ACLU files suit against Obama, Petreaus on behalf of dead Al Qaeda terrorists
Crossposted from my other Home.
Raise your hand if you think I am exagerating with that title….ok, you can put them down now.
Civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the drone strike killings of three U.S. citizens in Yemen.
The Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit in federal court in Washington on Wednesday on behalf of relatives of the victims. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, CIA Director David Petraeus and other high officials are named as defendants.
And just who are these poor victims? Let’s look at some quick bios:
Anwar al-Aulaqi: “senior talent recruiter and motivator who was involved with planning operations for the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda.” Email pals with Major Nidal Hassan before he shot up Ft Hood. Was allegedly the guy behind the Christmas Underwear Bomber fiasco.
Samir Khan: Pakistani American editor and publisher of Inspire magazine, an English-language online magazine reported to be published by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Samir here used to live in his mom’s basement in North Carolina and has been stirring up trouble for years, and my friends at “My Pet Jawa” have been tracking him the whole time.
Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi: Son of Anwar, he was killed after the other two in a targetted strike that is claimed to have killed other AQ operatives.
ACLU for their part put up pictures of a young Abdulrahman and had this to say:
In Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta (Al-Awlaki v. Panetta) the groups charge that the U.S. government’s killings of U.S. citizens Anwar Al-Aulaqi, Samir Khan, and 16-year-old Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi in Yemen last year violated the Constitution’s fundamental guarantee against the deprivation of life without due process of law.
The killings were part of a broader program of “targeted killing” by the United States outside the context of armed conflict and based on vague legal standards, a closed executive process, and evidence never presented to the courts.
Since 2002, and routinely since 2009, the U.S. government has carried out deliberate and premeditated killings of suspected terrorists overseas. In some cases, including that of Anwar Al-Aulaqi, the targets were placed on “kill lists” maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon. According to news accounts, the targeted killing program has expanded to include “signature strikes” in which the government does not know the identity of individuals, but targets them based on “patterns” of behavior that have never been made public. The New York Times recently reported that the government counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
Now, the last time I wrote about this subject it got 355 comments. As I noted at the time I wrote that post, the whole situation made me uncomfortable, and I wasn’t sure what to think.
If anyone is reading an inherent bias on my part in the preceding, I’d love to know what that bias is, because I honestly have no clue how I feel about this whole thing. I feel uncomfortable with secret bodies not authorized by legislation authorizing things like killings. On the other hand, Awlaki needed to be ventilated and good riddance to bad rubbish. But, we should always think worst case scenario with these sorts of things. Can you envision a scenario where a US Citizen is killed abroad with a drone attack, and he didn’t have what was coming to him? Probably we all can. So, what safeguard is there? That’s where I get somewhat lost.
I still feel that way. I’m not crying into my pillow at night that these horrible folks got vaporized, not even a little. But I still don’t know what the legal mechanism for this is. I had rather hoped at the time that there would be some statement made about how these trials took place in a FISA Court, but I still haven’t heard that being the case.
You can see the picture above, that was the last article written for the Al Qaeda magazine by Samir. That’s apparently not the Samir that the ACLU and his parents want to remember. From the court filing:
28. Plaintiff Sarah Khan is a U.S. citizen who has lived in the United States since 1992 with her husband and children. Her son, Samir, was born in 1985 and became a U.S. citizen in 1998.
29. Samir Khan attended elementary school in Queens, New York, and high school on Long Island, New York. After graduating from high school in 2003, he moved to North Carolina, where he attended a community college and worked part-time. He left for Yemen in October 2009.
30. Anonymous government officials have told reporters that Samir Khan was a propagandist” for AQAP. The government never publicly indicted him for any crime.
“Anonymous”? That’s his magazine up there. If an “Anonymous” government official said that the bright ball in the sky is the sun, it doesn’t make it not so. Just head over to My Pet Jawa and hunt through their records for “InshallahShaheed” which was Samir’s online name.
This part of the lawsuit apparently had the opposite effect as it was intended, at least for me:
Senior government officials, including Defendant Panetta and President Barack Obama, have acknowledged the responsibility of the United States for killing Anwar Al-Aulaqi. On the same day the strike was carried out, DOD published a news article stating that “[a] U.S. airstrike . . . killed . . . Anwar [Al-Aulaqi] early this morning” and that he had been “high on the military-intelligence list of terrorist targets.”
