There’s a difference between killing someone in the course of an actual battle, and deciding it is OK to kill a US citizen with a “due process” that is completely secret. No one disputes the constitutionality of the former. But if we’re going to to put a “wanted, dead or alive” tag on a US citizen, there should be some sort of credible due process. I don’t see any in this case.
He was given the same due process as any al-Qaeda leader hiding in an area where they are only accessible by military force.
I have a real problem with killing a US citizen without a trial; in fact, I’d have a problem with killing instead of arresting a US citizen after a trial.
Apparently John Dillinger was killed without a trial, though.
Ya know, there is all this slippery slope stuff and exactly what did or did not make this legal or not legal…
But when you make a handful (or even worse make it a lifestyle choice) of voluntary choices that any retard would know at the very least will put you in a world of shit (including possibly death from above) with the powers that be I cannot feel too sympathetic. Particularly when your choices are so extreme that its something that only between one in 10 million and one in hundred million people would choose to do.
This ain’t the edge of the slippery slope. Hell, its not even close. Its a hundred miles from the edge of the plateau.
I’m going file this one under the ole “some people just need killin”.
But what if a president decides that growers of carnivorous plants need killin’?
Or those who fish for billfish, whatever those are? 
THEN I’ll worry.
Well, me anyway. I don’t give a rats ass about you.
He was an American citizen killed by his country for his speech. He was not guilty of anything since there was no trial or evidence.
How would you feel about us blowing away Karzai? He is an untrustworthy ally whose brother is reputed to be a main player in international drug trading. How would you feel if we sent a drone his way? He may be a huge backer of the Taliban in secret. His secret police were rumored to have been involved in 911.
If we had a better leader I wouldn’t really care but it might be like Diem in Vietnam where we got worse leaders.
THEN it will be too late.
And I don’t give a rats ass about you either, you dukey butt!
I didn’t realize that you were a truther.
I guess you’re an even bigger moron than I thought.
I’d recommend you actually learn something about the Middle East before continuing to make a fool of yourself.
Can we assume that you favor the immediate release of Charles Manson and Omar Abd Al-Rahman who are “jailed for their speech”.
Why would he need to? When an enemy agent is working to overthrow the US from within US soil, you don’t drop bombs on his house - you send the police to arrest him. Things like drone strikes and Seal kill teams are reserved for places like, say, anarchy-stricken regions of Yemen, where you lack police power. I can’t imagine a scenario short of civil war where the president of the US would need to summarily assassinate people on US soil.
There is no such thing as a presumption of power in the Constitution, all powers of the federal govt are enumerated expressly. There is however a presumption of liberty as the 9th amendment proves.
So the burden is on you to prove:
- Al-Awlaki was not amenable to 5th amendment rights
- The President has the Constitutional power to kill him
Once again.. burden is always on you to prove there are no such limitations on Presidential war making power. Don’t try to pretend the burden is reversed just because no specific case on a point can be found.
I noticed that you cited the AUMF. IF Al-Awlaki has no 5th amendment rights and the AUMF was passed within the limits of Congress’ Constitutional power then I agree that this is the legal basis for targeting him.
However, so far the case law goes against you. In Reid v Covert (1957) the SCOTUS ruled that:
“When the United States acts against its citizens abroad, it can do so only in accordance with all the limitations imposed by the Constitution, including Art. III, § 2, and the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.”
Enemy combatant status by itself is not good enough of itself unless you have some evidence that Gitmo detainees who are US citizens can be lawfully killed without due process of law.
I think you’re conflating enemy combatants with battlefields and legitimate military targets as though they’re always one in the same thing.
If Langley is directing troops on the battlefield then they’re as much a legitimate target as the troops on the actual battlefield because they are posing an imminent threat to others. Killing them would be a lawful act of self-defence EVEN if they’re not technically enemy combatants as would killing POTUS if he had his hand on the button.
However, a person who happens to be an enemy combatant in the sense that they’re enlisted to fight but is also residing in barracks or a private dwelling and thereby not posing an imminent threat to anyone is not a legitimate target.
Perhaps you recall the Fort Hood shooting where 12 soldiers were murdered amongst others? The fact Al Qaeda was at war with the United States did not permit them to kill soldiers who weren’t posing an imminent threat.
