Of course it all started with the Patriot Act. But even looking at who keeps voting for that and keeping it alive and you can't just blame Bush either.
It's like there's no options for Americans politically which doesn't involve massive "black budgets" and secret courts doing who knows what. It's bipartisan and even plenty of the worst Iraq war supporters all have had career revivals in recent years because the media + social media decided that only one thing was bad, the current president. All bad deeds in the past were forgotten for the old set.
Endless "Secret Wars" seem terribly undemocratic and dangerous to me - for the obvious complete lack of public courts, true due process, or war crimes laws that normally are adhered to.
And I also see no proper reckoning in the relevant future either as long as these same "good guys" are back in power.
So I guess we're stuck with it.
Quote from Obama [3]: "Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_murder
[2] https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data
[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-said-hes-really-good-a...
I personally don't distinguish much between these (I'm basically in agreement with Einstein's stated views on the matter) but to pretend that our global human society doesn't believe in these distinctions is somewhat silly.
The US president can mass murder hundreds of children (Obama did just this) and not be seen as a criminal, even by that group, provided it falls into the correct category listed above.