With the ongoing confirmation hearings of John Brennan, who Obama nominated as head of the CIA, the topic du jour is the Obama Administration's Predator Drone hit-list on Americans abroad.
NBC News released a White Paper which details, albeit loosely, when these drones can be used to kill American citizens.
The overall gist of the paper is the use of these drones to kill Al Qa'ida leaders, with at least one caveat;
"This paper does not attempt to determine the minimum requirements necessary to render such an operation lawful; nor does it assess what might be required to render a lethal operation against a U.S. citizen lawful in other circumstances, including an operation against enemy forces on a traditional battlefield or an operation against a U.S. citizen who is not a senior operational leader of such forces." (emphasis added)
This should alert all citizens. The government has a habit of incrementally increasing the power and scope of it's programs to a point where it encroaches on the civil rights of all citizens.
Take the EPA for example. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) was essentially passed to prevent pollution. NEPA established the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to report on said pollution. President Nixon then created the EPA to enforce the policies created by the CEQ. The EPA then incrementally increased it's venue to the point where it now over-rules government entities, regulates carbon dioxide which it classifies as a pollutant, and regulates puddles.
This, of course, is a brief synopsis and is by no means meant to be a full history of the agency. It is a great example of how our rights are slowly but surely eliminated right under the noses of the vast majority of the public.
The above paragraph lays the groundwork for the expansion of the President's power to kill citizens of the United States outside of the originally stated parameters.
With that in mind, consider the fact that various government agencies are releasing reports that name Constitutionalists and conservatives as fanatics and terrorists.
Recently, a report from the United States Military Academy at West Point declares conservatives as outdated, racist and potentially dangerous government hating throwbacks to ethnically divisive times, prone to violence and terroristic activities.
Prior to this, a report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims right-wing extremists are on the rise and recruiting due to the "historical election of an African American president". The report classifies those concerned with illegal immigration, gun-control, etc. as well as returning military veterans, Constitutionalists, etc as potential radical terrorists.
Although this viewpoint is historically inaccurate, we have been taught since grade school that groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi) and it's modern day adherents, etc. are "right wing" organizations.
More accurately, the KKK, Jim Crow laws, segregation, socialist movements, etc. were all started by the left. Many left-wing politicians, such as Robert Byrd, Harry Truman, George Wallace and FDR appointed Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, to name but a few.
Byrd, Al Gore, Sr. and Sam Ervin were the chief opponents of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which Byrd filibustered for about 14 hours.
Woodrow Wilson reintroduced segregation to the already integrated federal government and held a White House showing of The Birth of a Nation, a film glorifying the KKK.
The racism of the left was combated by the right, which included Dr. Martin Luther King, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and many more.
With a history of incrementalism, propaganda and officially naming the right as terroristic, how long before the President (or a subsequent president) takes for himself the power to use drone strikes on American "terrorists" within the United States?
The drones are being built at the Springfield Air National Guard base right here in Ohio.
The Ohio State University is promoting drones for use in farming, as reported by the Dayton Daily News.
Police agencies are already using drones within the United States, as reported by the Columbus Dispatch.
There is a story about boiling a frog. If you drop a frog into a boiling pot of water, it will struggle and try to escape. If you put the frog in tepid water and incrementally increase the heat, the frog will happily boil to death.
Feeling jumpy, yet?
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