The application of power in the Shock and Awe of Iraq was as much about maintaining belief within America that the Cheney administrations controlled power as it was about unseating Saddam Hussein and brutalizing the people of Iraq.
That's the reason police kill and that's the reason Obama authorizes drone strikes. They accomplish nothing relative to criminal threats against us. New targets pop up as fast as the authorities can knock them down. BUT, the message is police and Obama have power, we accept this and don't rebel, because we understand they must demonstrate power or not have it.
A president, a defense secretary, a secretary of state, an Atty General ... all can have dreams of power and have an irrepressible need to display it by killing people. It's innate to being human. People want the death penalty despite its ineffectiveness in stopping capital crime. They want it because they want law and order to be backed by power. Killing provides the evidence of power
It's how our dominance hierarchy works and has worked for centuries and across cultures. It's why Europeans burned witches and it's why pre-Columbian MesoAmericans tore the beating hearts out of captured soldiers, and it's probably why ancient Celts threw slain people into peat bogs.
Power. It's deadly. People who eagerly want it should be suspect.
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