Mark Whittington
It has been a long time since President Gerald Ford, under pressure of the Church committee, issued an executive order prohibiting assassinations of foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro. In the 1970s, assassinating enemies of the United States was considered uncool.
Not anymore. Continuing a policy begun by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11, President Barack Obama has set out to kill people with an enthusiasm that would astonish a Mafia don out to conclude the family business. Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Alwaki are just two of the miscreants who have assumed room temperature thanks to presidential order. To be sure, Moammar Gadhafi was sent to meet Allah by his own people, but the U.S. helped, along with the French.
This is not to say that anyone whom Obama has had killed did not richly deserve what they got. However, one has to note that just as only Nixon could go to China, only Obama could make assassinations cool again.
Big Government opines that Obama has gotten a taste of solving problems by making them disappear. The president recently suggested other dictators may be next. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashir al-Assad might want to take note of this and get their affairs in order. Nature, however, seems to be dealing with Hugo Chavez on its own.
The political left, of which Obama is a proud member, was the most outraged back in the 1970s when it was learned that the CIA was trying to kill people, mostly without success. The reaction to Obama’s removing problems plaguing the United States has been largely muted from his political quarter, with some grumblings that al-Alwaki, being an American citizen, deserved a fair trial before he got a fair hanging.
Obama’s main critic, at least for his role in the demise of Gadhafi, has been Russia, which thinks it breached international law. This is rather rich, considering how Vladimir Putin has dealt with some of his domestic enemies.
Sadly, there will come a time when assassinating dictators will no longer be cool. This will happen at the same time Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, or someone else raises his right hand to take the oath of office. But until then, let all tyrants tremble. Obama is after you.
Courtesy: Yahoo News Online