  There are enough lies told about the U.S. that end up being effective recruitment techniques.  Do we really want to keep handing them truths?  I’m sure, though, that they just hate us for our freedoms.