Assassin-in-Chief

National Review ^ | Nov. 1, 2010 | Kevin D. Williamson

[americanophile]

Here are two facts: (1) Anwar al-Awlaki is an American citizen and an al-Qaeda propagandist. (2) Pres. Barack Obama proposes to assassinate him. Between the first fact and the second falls the shadow.

The Awlaki case has led many conservatives into dangerous error, as has the War on Terror more generally. That conservatives are for the most part either offering mute consent or cheering as the Obama administration draws up a list of U.S. citizens to be assassinated suggests not only that have we gone awry in our thinking about national security, limitations on state power, and the role of the president in our republic, but also that we still do not understand all of the implications of our country’s confrontation with Islamic radicalism. The trauma of 9/11 has deposited far too much emotional residue upon our thinking, and the Awlaki case provides occasion for a necessary scouring. Contra present conservative dogma, the Constitution has relatively little to say about the role of the president in matters of what we now call national security, which is not synonymous with combat operations. What the Constitution says is this: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” That is all. Upon this sandy foundation, conservative security and legal thinkers have constructed a fortress of a presidency that is nearly unlimited or actually unlimited in its power to define and pursue national-security objectives. But a commander-in-chief is not a freelance warlord, and his titular powers do not extend over everything that touches upon national security.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

I will not lose sleep over this guy being killed.

Now he can’t plan anymore terrorist attacks, which is a good thing.

[irishtenor]

I think i want to throw my two cents worth into this...

Anybody who turns to lawlessness must realize the consequences of their actions.

Anyone who has turned their back on their country to the point of joining a terrorist organization in another country bent on destroying the peace and tranquility of their country had better expect that country to renounce, revoke, or otherwise remove their citizenship.

Once that citizenship is removed, either by their own declaration or by a public declaration by the government of that contry, they cannot expect anything other than complete and utter destruction by the hand of that country.

I think this case fits that bill.

[DuncanWaring]

From the US Constitution - Article III, Section 3:

Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, ...

All that's needed to convict someone of Treason is two witnesses ... hopefully who would testify under oath and provide substantiating evidence.

Clearly absent is any reference to trial by a jury of peers, right to cross-examine witnesses, representation by counsel, or any of the other characteristics of a civil trial.

Thus, there should be no difficulty in getting a conviction on a charge of treason. If Treason is a capital crime, which I believe it is, dispatching alWaki (or whatever his name is) via drone/missile is fully consistent with the Constitution.

[rfp1234]

The current ability of terrorist traitors to keep their U.S. citizenship is an outrage (thanks, CAIR and ACLU).

But Congress will need to clearly address this issue, because it does set a troublesome precedent.

A trial in absentia, along with the State Dept. officially stripping this scumbag of his citizenship due to treason, would have been ideal before his execution. Ditto for Adam Gadahn, his time will come too.

[wilco200]

“This is war.”

This hasn’t been a war since 2003.

If it had been, it would have been over years ago.

This is PC nation-building boondoggle or as Obama calls it “an overseas contingency operation”

[cruise_missile]

Constitutionalists are so out there.
They think our laws are based on it. /sarc

Besides all that. This event has shown an unbelievable amout of hypocrisy from the Left.

Obama has changed his views on (remember when):
- Reading field combatants their Miranda rights.
- Closing of Gitmo.
- Military trials (Gitmo) vs. Civil trials (New York). - Indefinite Detention.
- Enhanced Interrogation techniques.
- The Patriot Act. Wire tapping is just wrong.
- The Iraqi surge. - Attacking sovereign countries. Iraq was wrong. But bombing Libya, Yemen and Pakistan is OK.
- Killing American citizens and denying them their 5th and 14th Amendment rights.

Obama when he first came into office wanted to call the War on Terrorism a “Manned Made Disaster”

He changes the rules on this daily just like he does on almost everything. And that is what is wrong with his leadership skills.

The only thing they haven’t changed their view on is water boarding.

[PanzerKardinal]

If Al Awlaki deserved to die because he was a major recruiter and ideologue of our enemies, along with fulminating Anti-American activities.

Then doesn't Jane Fonda deserve to be killed?

Or even John Kerry?

[montag813]

I’m onboard with it. Collaborate with Al Qaeda, and I want you shot on the spot. This is war.

Then how 'bout we actually declare one.

[cruise_missile]

Bill Maher Cheers Murder of U.S. Citizen Awlaki, Favored Civilian Trial for 9/11 Mastermind KSM (Just last year)

How things have changed with the Left.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/10/01/maher-cheers-assassination-us-citizen-awlaki-favored-civilian-trial-9#ixzz1ZZnKXTNM

[mazda77]

This is a total violation of the Constitution.

So is the interpretation of the 14th Ammendment in regard to "anchor babies". So where do we start and end on this one? Do we need to go through this whole arguement again? If, so, then maybe some so-called learned individuals will start to look just a bit deeper than the MSM.

