Death from above: It can happen here

You'd think that in this campaign season, the right would critique Barack Obama from every conceivable stance. But you would be wrong.

Esquire has published an expose of Barack Obama's "lethal presidency" -- including his extra-judicial killing of a 16 year-old American boy. See here and here and here. Long story short: The administration killed the son (who was not a "terrorist") because it was angry at the father (who was).

Let's start there. He was an American boy, born in America. Though he'd lived in Yemen since he was about seven, he was still an American citizen, which should have made it harder for the United States to kill him.

It didn't.

It should at the very least have made it necessary for the United States to say why it killed him.

It didn't.

His name was Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, and he was 16 years old when he died — when he was killed by a drone strike in Yemen, by the light of the moon. He was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was also born in America, who was also an American citizen, and who was killed by drone two weeks before his son was, along with another American citizen named Samir Khan.

He was a boy who hadn't seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who snuck out of his family's home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him. He was a boy who was still searching for his father when his father was killed, and who, on the night he himself was killed, was saying goodbye to the second cousin with whom he'd lived while on his search, and the friends he'd made. He was a boy among boys, then; a boy among boys eating dinner by an open fire along the side of a road when an American drone came out of the sky and fired the missiles that killed them all.

FDR did not target Hitler's relatives. In fact, sister Paula was treated in a very humane fashion.

If this president can murder American citizens overseas without any due process, then a future president will use drones to murder American citizens within our borders. It's the next logical step. I am convinced that it will happen.

The Islam-hating right-wing dolts who applaud Obama's drone murders never pause to consider the wider implications. They never think about the possibility that a future administration can now crush any form of dissent through the simple expedient of placing the "terrorist" label on those who demand change. Under the new rules, a "terrorist" is not just someone who commits an act of mass violence for political purposes. The term now applies to anyone who runs an unfriendly website, to anyone who offers mere words in support of an ideology that inconveniences the Powers That Be. Sing the wrong song and the drone of death will provide the big finish.

Genuine libertarians -- of the sort who used to vote for the Libertarian party -- should be appalled by Obama's actions. So where are the libertarian critics now? Will anyone on the right decry America's fleet of airborne robot killers?

The only voices expressing their disgust with Obama's murders are on the left: Glenn Greenwald (of course), Mother Jones, Firedoglake, and Digby.

I've been saying it for years: Although revolution is a vile business, the threat of revolution is the only thing that has ever kept any government honest. Thus, any technology that makes rebellion impossible makes tyranny inevitable. The ultimate target of a killer drone is democracy.