Killing Democracy To Thunderous Applause

A former chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo Bay prison facility sounded off on both President Barack Obama’s administration’s use of drone strikes and the apparent acceptance of the practice by the American people.

“We used to be the land of the free and the home of the brave,” Col. Morris Davis told Current TV host Cenk Uygur on Friday. “Since 9/11, we’ve been the constrained and the cowardly.”


Uygur mentioned that an unidentified “recent poll” showed that the practice of using drones to target suspected “imminent threats” has actually been met with support.

“The American people say, ‘Ehhh, well if the government calls them suspected terrorists, well then we agree that we should drone stroke them,’” Uygur said. “What’s happening with the American people where we seem to be, you know, killing democracy to thunderous applause?”

Though Uygur did not mention a specific poll, two recent reports do back up his argument: According to The Huffington Post, a survey it conducted revealed that 54 percent of respondents supported the use of drones to kill “high-level” terrorism suspects. And CNN reported on Thursday that a survey conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University last month showed support for drone use from 75 percent of respondents.

Davis, currently a professor of law at Howard University, also had choice words regarding the Transportation Security Authority.

“If you went to the airport 15 years ago and somebody felt you up, it was called a sexual assault, not pre-boarding,” Davis said. “From that, to the ‘kill list,’ to indefinite detention, liberty’s kind of gone by the wayside. Ben Franklin said, ‘Anyone who would trade their liberty for security deserves neither,’ and here we are now.”