Forgive me while I don’t cheer the assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki, the New Mexico-born cleric whom the United States just killed in Yemen.It is sad to say, but Al Qaeda and the US government are turning into mirror images of each other!! Both murder innocent citizens to send political messages. Both commit political assassinations. Both tend to disregard international and national laws. Both believe they are justified in utilizing any means necessary to carry out their aims.
He was a U.S. citizen, after all.
He had never been indicted for a crime here, much less convicted of one, much less sentenced to death.
Still, the President rubbed him out.
We are told that he was a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and there is some evidence that his preachings influenced Al Qaeda terrorists, including a few of the 9/11 attackers and the shoe bomber.
He’s no angel. No doubt about that.
But does that give the President the right to summarily execute a U.S. citizen?
~ from Obama Wrong to Rub Out Al-Awlaki by Matthew Rothschild ~
The chief difference between the two is that the former makes use of suicide bombers, while the latter -- to our knowledge -- does not.
Another thing that use to distinguish the two is that the US was constrained in what it legitimately could do by the US Constitution and federal legislation. But George W. Bush and now Barack Obama clearly have shown that these restraints no longer matter. The President has become a de facto king who can disregard the law whenever he feels like it!
Facts, evidence and due process no longer factor into the equation. All the President has to do is say that this or that person is a legitimate target and it becomes so. Once he does this, there is NO recourse. There is NO review. There is NO way to challenge it.
Regardless of what one thinks about the guilt or innocence of Anwar Al-Awlaki, this establishes a scary and dangerous precedent. At some point in the future of this nation, a frightening right-wing ideologue will ascend to the throne in Washington (the pendulum effect). Will you feel comfortable with a president along the lines of a Rick Perry-like person having the ability to decide who is an enemy of the US government or American way of life?
As Glenn Greenwald points out,
What amazes me most whenever I write about this topic is recalling how terribly upset so many Democrats pretended to be when Bush claimed the power merely to detain or even just eavesdrop on American citizens without due process. Remember all that? Yet now, here’s Obama claiming the power not to detain or eavesdrop on citizens without due process, but to kill them; marvel at how the hardest-core White House loyalists now celebrate this and uncritically accept the same justifying rationale used by Bush/Cheney (this is war! the President says he was a Terrorist!) without even a moment of acknowledgment of the profound inconsistency or the deeply troubling implications of having a President — even Barack Obama — vested with the power to target U.S. citizens for murder with no due process.In other words, this change in what the US supposedly stands for -- the rule of law -- is being subverted, not solely by the Office of the President, but by Congress as well! The power elites are reshaping this nation so that it will soon look nothing like its former self.
I had the same concerns the moment I heard about it, and still do. But if you're saying Al Awlaki was an innocent citizen, I think you're deluded.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, you can't just walk up and arrest him, he's in another country working directly with our stated enemies, the only way in is an attack. Seems the law gets murky, no? You could say he has't been tried, and thus is innocent until proven guilty, but is that realistic?
Isn't it fair to say there's a difference between what happened here (declaring Al Awlaki a terrorist and killing him), as opposed to merely labeling some peaceful, if anti-establishment, citizen a terrorist and killing him, as many dictators do?
Is it a slippery slope? Maybe, and there needs to be a national discussion.
Brandon,
ReplyDeleteWhat evidence do you personally possess to KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that Al Awlaki is guilty of ANY crime? The ONLY source we have for this information comes from the same entity -- the US government -- that murdered him.
Did the guy write incendiary stuff? No question. But did he have a direct connection to the planning or carrying out of any crime? We don't know and now we never will.
If writing or saying incendiary stuff targets a person for government-sanctioned assassination, then why is Glenn Beck still alive? We know of, at least, two cases in which someone planned or carried out murder as an indirect result of his blathering.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm NOT calling for someone like Beck to be killed. In this country, we each have the right of free speech. I may vehemently disagree with what the Al Awlakis and Becks of this world have to say, but I defend their right to say or write it.
Well, you make a good point.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the evidence the gov't had, don't know much about the case period. There really isn't much of an argument, within the law, for killing the guy, even if it's an open and shut case, but realistically, practically, it is easy to see why they did it. There was more than just talk here.
If one is planning and carrying out acts of agression against their country, that's sorta tantamount to renouncing citizenship. I think you're right here, and concede, but it is a grey area.