Whom Should We Put On Our Kill List?
By Luke Hiken and Marti Hiken
June 25, 2012
Now that Obama and his handlers at the Pentagon have informed us that it is legal, appropriate and acceptable to have a
“kill list,” we’ve actually warmed up to the subject. After all, if Obama can have a kill list, so should every good
American. We sat down and thought about those we would put on a “kill list” if we ever got the chance. We tried to
imagine whether we actually could come up with a valid list of who our real enemies should be: capitalists, weapons
manufacturers…. There were so many targets to consider.
We started out with the worst of the worst -- those who destroyed the American economy and impoverished the people of
the U.S.: Wall Street bankers, Pentagon weapons manufacturers, military contractors and mercenaries. Then we started to
think about the individuals who were at the forefront of destroying our government: the Koch Brothers, the Walton
family. We pondered the impact that the Bush family, Cheney, Abrams, and the murderers who inhabited the White House for
the last many years have had on the country. We considered the monsters who deprived the American people of health care,
social security and a livable wage. The list kept growing….
We recognized immediately that we should destroy individuals who had been particularly virulent in their destruction of
our nation, but we also wanted to make sure that there were symbolic targets who deserved to die as well: corporate CEOs
who had eviscerated successful businesses for their own profit; insurance companies that had undermined the public’s
access to health care and necessary services; sexist, homophobic opportunists, who had caused the death and humiliation
of thousands of our fellow citizens; whoring politicians, who pandered to the rich at the expense of the people.
Quickly, we came to understand that we needed more unmanned drones to destroy our enemies. But, we also realized that
the creators of the unmanned drones should themselves be destroyed. What a conundrum! While Obama has chosen Muslims as
his favorite group to kill, we select torturers, such as John Yoo and Jay Bybee. However, rather than add low-level
prison guards to our list, we instead narrowed it down and decided to only assassinate those responsible for
establishing the policy that legitimized torture. Surely we didn’t want to expand our kill list in an indiscriminate
manner.
We found it difficult to identify and limit judges and prosecutors, a particularly difficult group to identify, who were
responsible for selling the country to the highest bidders. Slime like Scalia, Alito and Thomas would certainly top
anyone’s kill list that cared about truth or justice in the legal system. The difficulty lay in distinguishing between
these activist right-wingers and the typical Superior Court judge who spent every day of the week sentencing African
Americans and racial minorities to life sentences in prison.
Equally difficult was figuring out which of the Pentagon maniacs should be held accountable for our permanent wars,
dependence upon weapons of mass destruction, and for attempting to subjugate the entire world for our insane imperialist
agenda. After all, soldiers are supposed to fight and kill, so why should we hold them responsible for doing so in the
context of modern warfare?
As we trudged our way through an ever-expanding list of those to kill, we considered the religious hypocrites and
fanatics who spend their lives enriching themselves at the expense of the rest of us. We were becoming weary from trying
to ensure that the individuals we chose to kill were worthy of being on our list.
After weeks of fine-tuning our choices, we ended up right where we started: this is a road without an end. Once we took
it upon ourselves to decide who should live or die, we had lost any right to choose any one individual. We concluded we
should spare even Obama, given that he is as clueless about the implications of his kill list as he is merciless.
*************
Marti Hiken is the director of Progressive Avenues. She is the former Associate Director of the Institute for Public
Accuracy and former chair of the National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force.
Luke Hiken is an attorney who has engaged in the practice of criminal, military, immigration, and appellate law.
The Progressive Avenues website, www.progressiveavenues.org, is regularly updated in the “What’s Added, What’s New” link on the Home page, at http://www.progressiveavenues.org/Whats_New_Added.html