That's right -- not just Nixon ... Nixon and Bush. Can vilification from the left get much worse than that?
Cornel West continues to demonstrate why parents might want to think better of sending their children to Princeton, where West purportedly teaches when he isn't gushing over hip-hop and engaging in arcane rants over the airwaves. (audio clips after page break)
On his most recent radio show with co-host Tavis Smiley, West condemned President Obama's legal justification for drone killings of Americans suspected of involvement with al Qaeda, saying Obama had become no different than George W. Bush and Richard Nixon, all being "war criminals" (audio) --
SMILEY: This week's Senate confirmation hearing for John Brennan, the man who wants to head the CIA, capped off a week of criticism for his boss, President Barack Obama, over this license to kill American citizens. It's all related, Doc (West), in that Brennan would likely be the one carrying out Obama's orders to kill people they suspect as al Qaeda members, even if they've not committed any acts of terrorism. And so like the McCarthy era during the '50s, someone's membership in an organization rather than their actions can mark them in the eyes of Washington.
The memo written by the Justice Department, in fact, even contains that this policy holds up to international law. We've discussed this to some degree in the past, but this week when this story broke of the Justice Department memo which gives this authorization to our president who happens to be Obama at the moment but any president now has the authorization, if you buy into this memo, to kill American citizens, in fact. Your thoughts on this so-called license to kill?
WEST: No, but I think, my dear brother, the chickens are coming home to roost. We've been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people, it's been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes. I think we have to be very honest, let us not be deceived -- Nixon, Bush, Obama, they're war criminals. They have killed innocent people in the name of the struggle for freedom, but they're suspending the law, very much like Wall Street criminals. The law is suspended for them, but the law applies for the rest of us. If you and I, brother Tavis, if we kill an innocent person, we're going to jail.
SMILEY: That's right.
WEST: And we goin' be in their forever.
SMILEY: Hmm mm.
The ever-trenchant activist academic has become one of Obama's fiercest critics, saying last month that Obama was unworthy of taking the oath of office with his hand on Martin Luther King Jr.'s Bible. Within a week of Obama winning re-election last November, West derided him as a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface."
(h/t for audio, Brian Maloney at mrctv.org)