Yeah, well good for them. I feel a little better everytime I read it, because it means there are fewer folks out there trying to hurt my family, including my brothers and sisters that are still deployed to Afghanistan.
So, I still remain concerned about the way the law of this works, but I’m not losing sweat over these guys here. What say you?
Category: Politics
ACLU better watch it – BO is a Chicago politician and I bet there’s still room for troublemakers at Gitmo or Bagram.
The Aheists Communists Liberals Union hate America and the Christian soldier, but terrorists & Muslims are to be worshipped – what a surprise. Also, I guess they got tired of kicking around Dubya/Cheney/Rumsfeld.
Dude, these assholes declared outright war on America. I’m not crying at night. They participated in the planning and execution of acts of war against our nation on behalf of entities committed to seeing us destroyed.
Put simply, I just don’t give a flying rat’s fuck about these camel humping assholes.
Sorry, Mark – this is something that really pisses me off!
Not a lawyer here, so really shouldn’t get too tangled up in the legality of it all, but you have expressed some of my concerns about this whole thing.
If citizenship does not afford different standards of treatment prior to one’s execution, then what is it worth? Who might be the next target? It seems rather elementary that the Constitution prescribes how, when and who may mete out the death penealty. A party of one, or a couple, cannot arbitrarily make such a decision.
I certainly agree that I will not miss any sleep over these nuts no longer sharing our air, but the means of getting there is disturbing.
If a US citizen joins another nation’s military and goes to war against the US, does that mean we can’t kill them?
@2: I agree with you, Nicki, but I also agree with TSO in that I tend to look at worst case scenario type stuff when it comes to the government. We know that the government acts like a child in that anything they get, they take to the hilt eventually. For example; if they get $20; they spend the $20, not $19.99. If they are told they have legal standing to hold indefinitely or kill US citizens “engaged in terrorist activities”; they will do just that, but since they will be the ones that define what “terrorist activities” are, it has the potential to go awry in a hurry.
The systematic execution of American Citizens in non-combat engagements by the US Govt on orders by US politicians is indeed problematic. This in no way means that those terrorists with US citizenship get a pass, but rather that certain steps should be taken before blowing them up driving down a desert road in a foreign country.
There are 3 valid and Constitutional options available to conduct the same mission, without this Constitutional problem:
1) Strip them of US Citizenship, as a result of their treasonous activities. This is an action that is conducted by many countries. Adam Gadahn is another Al-Qaeda terrorist that was born in the US and raised in CA as a hippie leftist. As he has publicly revoked his own citizenship, he can be dealt with in the same manner as any other foreign combatant.
2) Convict them of treason, prior to issueing the execution orders.
3) Send in ground forces to capture/arrest him, and kill them in combat when they resist, or try them in court if they don’t.
Being labeled a terrorist by a politician is an insufficient bar to a summary execution of a US citizen. Along this same slippery slope, Neopolitano has issued warnings that US Veterans, those quoting the US Constitution, or flying the Gadsden Flag may also be domestic terrorists. If Samir Khan can go from internet tough guy playing in his mother’s basement to executed terrorist, based solely on the decisions of politicians, without trial, without conviction, it is not a great leap for the same politicians to issue execution orders for gun-hoarding insurgents in the West Virginian mountains.
I have no love for the 3 terrorists listed, and while I am pleased that they now feed the dung beetles, their citizenship should have been stripped, BEFORE an execution order was issued.
4 & 5 – it’s the proverbial slippery slope. our legal system is no more prepared to fight a 4th gen war than the Army would have been in 1940. The law has not caught up to reality. Personally, I’m OK thinking these jerks are enemy combatants regardless of whose passports they carry, or at minimum making extremely poor life choices like hanging out with people who have HE aimed at ’em. Do I think it’s OK to take them out? Absolytely. Do I trust the government under this OR ANY OTHER admisnistration to handle this responsibility wisely? Not on your life….
@5 – OT, I don’t disagree with you at all. I frankly have very little trust in politicians, but the fact remains that these “citizens” joined what is, in fact, a quasi-military organization that is waging war against the US. They are combatants. They should be taken out.
