Al-Awlaki: A U.S. citizen in the cross hairs

last updated 8 January 2015

President Obama has just ordered the assassination of an American citizen, said Scott Shane in The New York Times. The target of this extraordinary presidential directive is Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico and spent years in the U.S. before relocating to Yemen. Al-Awlaki allegedly served as an al Qaida contact for Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, last November, and for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian underwear bomber charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day. U.S. officials say that al-Awlaki’s role in al Qaida has evolved from inciting violence against Americans to plotting actual attacks. But although the government maintains a list of terrorists authorized to be killed, “it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented,” for an American citizen to be on it.

So much for the U.S. Constitution, said Dale McFeatters in ScrippsNews.com. Since al-Awlaki is a U.S. citizen, the bull’s-eye on his back had to be approved by the National Security Council. But the Constitution unambiguously maintains “that no American shall be deprived of life without due process of law.” Are we to believe that “secret deliberations by the NSC” meet that constitutional standard? Even as a conservative, I find this order worrisome, said Kevin D. Williamson in National Review Online. It’s not impossible to imagine a U.S. president deciding that a journalist who’s obtained classified information needs to be “assassinated in the name of national security.” Al-Awlaki may be a very bad guy, but “this seems to me to be setting an awful and reckless precedent.” Sadly, said Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com, Americans are too enfeebled by fear to object. Like President Bush, Obama now claims that he need only label someone a “terrorist” to justify killing them “on sight.”

Al-Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship is irrelevant, said David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey in TheDailyBeast.com. As a member of al Qaida, al-Awlaki has joined in “armed hostilities” against the U.S. That makes him a soldier—not a “criminal suspect”—and under a well-established body of law, he is “subject to attack, capture, and detention pursuant to the law of armed conflict.” It’s time for Obama’s “disappointed supporters” to acknowledge the reality he accepted when he moved into the White House: We are at war.