With the recent extra-judicial killing of American Anwar Awlaki, exectued on the orders of President Obama without any provision of a charge of a crime against him, or any evidence as to such a crime having been committed, the United States Constitution has become effectively null and void.

Now certainly, the degradation of American legal and civic principles has been underway for quite some time. These anti-Constitutional policies went on steroids after 9/11, particularly due to the the uber-state, almost fascistic policies plowed forward by the Cheney/Bush administration.

The Fourth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution have long been dead letters. Now, thanks to Obama’s imperial act of killing an American citizen without any effort to recognize constitutionally guarantees to legal due process and state exhibition of evidence and proof of a crime before sentencing for that crime, we can now add the Fifth Amendment to the mortuary of American rights and principles.

Few writers have provided as clear, cutting, insightful, disturbing a description of this action by Obama than constitutional lawyer and commentator on Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald…

Now that hordes of Obama defenders are running around justifying the President’s due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki based on exactly the same claim and mindset — our President targeted a Very Bad Terrorist, so no due process or disclosure of evidence was needed — the same question obviously arises: if there’s so much evidence showing that Awlaki was involved in plotting Terrorist attacks on the U.S. (as opposed merely to delivering anti-U.S. sermons protected by the First Amendment), isn’t that even more of a reason to have indicted him and charged him with crimes before killing him? Please watch this amazing video of ABC News‘ Jake Tapper persistently questioning a stonewalling, imperious White House spokesman Jay Carney about this issue; remember: he’s asking the White House what evidence justified the U.S Government’s targeting of its own citizen for assassination with no due process, and the White House is telling him: we have it in secret but don’t need to show anyone.

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That mentality — he’s a Terrorist because my Government said he’s one and I therefore don’t need evidence or trials to subject that evidence to scrutiny — also happens to be the purest definition of an authoritarian mentality, the exact opposite of the dynamic that was supposed to drive how the country functioned (Thomas Jefferson: “In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution“).

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In other words: we wanted to strip Awlaki of his citizenship, but there’s no legal authority for us to do that, so we just went ahead and killed him. What a world apart from George Bush.

Bullseye. As one of Greenwald’s readers commented…

One of the more astounding things here is the willingness of, not just internet commentators, but pundits and media personalities who almost certainly know better, just blatantly making up fake “laws” or “circumstances” that supposedly allow and excuse this… His youtubes constitute treason! By moving to Yemen he revoked his US citizenship! He’s outside the country so the constitution doesn’t apply! I saw the same kind of thing regarding “Collateral Murder” and then again regarding Julian Assange. The media explaining to their audience circumstances and laws that factually do not exist. Just an extension of the “clap harder” principle… if we repeat a lie enough, we can act as if it’s true.

Read Greenwald’s complete article Here.

There’s also more on this from another realm of the political spectrum, someone who can hardly be considered some lefty agitator, Paul Craig Roberts. This former Reagan Treasury department official and member of the Wall Street Journal editorial staff is even more blunt and disconcerting regarding the full scope of what this action means for America and its future.

In our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Lawrence Stratton and I showed that long before 9/11, US law had ceased to be a shield of the people and had been turned into a weapon in the hands of the government. The event known as 9/11 was used to raise the executive branch above the law. As long as the President sanctions an illegal act, executive branch employees are no longer accountable to the law that prohibits the illegal act. On the president’s authority, the executive branch can violate US laws against spying on Americans without warrants, indefinite detention, and torture — and suffer no consequences.

Awlaki was a moderate American Muslim cleric who served as an adviser to the US government after 9/11 on ways to counter Muslim extremism. Awlaki was gradually radicalized by Washington’s use of lies to justify military attacks on Muslim countries. He became a critic of the US government and told Muslims that they did not have to passively accept American aggression and had the right to resist and to fight back. As a result Awlaki was demonized and became a threat.

All we know that Awlaki did was to give sermons critical of Washington’s indiscriminate assaults on Muslim peoples. Washington’s argument is that his sermons might have had an influence on some who are accused of attempting terrorist acts, thus making Awlaki responsible for the attempts.

Obama’s assertion that Awlaki was some kind of high-level Al Qaeda operative is merely an assertion. Jason Ditz concluded that the reason Awlaki was murdered rather than brought to trial is that the US government had no real evidence that Awlaki was an Al Qaeda operative.

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“Terrorist” and “giving aid to terrorists” are increasingly elastic concepts. Homeland Security has declared that the vast federal police bureaucracy has shifted its focus from terrorists to “domestic extremists.”

It is possible that Awlaki was assassinated because he was an effective critic of the US government. Police states do not originate fully fledged. Initially, they justify their illegal acts by demonizing their targets, and in this way create the precedents for unaccountable power. Once the government equates critics with giving “aid and comfort” to terrorists, as they are doing with antiwar activists and Assange, or with terrorism itself, as Obama did with Awlaki, it will only be a short step to bringing accusations against Glenn Greenwald and the ACLU.

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