I used to believe in the ACLU and what it stood for – the defense of civil liberties and the constitution.
Nowdays many worthy cases of infringment fall by the wayside because they have not sensationalism or shock value to enhance self promotion.
Loosely translated, the ACLU shops or picks and chooses it’s cases on the amount of media attention and exsposure it can garnish, regardless of the creedance, constituional injustice or imporatance of the case.
This is yet another prime example.
I hate to say this but to hell wiith the ACLU until they get some new leadership.
The whole drone strike program does have many people on both sides of the isle concerned. Huge sh*tstorm was stirred up over CIA enhanced interrogations whether it was or was not torture. So its ok to just blast suspected terrorists to smithereens(plus collateral damage) – thats better than interrogating? Without getting mucked up in international laws, I wonder when we start suffering blowback? We’re bombing in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and probably few more not in headlines – countries we are not officially at war with.
There is an unmistakable slippery slope aspect to this. Very soon we won’t be the only game in town as many other countries are already in possession or currently developing their own UAVs. With doctrine we currently follow, other nations may feel turnabout is only fair – to eliminate a “infidel” target on our soil due to U.S. refusal to prosecute or extradite. We can retaliate, but shines uncomfortable light on us as no longer possessing legal or moral high ground.
Well, with the NDAA signed into law this past January, what’s to stop Obama from labeling the ACLU as terrorists and black bagging them?
@6 Well stated…
I also have a hard time legally with what constitutes active enemy combatants outside of areas declared war zones…we have a mechanism in place to declare war, when we don’t use that mechanism the legitimacy of the conflict and actions subsequent to the conflict can become discussions for future historians to debate exactly when the empire’s decline began. As this site points out we already have a serving Senator who is a known liar regarding his service to our nation, these are not the types of people who should be allowed to sit in a dark room unsupervised and make these calls when our laws dictate we behave otherwise.
The hard part about being a nation of laws is forcing yourself to follow your own laws when your opponents won’t. Once you bypass those laws in the name of expediency you create opportunity for the law to be used against the folks it was designed to protect. I feel TSO’s discomfort here, historically we have been the guys who followed the rules no matter how difficult or uncomfortable and despite what our enemies were doing (at least officially) once you strip away that veneer of honorable, legal action you are left with an ugly truth, your government is the same as every other despotic regime that decides behind closed doors in secret who its’ enemies are and kills those enemies (real or perceived) whether foreign and domestic….
Nobody’s crying about these 3 4ssholes, but a government that has already seen fit to kill 79 people while trying to serve a warrant to one of them is not to be trusted with unlimited power, ever…I’m no fan of the ACLU, but I am not certain they are wrong here…
@10 Regarding the drones, there are about 1,000 drones a month being bought and built by hobbyists right now that can carry enough weight to deliver a lethal payload. The FAA limits these drones to flights of 400 feet, but bad guys won’t have a problem breaking that rule and these newer drones use a chip that combines the GPS, Logic, and control into a single chip costing about $17 at Newegg….you can build a drone today that can carry a 2lb payload and stay airborne for an hour, furthermore that drone can be operated at range by your cell phone or mobile touch screen device. The cost of resources required to create these drones are within the reach of any family hobbyists who want to build one, well funded enemies can easily build them now, nations with resources will have no trouble ramping up their production. To me the smaller handhelds are extremely dangerous in potential because there is no way to find them before they create a problem.
They are enimies of the state- They have forsaken their duty to America.
The took up arms against their Country and harmed their fellow citizens.
Betrayal has only one reward- Treason in times of war is DEATH.
They wrote their own check. US Laws applies only on US Soil. And where did these clowns buy the farm at?
They were targets of convenice in a hot target area- What would a law abbiding US citizens be doing in that part of the world???
@14 Agreed. When you’re wanted for treasonous crimes, preaching about the murder of innocent people, and purposely travel to a place that makes an effort to capture you unnecessarily dangerous you’re pretty much asking for a guided weapon to knock on your front door.
The one crime enumerated in the Constitution as a proper function — treason, but no national gov’t officer will enforce and prosecute !!
16–(proper function for gov’t to prosecute)