Jennifer Rubin’s call in the Washington Post for murdering Iranian scientists has elicited outrage. Justin Elliott at Salon:
Rubin wants the United States to make human rights a central theme in its Iran policy — and to indiscriminately assassinate civilian scientists.
…even the U.S. State Department referred to these attacks as acts of terrorism, which would make them antithetical to any serious concept of human rights.
Asst Sec’y PJ Crowley specifically condemned such actions two weeks ago:
“we decry acts of terrorism wherever they occur.”
At Huffpo, Bromwich says Obama is in part to blame for Rubin’s “barbarous dialect”:
There was nothing like this in our popular commentary before 2003; but the callousness has grown more marked in the past year, and especially in the past six months. Why? A major factor was President Obama’s order of the assassination of an American citizen living in Yemen, the terrorist suspect Anwar al-Awlaki. This gave legal permission to a gangster shortcut Americans historically had been taught to shun.
