Which Lives Matter is finally a daily public issue, both domestically and internationally. But it's not exactly about race. In fact, as you've seen, cooperative black participants in law enforcement can mask racism and make justice even harder to achieve.
After 6 years of denial, I spoke firmly and clearly last week: of at least 476 innocent civilians I've killed with drones, only two lives should be mourned and only two names acknowledged: Giovanni Lo Porto and Warren Weinstein -- coincidentally, a white European christian and a white American jew. Mourning any of the 474 innocent brown muslim Mideast residents I've killed with drones (or even acknowledging they have names, or that they include dozens of women and children) would threaten national security. So conversely, accepting that those lives don't matter -- that helps keep us safe.
At least that’s my current policy. Anyone disagree? We’re a democracy, so speak up. After all, what’s the likelihood that people whose lives are being threatened daily will eventually dare to violently rise up? Um, unless that’s why recruiting for jihad has gotten so popular, despite increasingly psychotic assholes in charge — a dynamic even Rumsfeld predicted, and which I personally warned about 8 years ago when I first promised to close Gitmo.
That’s what’s so disturbing about Baltimore, Ferguson and so many other cities. Once folks see people of color whose lives don’t matter, rising up against a militarized US government and succeeding, it could give people everywhere ideas. Domestically, my National Guard is ready to strike back. And since I’ve got nothing to prove to black America, rest assured my Guard -- whether in Missouri, Maryland or elsewhere -- won’t be challenging racist governors the way Kennedy's and Johnson's did.
The core idea is the same whether we're in the inner city or overseas: If you are scared enough — in Terror and willing to say you’re afraid for your life -- and you work for our government -- you don’t have to follow the constitution or even the law when you kidnap or kill. I’m following that rule, and so is almost every prosecutor -- with some amazing exceptions.
With Eric Holder’s Supreme Court help it's by now firmly part of the case law: no policeman needs to worry about being convicted or even charged for killing a child with a toy, a housewife with a butter knife, or an unarmed black man. Such people can still be very scary to some police — and that’s all that’s required for an acquittal.
So have some compassion for our domestic police when they get confused about which lives matter and which don’t. They’re trying to follow my leadership, but “black lives matter, brown/muslim/asian lives don’t” is hard to convey and enforce, and sometimes they get real scared (which does make it legal) but get the details wrong or do the wrong thing on camera. (Some things simply shouldn’t be public. That’s why I changed the Freedom of Information Act to exclude certain photos, and it's why I'm keeping thousands of torture photos secret in violation of court orders.)
We’re all here to keep you safe so you’re not stuck doing this dangerous, dirty work yourselves. Cut us some slack.