Should any President have the power to target and kill a 16 year old American citizen without having to tell anybody why he did it?
This is not an anti-Obama thing, although the irony of murderous ways abounds, this is about unchecked executive power with the self-proclaimed right to decide which American citizens should live and which should die.
Obama supporter Tom Junod at Esquire rightly questions the whole thing.
Let’s start there. He was an American boy, born in America. Though he’d lived in Yemen since he was about seven, he was still an American citizen, which should have made it harder for the United States to kill him.
It didn’t.
It should at the very least have made it necessary for the United States to say why it killed him.
It didn’t.
His name was Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, and he was 16 years old when he died — when he was killed by a drone strike in Yemen, by the light of the moon. He was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was also born in America, who was also an American citizen, and who was killed by drone two weeks before his son was, along with another American citizen named Samir Khan. Of course, both Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were, at the very least, traitors to their country — they had both gone to Yemen and taken up with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and al-Awlaki had proven himself an expert inciter of those with murderous designs against America and Americans: the rare man of words who could be said to have a body count. When he was killed, on September 30, 2011, President Obama made a speech about it; a few months later, when the Obama administraton’s public-relations campaign about its embrace of what has come to be called “targeted killing” reached its climax in a front-page story in the New York Times that presented the President of the United States as the last word in deciding who lives and who dies, he was quoted as saying that the decision to put Anwar al-Awlaki on the kill list — and then to kill him — was “an easy one.”
But Abdulrahman al-Awlaki wasn’t on an American kill list. Nor was he a member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninusla. Nor was he “an inspiration,” as his father styled himself, for those determined to draw American blood; nor had he gone “operational,” as American authorities said his father had, in drawing up plots against Americans and American interests.
He was a boy who hadn’t seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who snuck out of his family’s home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him. He was a boy who was still searching for his father when his father was killed, and who, on the night he himself was killed, was saying goodbye to the second cousin with whom he’d lived while on his search, and the friends he’d made. He was a boy among boys, then; a boy among boys eating dinner by an open fire along the side of a road when an American drone came out of the sky and fired the missiles that killed them all.
It is not sufficient to say that these guys are bad guys and bad things happen when you declare war on the US.
The Supreme Court just ruled that life without parole for minors constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, but killing them without trial or court order is okey dokey?
This is a power no President, no matter how well intentioned, should have.
July 10, 2012 at 3:17 pm
I fully agree. God have mercy on President Obama and on us as Americans. Heaven help us to know, love and serve God even when it is hard.
July 10, 2012 at 5:17 pm
There are rumors Obama enjoys these strikes a little too well. Meanwhile, Hilary keeps escalating with Russia and China over Syria, even as word leaks out that the massacres may be the rebels, not the Syrian army (though I am sure the military is not averse to killing). So, the U.S. is overextended and, assuming Russia+China can put together a coherent response, they can totally screw with U.S. logistics and the house of cards falls apart.
But we've got a president with control over the nuclear arsenal who has already displayed no compunction in murdering a 16yr old.
July 11, 2012 at 1:47 am
Tough call. An American in a German or Japanese uniform in '44 would have been fair game. What makes these guys special?
July 11, 2012 at 2:27 am
Collateral damage. Al-Awlaki was a legitimate target (all his American citizenship means is his death is also punishing treason).
Kindly learn the definition of murder; this is, at worst, negligent homicide. And you'd have to prove reasonable precautions weren't taken to ensure the absence of innocent bystanders.
July 11, 2012 at 11:22 am
@Sophia, the strike that killed Abdulrahman occurred 2 weeks after the one that killed his father and Khan. Therefore he was not "collateral damage," but rather was explicitly targeted.
July 11, 2012 at 11:22 am
@Sophia, the strike that killed Abdulrahman occurred 2 weeks after the one that killed his father and Khan. Therefore he was not "collateral damage," but rather was explicitly targeted.
July 11, 2012 at 11:23 am
@Sophia, the strike that killed Abdulrahman occurred 2 weeks after the one that killed his father and Khan. Therefore he was not "collateral damage," but rather was explicitly targeted.
July 11, 2012 at 3:03 pm
Nobel Peace Prize might have been premature.
July 11, 2012 at 3:33 pm
Ron Bowers,
stop….
July 11, 2012 at 3:34 pm
hitting….
July 11, 2012 at 3:34 pm
the PUBLISH button!
July 12, 2012 at 11:25 am
@Ron Bowers: it's not a question of when his father was killed, but of when we confirmed he was killed. If we were still making strikes against al-Awlaki, even though they'd already been successful, if we didn't know that then, indeed, his son's death was just collateral damage.
So: did we get immediate confirmation of his father's death? Or not?
Finally, my name's Sophia's Favorite, not Sophia.