On May 2nd 2011,1 Obama watched Osama bin Laden being assassinated. Fourteen people watched the snuff movie with him,
President Obama said,
“Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So, his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and dignity.”2
The September 2001 massacres were a humiliation for America. They wanted vengeance.3 Their template was Dirty Harry4 (see Addendum). He was a fictional all-action policeman and featured in several films in the 1970s and 80s. Obama was a teenager then and was probably influenced by the gung-ho tropes.
Obama and the American public felt entitled to assassinate Osama.5 Obama gloried in the assassination. Assassination became a political policy and triumph. Osama was a terrorist mastermind but not unique. Did Obama’s peace and dignity imply a universal justification for assassinating people like Osama? If so, that’s inconvenient for American statesmen, including him.6
Currently America is sinking small boats because they say that the sailors are narco-terrorists.. Vice-president Vance said, with classic American hubris, “…that he did not even care if people call it a war crime,”7 demonstrating the mentality of the American government. War crimes are a suitable American policy because they aren’t really war crimes. American Exceptionalism relieves Americans from moral considerations.
Vance and Hegseth glorify illegal actions with childish reductionist rhetoric. This amounts to no more than,
‘I do it because I can. So, what! What can you do about it?’
They don’t prove drugs are on board because evidence is irrelevant. What matters is that the boats are sunk as a military PR stunt. If drugs were on the boats they could easily be intercepted using overwhelming American naval resources. Drugs aren’t the point. What matters is demonstrating American power.
Destroying boats and killing Latin Americans is machismo politics – it’s a Dirty Harry foreign policy. The importance of tiny boats in the supply of drugs to the gigantic American drug market is wildly implausible. Most illegal drugs are Chinese and Mexican and are imported by US citizens,
“Roughly 70% of all offenders were U.S. citizens, and almost half (49.4%) had little or no prior criminal history.”8
Obama’s elegant rhetoric and Vance’s boorish abuse are the same. Both believe that extra-judicial murder is OK when America does it.
Addendum: The ‘do you feel lucky punk’ quote
I know what you’re thinking: ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do you, punk?
Notes
1 Osama bin Laden killed by U.S. forces – HISTORY see also Barack Obama: War Criminal | Odeboyz’s Blog
3 Obama took ownership of the action and was holding the smoking gun.
5 Osama Bin Laden: What happened to his body? – BBC News
6 Barack Obama: War Criminal | Odeboyz’s Blog
7 JD Vance Doesn’t Care If Venezuelan Boat Strike Called A War Crime | HuffPost UK Politics see also Hegseth names Caribbean anti-drug mission ‘Operation Southern Spear’ – NBC 6 South Florida He thinks that sinking small boats using overwhelming force is acceptable if he believes it to be justified.
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