The “smarter than you” crowd
You know someone had to say it. al-Awlaki’s death has been ruled murder by the “smarter than you” crowd, beginning with DOCTOR Ron Paul and now Glenn Greenwald;
The vacuous Greenwald goes on to say;
What’s most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government’s new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government.
Far from any battlefield? al-Awlaki was far from any battlefield when he encouraged Nidal Hasan to murder 14 American soldiers. In fact, Hasan was far from any battlefield when he did his dirty deed. So was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab when he lit his drawers on fire and scorched his nuts off over Detroit that fine Christmas day. Carlos Bledsoe was far from any battlefield on that day that he shot two young soldiers outside of a recruiting station in Little Rock after getting his orders from al-Awlaki.
Um, Glenn, there is no battlefield and the enemy has no rules of warfare. it should have been made clear to you when Daniel Pearl was beheaded for our television entertainment.
Glen’s bedfellow, Ron Paul said;
“No, I don’t think that’s a good way to deal with our problems,” Paul said in a videotape of the questioning by reporters. Awlaki “was never tried or charged for any crimes. No one knows if he killed anybody. We know he might have been associated with the ‘underwear bomber.’ But if the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys. I think it’s sad.”
Nice try…we had months to “accept this blindly” since the White House announced there were shoot to kill orders on al-Awlaki. If the American people had a problem with this, there would have been outrage and marching in the streets which would have made this president waffle, like he did on Guantanamo.
I guess no one noticed that our enemies in this war don’t exactly fight by the traditional Western European rules of war and in order to beat them, we have to do unorthodox things. And make no mistake, we HAVE to beat them.
Greenwald and Paul are only feeding the terrorists propaganda lines for their next screed.
Category: Antiwar crowd, Terror War
Americans who take up arms against their own country automatically lose their citizenship.
Ben #1: Interesting concept. Not wrong, mind you, but worthy of some note.
@1 – I like the concept as well. A bit tricky in a civil strife situation….but would work for the time being.
Awlaki and Khan are dead…..say goodnight, Dick.
All enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC. Nuff said
@5 THIS!
There is a pattern here by the Obama Administration that some people are about to jump on. Rather than capture a terrorist, and thereby create a captive at Guantanamo that (as Obama has asserted) deserves constitutional protections, they are simply greasing these guys while they are in the field.
If they’re dead, they have no constitutional right to a trial anymore. Or right to anything for that matter.
So, expect some to say “At least Bush captured people like KSM and kept them alive. Obama has liquidated these people — even Americans — to avoid legal or political entanglements. Killing in the name of legal shorthand is unethical.”
I am not saying the criticism is right, and God knows I get a chubby when a jihadist is introduced to a thermochemical reaction that instantly converts him into a fine pink mist. I’m just pointing out the parameters of an emerging controversy.
The interesting part of all this is that he would still be alive if he had stayed here (although hopefully cooling his heels in a jail cell). Instead, he went and hung out in a part of the world where we are currently taking the fight to the enemy — and killing them.
Rocket science, anyone?
Inciting and planning violence against your country’s citizens is a good enough reason, in my eyes, to issue a dirt nap order. Sedition, I think, is the charge. Death is the sentence. Sentence carried out.
Do we wait to catch them with a weapon in their hand? We have enough evidence (emails, speeches, websites, etc.) to show that this was his mission. Others were enticed into doing his bidding, people were killed and maimed, yet he should have due process? Ok; how do the brain trust of Paul and Beck propose to make that happen?
Ron Paul and friends really do have a very rudimentary view on complicated issues, particularly this area of the law. The best analogy I can think of is this: American citizen walks into a bank, holds a gun to the teller and threatens to blow up a room full of hostages. SWAT sniper shoots the citizen due to exigent circumstances of the situation. Certainly the situation in this analogy dictates that the government couldn’t haul the guy into court or afford him his due process rights. The only option that the bank robber in this hypothetical had would be to surrender. Then he is afforded due process… This hypo is not so different than the issue that Ron Paul and friends are harping about. Anwar was likely deemed an enemy combatant. He was engaged in active plots and actions against American lives. AND, Anwar refused to surrender. He is, for all intents and purposes, the bank robber albeit on an extremely larger and more overall dangerous scale.
Sadly, if you remove the naive and the biased from this debate and replace with the knowledgable and common sense crowd, there really is no debate.
Finally, @5, you bring up something I hadn’t thought of. It’s an excellent point and fits in with the enemy combatant aspect.
