Kill List Tuesday

Dear Mr. President,

Today is Kill List Tuesday and I’m trying to imagine it. That huge windowless room in the basement of the West Wing, a group of somber bureaucrats seated in swivel leather chairs around the long polished conference table, each with a fat binder of this week’s “nominees”—mug shots, brief bios—discussing past sins, future threats, awaiting your final decision on each one. You sit at the center, John Brennan, your trusted adviser, your Rasputin, on your right, nodding approval at every decision, who will live and who will die. I try to imagine the imminent threat to the United States posed by a 17-year old girl or boy in Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia, what they have done or could do that warrants assassination, obliteration by a Hellfire missile. I cannot. What does it feel like to make these life-and-death decisions every Tuesday? Do you savor a warm glow of power? Do you feel like Zeus sitting atop Mt. Olympus hurling thunderbolts? Washington, D.C. is not Mt. Olympus, Mr. President, and you are not Zeus. Zeus was ruled by emotions. Zeus made mistakes and was tormented by them. You are, it is said, thoughtful, cool, aloof, detached, and I wonder if you are ever tormented. Do you ever try to imagine what it’s like on the other end of your decisions? Do you ever have qualms, doubts, guilt? You justify and rationalize all this in your lawyerly way with lawyerly words but is it enough to block out the images of violence done and the moral outrage of those whose mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins were just incinerated by an unseen, unknown and distant enemy? You are praised for taking personal responsibility for these grave decisions, for wrestling with the moral conundrums they pose, but I don’t see a moral conundrum here, Mr. President, I see a sick, twisted, logic that rationalizes murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity. I see an evil that violates our deepest belief in who we are, that tramples the values we held as a nation, that makes a mockery of justice and the rule of law. Your Kill Lists, your Targeted Assassinations and drone strikes do not make us safer; they breed more hatred and fear, and they poison our souls individually and collectively. I don’t share your values, your morality, your sense of justice. You are a war criminal and cold-blooded assassin who obeys no law but his own. But you are not above all law and one day your time will come and may God have mercy on your soul, for few others will.