Death by remote control

Anwar al-Awlaki
Photo by Muhammad ud-Deen

Other than his family, I don't think most Americans are shedding many tears over the death of Anwar al-Awlaki on Friday. But the fact that an American citizen was targeted for assassination should concern us.

By Linda Felaco

"I've never wished a man dead, but I've read some obituaries with great pleasure."
—Mark Twain

I'm opposed to the death penalty, though I'll confess I was willing to make an exception for Osama bin Laden. For the nearly 10 years that he remained alive after 9/11 until the Navy SEALs executed him in May, I considered him to be out on bail awaiting trial. Except it seemed singularly pointless to try a man who not only utterly rejected our system of laws and justice, our way of life, indeed our entire civilization, but also relentlessly sought its destruction.

But now that radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, has been killed in a CIA drone strike in Yemen, I'm not so sure anymore about our justifications for extra-judicial killings. It seems like killing bin Laden started us down a slippery slope. Yes, al-Awlaki was a dangerous man, and we're safer without him alive. But he was never charged with or tried for any crime, and although he's believed to have recruited the underwear bomber and to have inspired the Times Square bomber, he may not have ever killed anyone. As Ron Paul pointed out, even Timothy McVeigh got a fair trial; we didn't assassinate him.

Glenn Greenwald wrote in Salon that by assassinating one of its own citizens, the U.S. government has violated the Fifth Amendment, which states that "No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law." He went on to say:

"Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President's ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki -- including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry's execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists -- criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed." 

In contrast, Andrew C. McCarthy wrote in the National Review that "War is not supposed to be litigation. It's not about rights for the enemy but rather victory for the American people." Andrew Sullivan has taken the position that "we are at war, and that avowed enemies and traitors in active warfare against the US cannot suddenly invoke legal protections from a society they have decided to help destroy."

Fair enough. But our strength as a society lies in our principles of law and justice. Abandoning them when it's convenient to do so makes us weaker, not stronger, both in the eyes of our enemies and in the eyes of our friends.
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UPDATE, Sunday, 10/2/11, 4:30 p.m.

Along with al-Awlaki, the U.S. drone strike on Friday was reported to have also killed American propagandist Samir Khan, who published a slick English-language web magazine that spouted al-Qaida's anti-Western ideology, and al-Qaida's top bombmaker in Yemen, Ibrahim al-Asiri. However, a top Yemeni official reported today that al-Asiri was not among the dead. Al-Asiri was tied to the "underwear bomb" and a pair of explosives-laden printers that were intercepted en route from Yemen to the U.S. in 2010. Antiterrorism experts say al-Qaida remains a powerful threat in Yemen and that the death of al-Asiri, a critical component of al-Qaida's activities in Yemen, would have been a significant blow to the organization.