The killing of Anwar al-Aulaqi and Samir Khan seem so wrong on so many levels, but I will try to articulate why these killings of accussed terrorists are so troubling.
Recall the criticism of the George W. Bush administration for supposed "war crimes" because harsh interrogation techniques were employed against such captives as Khalid Sheik Muhammed. Candidate Barak Obama, and later the Obama administration, referred to waterboarding and other such enhanced interrogation techniques as "torture". In January 2009, President Obama banned the use of waterboarding.
Recall further that President Obama promised to eliminate the detention center for terrorists located in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has found it impossible to find a politically survivable way to deal with these terrorists and Gitmo remains open, but our government no longer captures terrorists nor does it send any more to Gitmo. Now, we kill them with drones or kill them with Navy Seals. The loss of intelligence due to the administration's inability to figure out how to deal with interrogation and housing issues is not the subject of this piece, but it is also quite troubling.
Now, however, our President has taken an unprecedented step. He has institutionalized the notion that the President of the United States of America has the power and authority under our Constitution to order the killing of a U.S. citizen on foreign soil if he, in his sole discretion, believes that it should be done. When asked for details on the legal principles that allowed the killing of al-Aulaqi and Khan, the White House today stated that those were "state secrets". Therefore, no legal justification will be offered to Americans or the world, it appears.
The media has told us that al-Aulaqi was a very bad man. He is "linked" to other terroists, what ever that means. He has incited others to commit violence against Americans, we are told, though we do not know who his accusers are who say these things about him because no one in the judicial system has conducted a trial. We do not know what the evidence is that proves this man's guilt, other than the say-so of the media and the White House. This, my friends, is not how the United States of America was supposed to work.
The assassination of Mr. Khan is even more troubling. His great crime was to publish an online magazine that promoted jihad. To our knowledge, he has never killed anyone or participated in any terrorist plot. He says things we don't like on websites, and therefore he has been killed - a 20 year old American citizen who never stood trial or faced any accuser for what ever crime he is supposed to have committed.
This is not a liberal or conservative matter to me. It is a matter of whether we love our Constitutional form of government, respect how it came to be, and commit ourselves to governing in accordance with its principles, or whether we are willing to ignore it when the media and our political leadership tell us to ignore it.
I have no problem pouring water up the noses of terroists. I have no problem housing them humanely at Gitmo and putting them on trial in military tribunals as foreign enemy combatants. I do have a problem with my government killing American citizens who have been convicted of no crime. I had a problem with it when the massacre at Kent State occurred in 1970 and I have a problem with it today. Other Americans do not seem to mind. That is the observation that bothers me most. I wonder if we have not already lost our country and our liberty, and have simply been to distracted to notice.
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