Don’t forget American citizens are on the table too, no due process required!
EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki Thank you Jaywalk for the correct link
EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki Thank you Jaywalk for the correct link
I'm not for drone strikes, but it seems to me if your dad is an armed militant working against the US and killed in a US military operation, and then you go around associating with even more armed militants working against the US, you're asking a lot of your US citizenship to protect you from getting droned.
A US citizen who was executed by a drone strike ordered by Obama himself.
A little different, but imagine if an American decided to go fight for Germany during WWII. Should he receive any special consideration above what native-born German soldiers got, before Americans start shooting towards him?
Not enough for my taste, but it at least caused a hiccup in the meat grinder. And it diminishes Obama's legacy in an objective way that can be repeated ad nauseam, legitimately. He lives on past the bullets as a bullet-point in presentations, discussions, debates and speeches.
Salutations, fellow United States citizen Mr. Al-Awlaki.
Nobody, including the President, has the right to do that. It was blatantly unconstitutional.
Here’s a mental experiment for you: what would you do if Russia, lawfully (according to Russian laws) executed people in US? Because that’s exactly what US is doing to the rest of the world.
> what would you do if Russia, lawfully (according to Russian laws) executed people in US? Because that’s exactly what US is doing to the rest of the world.
Well, that depends - is the US government a failed state incapable of enforcing its own laws? Or did the US government give permission for this to happen? Then sure, go right ahead Russia. The Yemeni government gave the greenlight for the US to drone strike al-Awlaki.
Essentially, you’re assuming US are always the good guys. And the easiest way to explain this is the foundation of all US politics: racism.
Having said that, US _arr_ the good guys at the moment, and let’s hope it stays that way.
If Russia executed people that were waging war against Russia from within the US, that the US had already convicted of making war on Russia, was the US also trying to capture or kill at the same time?
I'd expect the US government to say "thank you".
The due process afforded in the constitution. With, you know, trials and juries and such.
> A little different, but imagine if an American decided to go fight for Germany during WWII. Should he receive any special consideration above what native-born German soldiers got, before Americans start shooting towards him?
I would say that an operation specifically to assassinate that person without a trial should be viewed as unconstitutional.
And just going to through out there that Anwar al-Awlaki isn't accused of taking up arms, just publishing political speech that the US government didn't approve of.
A drone strike feels like a pretty active situation no?
I'm not being pedantic, just pointing out that there is a ton of grey area that your statement doesn't account for, and we'd need to dive into the details of this situation to determine whether the assassination was justified or not. Even then, it would mostly be a qualitative judgement.
For example, let's say you had credible information indicating someone was going to bomb and elementary school, and you saw them running down your street towards one such school. Would you shoot?
What if, same situation, but you saw them riding a bike or driving a car toward the school? What if you had no idea where they were, but someone told you they'd be in a certain location before the attack and you could only get a drone to the location in time?
I'm not saying the gov was wrong or right with Anwar, just that the arguments presented here fail to account for real world complexity.
Following that logic, drone striking you in your house is an active situation. No constitution needed.
No, I obviously meant that you're allowed to kill as LEO _in response_ to an active situation.
> For example, let's say you had credible information indicating someone was going to bomb and elementary school, and you saw them running down your street towards one such school. Would you shoot?
> What if, same situation, but you saw them riding a bike or driving a car toward the school? What if you had no idea where they were, but someone told you they'd be in a certain location before the attack and you could only get a drone to the location in time?
The real world is not the TV show 24. The purpose of the constitution is to constrain such actions even if extrajudicially drone striking every person with a modicum of 'credible evidence' against them would be easier or might lead to less tragedies.
Additionally, you're ignoring that there was no active situation Al-Waki was accused of participating in. Just political speech the government didn't approve of.
My point was that you haven't defined what an "active situation" is. I could say "we should only kill people when we have to" and that'd be accurate, but that'd be useless for the point of this conversation, which at this point seems to be defining "have to".
> The real world is not the TV show 24. The purpose of the constitution is to constrain such actions even if extrajudicially drone striking every person with a modicum of 'credible evidence' against them would be easier or might lead to less tragedies.
Indeed, however, such things happen and people are forced to act during them. I also highly doubt the playbook the military uses is "do we have at least a modicum of evidence? then kill them."
>Additionally, you're ignoring that there was no active situation Al-Waki was accused of participating in. Just political speech the government didn't approve of.
I am ignoring no such thing as I made no comment on his situation other than to say I do not have enough information to make a judgement.
Source?
Should the US conducted the formality of convicting him of treason in absentia? Sure.
None of this remotely excuses killing his children.
Once again - you’re assuming US was the good guys there. Which is quite an absurd assumption if you look at the numbers instead of propaganda.