Obama the Executioner

First, it is important for me to point out that I completely agree 100% with Obama’s decision to ignore Pakistan’s sovereignty and kill Osama Bin Laden. I also believe this event will go down as Obama’s crowning achievement of his first (and hopefully last) administration. I have routinely characterized Obama as being weak and indecisive on issues of importance, but in this case Obama was strong and decisive.

With all that said, I am still wondering where is the liberal outrage over the Bin Laden assassination? Liberals have routinely chastised and bashed the Bush administration for the improper treatment of enemy combatants proclaiming he had violated their civil liberties. Of course, an argument has been made that without the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (torture if you are liberal) intelligence agencies would never have found Osama Bin Laden. In any event, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the raid on the Bin Laden compound in Pakistan was a “kill mission”. In other words, the Obama administration never intended to take Bin Laden or any of the male members in the compound alive. Obama decided he was going to put the complete judicial system in his hands and execute Bin Laden.

The Bin Laden compound was not heavily fortified with guards and ammunition because that would attract too much attention. Bin Laden himself was unarmed and many of those that died along side with him were not identified as civilians or terrorists. It is completely possible that Bin Laden was holding and hiding behind innocent civilians to enhance his cover – this is what terrorists do. Thus, it is probable that innocent civilians were also murdered on this mission.

Throughout the Bush administration a great deal of time and energy was not only placed on condemning enhanced interrogation methods, but also at the loss of innocent civilian lives. Scott Pelley went after Blackwater employees who had itchy trigger fingers and consequently killed over a dozen innocent civilians in Iraq. However, in combat, it is hard to decipher who is the enemy when they blend in society. And no one should ever question the actions of military personnel unless they too have experienced combat. It is solely up to the military to determine if the law had been broken, not liberals or progressives. Still, where are the media and ACLU pundits condemning the Bin Laden mission as violating the civil liberties of human beings? Eric Holder, Obama, and progressives alike want to give enemy combatants civilian rights and trials – but those in the Bin Laden compound will never get these privileges because they were executed. Where is the liberal outrage? Why aren’t Obama’s actions being scrutinized by the media and the Left the same way that Bush was?

This is not the only time Obama crossed the liberal civil rights line and has been given a pass by progressives and the media. Obama went to war in Libya without congressional consent. For the first time in American history Obama has placed a death warrant on an American born civilian - al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki. And let’s not forget that Obama is continuing with Bush policy of holding enemy combatants indefinitely without a charge and is trying them in military tribunals. By liberal definitions all of these actions can be viewed as civil liberty violations (Conservatives rightfully do not view terrorists as prisoners of war). So where is all the outrage and negative publicity over these so called civil liberty violations? If a conservative president executed civilians or terrorists alike the progressive media would be pushing for war crime indictments. Once again, the left is being hypocritical by only seeing crimes when questionable actions (in eyes of liberals) are carried out by conservatives, but they conveniently look the other way when the left commits these crimes.