In fact did you know it is illegal to kill a wounded soldier on the battlefield if they’re no longer an imminent threat? That’s the law of hors de combat under the protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention.
So it is all about the circumstances of the case not just the status of the target.
Since Yemen was not in a state of war and Al-Awlaki was not killed on a battlefield nor it seems was he about to order a terrorist attack which would have made it defence of others, he had 5th amendment rights not to be killed without due process of law.
Exactly. At its core, this is a jurisdiction issue. Saying that the U.S. can arrest someone in Yemen is saying that Yemen is U.S. soil. Frankly, the U.S. claiming jurisdiction over faraway lands would scare me a whole lot more than the odd killing.
Yea its not about claiming jurisdiction, which requires the consent of the foreign sovereign, as much as it is about the Constitutional basis for federal officials to act against US citizens overseas.
Notwithstanding that they may be violating the laws of the other country, the US govt cannot suddenly ignore the rights of citizens by acting outside its borders.
The SCOTUS is pretty clear on that as they held in Reid v Covert (1957).. see my post above.
That case is about a woman who murdered her husband in Britain and was subject to a military commission for punishment.
Furthermore, you fail to quote a couple of important lines in the concurrence:
Aside from that decision, there is also Ex Parte Quirin, in which a unanimous court stated:
I think that’s a much more clear and concise explanation of how the war power interacts with constitutional protections.
Absolute, complete nonsense. If you don’t know anything about the laws of war, don’t make shit up and expect others to swallow it.
I’m sure the text messages Awlaki traded with Major Hasan before the Fort Hood massacre were just about trading lentil soup recipes and dishing about the Jersey Shore. But the safe money says the authroities have those messages and that evidence alone constitutes imminent incitation of violence.
Pot. Kettle:
“And so I agree with my brother FRANKFURTER that, in view of Ross and the Insular Cases, we have before us a question analogous, ultimately, to issues of due process; one can say, in fact, that the question of which specific safeguards of the Constitution are appropriately to be applied in a particular context overseas can be reduced to the issue of what process is “due” a defendant in the particular circumstances of a particular case.”
and
“So far as capital cases are concerned, I think they stand on quite a different footing than other offenses. In such cases, the law is especially sensitive to demands for that procedural fairness which inheres in a civilian trial where the judge and trier of fact are not responsive to the command of the convening authority.”
It seems clear from Reid v. Covert that there are certain protections (NOTE: not the full panoply of Constitutional protections, but at least some due process), guaranteed in the Constitution that apply to citizens abroad. There is an argument to be made that Al Awlaki received enough due process (I’d bet dollars to donuts that that is the finding of the Justice Departments’ memo OK’ing the targeted killing) for his situation, but it is wrong to say that the due process clause doesn’t apply at all.
In Quirin, the President didn’t order the targeted killling of the “unlawful combatant” without trial, he tried them in military commission, they were given habeas rights and allowed to appeal, and THEN killed by the military. That’s not what happened to Al Awlaki.
I think this is an important debate because we’re not entirely clear how “much” of the constitution applies outside the US to US citizens, but that case deals with a civilian. Not an enemy combatant. If a person is an enemy combatant, then cases discussing which constitutional rights follow US (civilian) citizens around the world do not apply in the same way. Right? That civilian/combatant distinction has to come into play in the debate, in conjunction with the person’s nationality.
But also, yea, I’m sure in this particular case (Awlaki) he was given constitutional due process considerations because he was an American citizen. We don’t know how much, only that it was much less than if they were to consider him a civilian.
Do you see the irony? He’s an “enemy combatant” because the President said, without review, that he’s an enemy combatant. Call him an enemy combatant to take away his rights as a citizen so you can kill him without violating the constitution. It’s completely circular. We can’t kill you without due process because you’re a citizen, so we’ll call you an enemy combatant and poof, now we get to kill you.
As the Supreme Court ruled, simply calling someone an enemy combatant doesn’t take away their rights under the Constitution.
Perhaps he was given due process. It should would be nice to know he had an attorney, was allowed to appeal, and had a neutral magistrate though.