Oops, I meant to say Greenwald
Dear Mr. Greenwald,
I interrupt my dead tango dance for this message…
Last I checked, most flag grade officers were not on the “front line” or on the “battlefield” but are considered legitimate military targets. Asshat Al-Alawki went over to the enemy and became one of their “flag grade officers.” Thus, he was a legitimate military target. The fact that he was born in this country is of no moment. If we had captured him, he would be entitled to a trial for treason and a hot shot. However, we did not capture him, we killed him. Period. The End.
Continuing with dead tango dancing now…
Oops, adult beverage celebrating caused tense inconsistency – should read “are not on the ‘front line’ or ‘battlefield'”. Sorry for the confusion.
Dont dead tango dance do the darth vader hammer dance like at jawa report.
It isn’t automatic that you lose citizenship if you take up arms against the US, but I am curious why the state department never revoked Awlaki’s passport or citizenship.
The best irony is that the White House killed a guy accused of crimes against America with no issues, while a guy who was found guilty by a jury of his peers and several appeals was the cause-de-jour for the left on the evils of state execution of criminals.
@Yossarian – “Ron Paul and friends really do have a very rudimentary view on complicated issues, particularly this area of the law.”
This may be true, depending on one’s opinion, but the unfortunate fact remains that there are precious few views on this subject that aren’t rudimentary, in those running for office, those in office, and those appearing in the media.
This was a good kill. I worry however, that our haphazard and resource deficient approach to neutralizing al Qai’da, will allow the gains made today to be recouped by the enemy.
The libs are all screwed up now. They spent forever decrying the holding of enemy combatants at Gitmo, raised the roof on interrogation techniques categorized as torture, screaming for GW’s head the whole time. Subsequently, their guy, Wispy-Lispy Obama, authorizes the summary execution of our enemy. They don’t know which way is up any longer.
#17 your pet names for Obama are something magical let me tell ya. Wispy-Lispy? At least put in some effort like the guy who created the ObaMao t-shirt.
You missed the part of the Ron Paul thing that I hit on when I read it earlier, where he said it would have been fine if they had done the same to Osama. So, exactly what is the law envisioned by Dr Paul that allows the killing of one individual, but not another? It can’t be the due process argument, unless he is saying that Due Process only applies to US Citizens, which seems to differ from his views of the Constitution with regards to other individuals.
Thought I might write a piece on it at some point, but I don’t see where his brightline rule is.
I think it has to do with citizenship, TSO. Paul claims that this government violated the protections of the 5th Amendment. That whole thing about not being deprived of life, liberty or property without the due process of law.
The text of the fifth amendment “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger…” its more about arrests.
There have been instances where the government has taken action against the citizens protected by the constitution. Trying not to get to deep in the weeds but Washington had the federal militia go up against civilians in 1794 during the Whiskey Rebellion with the inevitable results. These were citizens who took revolted against the United States over a tax.
During the Civil War Union soldiers killed both Confederate soldiers and civilians. They were still citizens of the U.S. Again with the draft riots in New York City.
Was AA a citizen, or an anchor baby citizen?
You’re comfortable with this being the basis of an extrajudicial killing? Bald faced assertions from anonymous government officials that al-Awlaki “probably” met Abdulmutallab in Yemen? This is the entire basis for the government’s argument that al-Awlaki had an “operational role” in al Qaeda, and thus had the authority they needed to kill him, and they hedge it with “probably.”
I’m sorry but I do not get a warm and fuzzy feeling about this. When you order the targeted killing of an American citizen, you probably shouldn’t have to hedge your facts with a “probably.” (See what I did there?) Even if you do not buy the notion that this should be handled in a court with reasonable doubt as the standard for establishing guilt, the standard used here should be enough to make you uncomfortable.
“A U.S. intelligence official said Thursday that ‘there was probably a face-to-face encounter’ between Aulaqi and the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, during a stay in Yemen before the Nigerian man flew to Amsterdam and boarded Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines Flight 253.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/31/AR2009123101524.html
BTW, I cannot get over the irony of someone with the handle Yossarian seemingly endorsing unchecked government authority when it comes to killing American citizens. The only thing I can think of is that the intent is to be ironic. If that is the case, someone should have warned me that there are hipsters on TAH.
