SocraticGadfly: Obama light years from Lincoln on assassinations

January 28, 2010

Obama light years from Lincoln on assassinations

Glenn Greenwald, as part of a long column noting Obama is just as bad as Bush on OK-ing assassinations abroad of US citizens who are alleged terrorists, quotes the quite different first Illinois president:
The law of war does not allow proclaiming either an individual belonging to the hostile army, or a citizen, or a subject of the hostile government, an outlaw, who may be slain without trial by any captor, any more than the modern law of peace allows such intentional outlawry; on the contrary, it abhors such outrage. The sternest retaliation should follow the murder committed in consequence of such proclamation, made by whatever authority. Civilized nations look with horror upon offers of rewards for the assassination of enemies as relapses into barbarism.

Obama, we know Abraham Lincoln. Tis true that his views on black civil rights took much time to evolve, but evolve they did. Sorry, even disgusted, that your views on civil liberties today are only devolving.

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