[Dawgreg]

Him being an American citizen was forfeited when he went over to the dark side and encouraged and helped his fellow fanatics kill us other American citizens. I’m glad not one drop of blood was shed to go in and get him and bring him to trial. He was an American citizen in words only.

[Ken522]

You are 100% on the mark, Muawiyah; it’s also possible the services already set up a task group to get Al-Awaki which PRE-DATED the Obama administration; Obama would just have signed off on it at the insistence of ADM Mullins. I don’t know any of this for a fact, but it would lend continuity to the flow of events.

[Billthedrill]

The Constitution is also mute about what, precisely, constitutes "due process" in this particular situation. Much being made of the fact that the target - I will not say "victim" - was allegedly an American citizen. I might point out that the entire campaign is, with respect to foreign citizens, also contrary to international laws to which the U.S. is a signator.

What of it? Here we have an open enemy who is using sanctuary granted under both sets of law to make war against the United States, kill its citizens, destroy its property, blacken its name and motivate others to make war against it as well. There is really little grey area here, and the fact that the terrorist may or may not have been born on U.S. soil strikes me as a bit of legal pettifogging. Certainly there must be strict controls over whom among our enemies is targeted this way, and that, within Constitutional strictures, is provided by Congressional oversight committees entrusted with that specific function. Despise 0bama though I do, this is not a case of him picking names out of a hat.

I do not minimize the danger of Star Chambers and secret assassination orders, and I would certainly acceded to a formal review of the process, also as provided for under the Constitutio. But clearly this is a new form of warfare in which he who follows the rules is quickly outmaneuvered by he who does not and hides behind them. That's part of the reason this sort of terror warfare has become so popular. We can talk about process and probably should, but this particular individual gets not a single tear from me no matter what hospital saw his entry into the world he was setting afire.

[sand lake bar]

I agree 100%. You wage war against America, you risk death, no matter what your passport says.

[truth_seeker]

If he was wearing a military uniform, of a nation-state that we were in a declared war with, wouldn’t we shoot him? Regardless of his earlier birth derived citizenship?

But since islam is too cowardly to fight like men on battlefields, why do we give them advantages?

Why is he less than an officer, in the enemys’ armies?

To me this guy is no different than any other traitor, who fights on the other side.

Declared or undeclared, is is nonetheless war.

Uniform or not, he is a warrior.

Our Constitution was never intended as a suicide pact, inspite of what Dr. Paul might think.

[GOP_Party_Animal]

You left out “mind-numbed, knee-jerk, robot-like Paultards”

Exactly what I was thinking. This sounds like Ron Paul nuttery. Look, the President swears to defend against enemies, foreign and domestic. This camel jockey was on foreign soil, working with foreign agents to kill Americans. If you're opposed to rubbing him out, then perhaps you favor risking CIA agents' lives to retrieve him and give him a nice long trial here in the 'States. Then, during the trial, Al-Qaeda can learn how we found him.

[bigheadfred]

A note on 'intolerance': I don't doubt that there are decent individual Muslims, but as a unique theocratic doctrine, Islam has proven to be among the world's most uncompromisingly hostile, violent, xenophobic, intolerant, misogynistic, regressive and imperialistic ideologies. A battle of more than 2,000 years has been waged by imperial Islam against Christianity, and all those ideologies that differ from this Bedouin mythology, and much of the cradle of Christianity has been conquered. Ignoring the evil of this rabidly anti-Semitic ideology is tantamount to ignoring Nazism because some Germans were decent. Thanks to Islam, there simply is no compromise between the peaceful teachings of enlightened Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, etc., and the regressive totalitarianism of Sharia. I am cognizant, and have great respect for the American tradition of free religious expression, but I also understand its limits - neither it, nor Christianity, is a suicide pact. I absolutely don't advocate any kind of violence against peaceful Muslims, but neither do I believe that the rest of us are required to surrender our faiths, our culture, or our lives in pursuit of an illusory pluralism that exists nowhere in the Islamic world.

Anyone out there seen this before? ANYONE????

[Revolting cat!]

At least the kilt dude was provably an American citizen, which still cannot be said of the usurper who ordered him killed.

[BIGLOOK]

Show me the body.....

If it's really him, ok, but if all this was to burnish Obama' s record in office during plunging polls, it's not. Consider this; The Puzzle Palace loses out on this, one way or another.

[montag813]

This is war.

If this was truly a war, then one would have been declared by Congress, broad enemies named, and we would currently have troops occupying Pakistan at the least (with their nukes under our control), and Saudi Arabia under U.S. directorate, with U.S. Army Intel combing through all "princes", banks and paperwork on the Peninsula for links to AQ - and crush them. We would also never have seen G.W. Bush disgrace us all by going barefoot in that filthy mosque while the WTC was still smoking, and declaring that Satanic cult a "religion of peace". Can you have imagined FDR doing so in a Shinto shrine after Pearl Harbor? And he was a liberal.