I think he was pretty clearly a traitor and an active enemy combatant in the field which makes him targetable without the usual legal process required to kill a US citizen. That said I’m very relieved that this discussion is happening; the man was a US citizen and he was just killed by the US military/intelligence apparatus without ever being convicted of a crime and that’s something that should be talked about. I would have liked to see a military tribunal convict him in abentia first but, in the end, I’m not losing too much sleep over it.
this guy crossed a line, went to a foreign country and actively plotted against us. I say “Due process” ends at our borders. After that it’s two to the chest one to the head, and if you live through that THEN we give you a trial.
re #22
There are no shades of American Citizen, you either are one or you aren’t one and trying to recategorize or cheapen a person’s citizenship because of who their parent’s were is deeply anti-American. It pretty much runs contrary to the whole point. Regardless, he was born in the US to parents studying in the US educational system, his dad was a Fulbright Scholar.
To Mr. Paul: Do we wait and give a criminal holding a gun to a store clerk’s head “due process”? If he surrenders, then he’s charged and goes to jail. If he doesn’t, the police sniper makes his head into a canoe, even though the sniper failed to give him “due process”. I doubt Alawki would have surrendered had he been given the chance, so it was like the police sniper taking care of the bad guy without reading him his rights.
re #25,
I’m sure everyone working on behalf of US citizens in Consulates and Embassies around the world would be rather miffed to find that there are those who value the worth of a US citizenship so little they think that the rights (and responsibilities) of US citizenship should end when you leave the country.
This kill was good. But the precedent has potential to be abused. What exactly is an enemy of the state? Whose state?
Well perhaps the point was not stated well.
First, let us make this clear we must respect others citizenship as they respect ours. If the legitimate Government of Uperdouchebagistan thinks Abducting American citizens is great sport, they should not be surprised if we drop a hammer on their skulls.
American Citizenry engaged in active warfare against these United States will/should be treated like an enemy. They will be stopped by whatever means necessary. If their alive afterwards, ok. But a trial by Jury should NEVER be our first goal when dealing with stated enemies.
there’s a great scene in Band of Brothers where a Wehrmacht detachment was under guard and one of them says he’s from Oregon. Now I use that to illustrate a point. Should he, in the service of the Wehrmacht, have been singled out and captured to prevent an American Citizen who went over to the other side, from not getting his due process? That would be utterly retarded. Like in WWII the Trials come when the dust settles. THAT is the point I was trying to make.
I thought about it too but I cannot think of a real life example. The closest thing I can think of is the a (non-fuctional) SS unit intended to be made of those from the UK.
The closest I have found to Americans serving in the German Army is this.
I do know there was actually a strong Nazi movement in America (even having an event in Madison Square Garden with Washington and the Swastika) I do know there were German Americans that returned to Nazi Germany. But The examples are few and far between.
Ron Paul whined when we rolled up UBL that we should’ve asked the Pakistanis to turn him over first. He seems to have heartburn with force projection in general.
I get the feeling that these guys think the posse comitatus act should be global.
The comparison to Al the Whacky and a domestic hostage situation is off the mark. In the latter, the threat of harm is imminent. Act now or a hostage dies now. In the case of Al the Whacky, all the tough talk and past actions by him do not constitute an imminent threat. Was he killed because of what he did or because of what he was going to do in the immediate future? I don’t know. None of this is to say that he ought not to have been killed. I regard him as a Benedict Arnold, about whom George Washington himself ordered that if he be taken alive that he be immediately taken out and hanged.
Ex Parte Quirin, people.
I don’t get the Quirin name drop. There was a military tribunal in Quirin, we are engaged in a constitutionally declared war, and the defendants–all saboteurs and one, Haupt,an American citizen–were represented by counsel. Perhaps I’m just being dense but I don’t get the Quirin reference.
The point being, that in time of war (and please don’t tell me we’re not) the courts have ruled that even American citizens engaged in treason or espionage against the United States aren’t necessarily entitled to due process via the civilian court system.
2-17AirCav: “a domestic hostage situation is off the mark. In the latter, the threat of harm is imminent. Act now or a hostage dies now. In the case of Al the Whacky, all the tough talk and past actions by him do not constitute an imminent threat. Was he killed because of what he did or because of what he was going to do in the immediate future? I don’t know.”
Well, yes, he was an imminent threat since several of his followers did, in fact, act on instructions from him. Hasan was in direct contact with him at one point. There are emails, there are his websites, his speeches. How many have to die or be maimed before we have seen enough to come to the conclusion that the man has to be stopped? Osama Bin Laden didn’t personally fly a plane into the towers. He didn’t personally take down an Embassy. He didn’t drive the boat alongside the Cole. Yet, he had a kill or capture order put on him. Just because Awlaki was an American citizen being the only difference between the two. Sorry, but he forfeited his 5th Amendment rights when he started others into attacking our citizens.
