Obama’s assassination program

George Bush’s decision merely to eavesdrop on American citizens without oversight, or to detain without due process Americans such as Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, provoked years of vehement, vocal and intense complaints from Democrats and progressives.  All of that was disparaged as Bush claiming the powers of a King, a vicious attack on the Constitution, a violation of Our Values, the trampling on the Rule of Law.

Yet here you have Barack Obama not merely eavesdropping on or detaining Americans without oversight, but ordering them killed with no oversight and no due process of any kind.  And the reaction among leading Democrats and progressives is largely non-existent, which is why Olbermann’s extensive coverage of it is important.   Just imagine what the reaction would have been among progressive editorial pages, liberal opinion-makers and Democratic politicians if this story had been about George Bush and Dick Cheney targeting American citizens for due-process-free and oversight-less CIA assassinations.

The American Prospect‘s Adam Serwer has an interesting post reporting that civil rights groups have issued a joint letter opposing the closing of Guantanamo if it means — as the Obama administration has suggested — that Guantanamo and its defining injustices will simply be re-located to U.S. soil.  As part of his reporting, Serwer writes this:

[B]road assertions of executive power haven’t even been limited to the last administration. Instead, we’ve seen the powers of the president expand, with the Obama administration asserting the right to assassinate American citizens without any due process or finding of guilt whatsoever.

From a civil libertarian point of view, we’re in a much worse place than we were during the Bush administration, when Democrats were willing to oppose Bush’s expansive claims of executive authority. Now we have only muted criticism from Democratic legislators and hysterical cries from Republicans that Obama isn’t going far enough.

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