Partly Cloudy, 64°
According to reports from the White House press corps, executive officials confirmed today that the targeted killing of American citizens overseas is really only weird if you think about it.
“If you stop and think about it, the idea that the President has power to authorize the killing of American citizens in international territory without due process and with impunity, as was the case with Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, will likely seem strange,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters. “However, if you don’t think about it, the act of killing American citizens won’t seem strange to you at all.”
“Indeed, we find that the United States’ using drones to kill Americans is really only a bad thing if one merely ruminates on the subject for a brief moment or two,” Earnest added.
When asked about the potential weirdness of further targeted killings of Americans, including recent plans to use drones to strike an American in the Middle East associated with al-Qaeda, Earnest stated that that sort of thing would only seem horrible if someone stopped and thought about it for even an instant. Earnest added, however, that it is usually better to think about something else, like Russia’s recent military intervention in Ukraine, or to think about nothing at all.
“In fact, not thinking about it will prevent one from seeing targeted killings as a weird thing,” Earnest said, indicating a diagram on which the phrase “Thinking about it = Weirdness” was written. “That is to say, rather than think about it for one minute or even two minutes, which would surely cause someone to think this sort of stuff is barbaric and wrong, we find that such killings don’t seem at all bad if one just does the opposite of that, i.e. refrains from thinking about it.”
“If one must think about it, however, it’s possible that one might allow the thought to pop into one’s mind and then quickly distract oneself with something else,” Earnest remarked. “‘The President of the United States can kill Americans if he so chooses and nothing will happen, and here is an interesting book on insects that I am going to read now,’ is an example of one such thought process. Ideally this would be just short enough a span of time to prevent someone from realizing how crazy the mere notion of such a power is.”
“These thoughts should be very, very, very brief, however,” Earnest added. “Otherwise, weirdness would set in within a couple of seconds.”
As of press time a majority of officials at the White House found the targeted killing of Americans to be totally fine.
