President Obama won re-election on Tuesday night and I was overwhelmed with relief. The next morning, I was filled with resolve.
There are humanitarian and constitutional rights issues where the President has taken actions I morally object to, the first being the use of weaponized drones; and the second being the unlawful detention of alleged criminals — that is indefinitely detaining them without charging them of a crime in the first place and then denying them a trial in a court of law (denying “due process”) in the second place.
I don’t have a problem with the collection of information that aids the government in preventing terrorist attacks, a.k.a. intelligence gathering. Maybe be it’s sneaky and shady. And maybe it IS. (Yeah, it is.) I do have a problem with killing innocent civilians by dropping bombs on them. It makes a kill list look like a grocery list you’d jot down for a going away party on a post-it note. At least the kill list doesn’t say, “A. Smith and everyone else in a 1 mile radius who happens to be there. And B. Jones and everyone else in a 2 mile radius who happens to be there.” Wow. The moral compass on meth. Using weaponized drones is immoral, unethical, unjust and absolutely unconstitutional in the absence of a declaration of war (which requires an Act of Congress) on the country whose people our government is killing.
And Gitmo. Guantanamo Bay. It’s time for this “detention facility” to get shut down. Charge everyone there with a crime in a federal court of law (the good people of Texas or New York would be happy to be on that jury, so send ’em over), get them convicted or acquitted and let’s be done with it. The system is awesome. The system is not broken. But there are people — like the President — who are either being threatened in order to keep them from allowing the system to work and achieve justice or too morally weak to uphold its innate greatness.
It’s time to demand greatness.