Thanks to LC & IB Bill Quick, we learn that apparently there are some on the right, or at The American Thinker at least, who aren’t exactly 100% sure that they should celebrate al-Alwaki’s recent departure to hell. No, the writer is not all verklempt that al-Alwaki’s no longer here, we do have the obligatory acknowledgments that the world is a better place without the terrorist bastard, BUT…
But it is worth noting that the United States government has killed a United States citizen without any judicial sanction, merely on an executive branch decision. A line has been crossed, and there are people on both the left and right side of the political spectrum who are given pause by the precedent and prospects for the future.
We’re with Bill Quick here completely. The line that was crossed was crossed by al-Alwaki when he decided to wage war against his homeland because, as the Oath says, those of us who gave it are obligated to defend the Constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic.
There is no “but you get special treatment if you’re an American citizen waging war against us” clause in there.
Al-Alwaki wasn’t “assassinated” (as you so cutely put it) because he owed back taxes or had written a scathing blog post about Ogabe, he was killed because he was waging war against the U.S. It is not only perfectly legitimate for the Commander-in-Chief, no matter who he is, to issue that order, it is his sworn duty to do so.
But you’re right that there are those who should be “given pause”, not because of an enemy combatant who just so happened to be a U.S. citizen getting killed as a result of waging war against us, but because of their seeming lack of understanding of the whole “…and domestic” part of the Oath. They just seem to be all on the same side (not ours) and they all seem utterly unaware of the implications thereof.
Hopefully for them and our nation, they’ll wake up before it’s too late for them.
Thatisall.
P.S.: To preempt any nonsense about his “being killed in Yemen which is not a war zone, waaaaaah”, allow us to quote this:
However, tribal sources told AFP that Awlaki was killed in an air strike which hit two vehicles in Marib province, an al Qaeda stronghold in eastern Yemen early Friday.
So, if the Brits or the French had taken the opportunity to blast the shit out of Adolf Hitler while he was in Paris, celebrating the capture thereof (but before the French had surrendered, therefore making them “not an enemy”), then that would have been an “assassination” too?