What Would Orwell Make of Obama's Drone Policy?

On the advice of the Horde, I took up George Orwell‘s “Politics and the English Language.” This passage seems especially appropriate today:

 

obampoint (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

 

 

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

 

rprprprp (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

 

 

 

 

Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.

 

 

 

 

I thought of that passage while reading through this white paper (brought to us by the dutiful reporting of Mike Isikoff), which lays out when, precisely, the administration believes it is entitled to order a drone strike against an American citizen. (Read the full memo at the bottom of this post.) The answer falls short of “whenever we want,” but it skirts damn close:

 

(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com …

 

via What Would Orwell Make of Obama’s Drone Policy?.

 

IS THIS MAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD, MENTALLY ILL? (Photo credit: SS&SS)

 

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