The Kill List

Dear Mr. President,

This morning the New York Times ripped the mask off you and revealed a war-mongering killer who disregards domestic and international law and the Constitution without the slightest hesitation or compunction. I was shocked to learn that you personally approve every name that gets put on the weekly “kill-list”–even 17-year-old girls–but there it was, confirmed by current and former advisers. You vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with America’s values, but the use of armed drones controlled by people 8,000 miles away is not an American value, nor is the use of assassins working in the dead of night to carry out extra-judicial killings, or the violation of national sovereignty of countries we are not at war with. You have bureaucratized murder and weasel-worded directives to permit continued indefinite detentions and extraordinary rendition to torture. You are consumed by blood lust and blinded by the ultimate power to decide who lives and who dies. You are like a sheriff in the wild wild west making your own law and enforcing it according to your own sense of right and wrong, judge, jury and executioner. But this is not the wild wild west, Mr. President, and this is not the role of the President of the U.S. of A. You have become, in the words of Mitt Romney, “Dr. Strangelove,” an apt characterization. Instead of making us safer, you have become the most destabilising force in the world today, worse a threat to world peace than Bush or bin Laden. You are a terrorist, Mr. President, a poster boy for the Evil Empire and your drones have become a major recruiting tool for those who hate our hypocrisy and injustice. It is estimated that there are at least three times as many al Qaeda fighters in Yemen today than when you started using drones there. Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan are all more unstable than when you took over three years ago. Iraq–the “dumb” war–was a failure. Afghanistan–your “smart” war–is also a failure. You promised to return us to the rule of law but instead you continue to make of us a nation of barbarians and outlaws. I am appalled that I fell for your lies and voted for you, but then, as the Times article pointed out, you were “never carried away by your own rhetoric”–i.e., you are basically a liar and a fraud. You have betrayed us, brought shame on yourself, on the Office of the President of the United States, on the nation. You should be impeached and tried as a war criminal, Mr. President, for that’s what you are.