do Muslims deserve human rights?

From today's big speech:

When a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America – and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens; and when neither the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot – his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a swat team.

There is a very important, very obvious word that is missing from this paragraph. That word is "Muslim." Because the reality is that we have no "war on terror" or "war on terrorism." The reality is that Abraham Al-Awlaki was not denied his basic human rights because he opposed the United States. (And make no mistake, the right to due process and legal representation is as basic a human right as exists.) He was killed because he argued for the killing of Americans while being a Muslim in a Muslim country. No one would ever imagine sending a drone to Stockholm or to Sydney. The practice is condoned and justified because of who drones target. Likewise, no one would tolerate the decade-long internment of accused white supremacists without due process or formal charges in an off-shore prison as they slowly wasted away from hunger strike. And were Abdulrahaman Al-Awlaki blonde-haired and blue-eyed, his face would be plastered on the cover of American magazines. That's just a fact.

There has never been a time since 9/11 when this country has not been busily killing Muslims somewhere in the world. That's a fact. I am told, even by self-identified liberals, that this is because we have Muslims enemies— extremists, terrorists, Al Qaeda. The evidence that these people have is scanty, amounting to "because the government says so." We deploy ordnance and kill people in foreign countries and all we ever know personally is that they were terrorists because the military or CIA said so. That justification would never be accepted, were the victims not Muslim. It's incredible how little information we actually have about the people we kill. There is no foreign army at work, here, no formal declaration of war, no battle lines, no borders. There is only the word of the administration.

You don't have to take my word for it when I say that the line being drawn here is not against terrorist but against Muslims. Ask Tom Friedman, who said, in the most honest statement of his life, that the point of the Iraq war was to say to the Muslim world "suck on this," in revenge against 9/11. "We coulda hit Saudi Arabia!" he said, mustache quivering. "We coulda hit Pakistan! We hit Iraq because we could." I submit to you that this wasn't some crazy statement by a lunatic but a perfectly accurate summation of the majority opinion of the United States. I think Americans wanted war on Muslims and were searching for any pretense. And I think that any discussion of this endless war that does not frankly reflect that it is a war against Muslims is an act of dishonesty.

During the Bush administration, most liberals could be counted upon to oppose our aggression against the Muslim world. Though there are still many liberal allies, and I am grateful for them, I no longer can rely on the average liberal to criticize our government's incursions into the Muslim world. I can't, because they have instead decided to support the Obama administration, and the administration has dramatically expanded the scope and the scale of a secret campaign of assault in the Muslim world.

We have lived with this "war on terror" for a third of my life. And liberals: speeches do not walk the dog anymore. The time for flowery speeches is over. It's time for action. Saying "we're going to end the AUMF eventually" is not enough. Talking about closing Guantanamo is not enough. It has to actually happen. Like Anthony Romero of the ACLU says, actions are more important than words. If Obama actually closes Guantanamo, I promise I will applaud. If Obama actually reduces or ends the drone campaign, I will celebrate. But those specific policies will only be valuable if they are part of a broad attempt to end the hostilities between the United States and the Muslim world. Given that every Muslim terrorist who announces their motives says that they are based on our incursions into the Muslim world, that can only happen if we withdraw.

Am I intemperate? I am. Does this intemperance make me frequently unfair? I suppose. Am I angry? Yes, I'm angry. I'm angry about the constancy of the death of innocent people and I'm angry about those who justify and excuse those deaths. I have said things that I regret, at times, and I don't like how often I am moved to anger by this issue. But in a country that is so dead set on prosecuting an endless campaign of violence that is waged in secret and without the possibility of an informed people, if I will err, I will err on the side of opposing anti-Muslim aggression. I do believe that Obama's speech today was a step in the right direction. But he has to take the rest of the steps. And everyone who debates this issue has to understand that whether Muslims enjoy or should enjoy the full benefit of human rights is absolutely at question here. If people answer in the affirmative, and they work to affirm and support those rights, we may well make this country a more moral force in the world. If so, I am prepared to make my apologies then.