Should we have landed a spec ops team to grab him, instead? The risk of losing a team member would have been too great of a trade-off for his skinny ass, IMHO, so taking him deep from a distance worked for me.
Does it set a dangerous precedent? Probably, unless the rule for this type of option is laid out very specifically, which is what should be the debate at this point.
@37. No, I am not playing the war/no war game. We are at war and an extremely difficult one. The enemy don’t wear distinctive insignia or uniforms. And I’m with you on the treason/espionage business. And I suppose that if Al had been tried in absentia, convicted, and sentenced to death, the matter would be at least more in line with the traditional fate of such traitors. I don’t pretend to have the answers.
@38. Your last para is my only concern.
I look at it this way, Cav. Would he have surrendered given a chance? Probably not.
Agreed, OT. It’s more than a little chilling. But the problem coulda/shoulda been addressed much further back in the chain of events which inevitably led to this being the only sensible solution.
Many of the obvious missed opportunites to stop his lunatic ass have already been mentioned here: when was his passport revolked, why was he issued one, was he issued one, how active was he before he left our shores in seditious behavior, was he involved with other criminal behavior? And those are just a few questions I would have. It is my opinion that there were likely plenty of red flags that he sent up long ago which should have been addressed.
What I’m getting at with my post is this:
We have ROE on the battlefield. This should be added to it. I think that in this case, because it happened on foreign soil that the Geneva Conventions should be a guide as well. If every country fought on the battlefield with their own country’s civilian law, the battlefield would be very convoluted. That’s why civilian law shouldn’t and doesn’t apply to warfighting and that’s what the GC were created for.
“If every country fought on the battlefield with their own country’s civilian law….” Say no more. Roger that.
Well the Geneva convention deals with conflict with uniformed nations and their military. About insurgency it is amazingly mute. I goes to great length to describe HOW you uniform, or how uniformed enemies should be treated, but it says absolutely dick about insurgents, and hints (subtly) that such people’s rights are jack and shit. That was the whole legal reasoning against Waterboarding.
Did he have rights? Yup? Should he have been taken alive? Maybe. There MIGHT have been valuable intel (as with UBL) but if it’s a choice between kill or capture, and you’d need to let a golden opportunity slip away… Well you go for the kill.
Another thing ppl are forgetting is that charisma is not a common virtue. This dude had a silver tongue. If you keep killing the charismatic leaders, eventually you’ll get leaders that’ll piss the troops off too much. Killing foot soldiers can be counterproductive but leaders… They can not so readily replace. Especially English speaking ones
I still think this was a good kill. Laws probably should be made to clarify just when you lose the protection of your citizenship, but that’s down the road
From what I understand, the only reason this guy was an American citizen is that his (Yemeni?) parents were in the U.S. studying. That whole birthright citizenship under its current interpretation. I’d like to see that fixed. The authors of the 14th Amendment are likely rolling over in their graves over how it has been viewed. Isn’t the U.S. the only nation in the world to grant citizenship just by virtue of being within its borders at the time of birth?
33#”I get the feeling that these guys think the posse comitatus act should be global.” exactly nice line by the way.
#38 Nicely stated, couldn’t agree more.
Man! Thought I was going to be parrying Ron Paul stupidy! Comforting to know I’m not alone.
I’m getting the idea the Ron Paul just threw himself under the bus…
Generally I tend not to like any REPUBLICAN candidate endorsed by cindy sheehan.
@45, Miss Ladybug: It is my understanding that the US is the only country left which grants citizenship that way. Even those countries such as the one in which I was born, of US citizens, offered a dual citizenship arrangement but I was required at the time of majority to take specific actions to make that happen. That seems to be one of those dark ages practices which by the mid 20th century most countries were reevaluating.
Yep, my former OIC said the same thing…he deserved due process. My thoughts are as follows: As am American, he committed treason the second he started supporting others who would commit terror acts against fellow citizens. And when he left this country and we know what we know? I say he forfeited his rights and didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything America gave him and he never did. Boom. I don’t buy into anything that can be thrown forward. He deserves a firing squad, while Nidal Hasaan watches.
While I am thrilled we were able to get this guy I understand where others are coming from with the whole citizen issue. I don’t think the President is going to start authorizing the executions of those who he doesn’t like or who oppose him. I think that is the point that some of those who oppose this action are making. Now the ACLU, they probably do believe this guys rights were violated and that he should have sat in the federal pen on our dime for the rest of his days. However some including me are worried about all of our rights moving forward. I do not oppose at all with what we did I just think it could be a slippery slope.