Again, maybe you can point out the part of the Constitution where it says “Does not apply if done by the military”.
Let me ask you a question. Do you think that the Authorization of Military Force allows the President to assassinate US citizens in the US without judicial oversight, as long as he says it’s a military strike against Al Qaeda? Are we really at a point where people believe it is constitutional for the President to order the Navy Seals to go kill some guy in Miami because he says he’s a member of Al Qaeda?
Oh, we agree again. Assassinations are troubling. But his citizenship makes it troubling … and unconstitutional.
There isn’t an easy solution. But we don’t decide to ignore the Constitution just because it’s too difficult.
I’ve gone around this in my head, and I’m still not sure. But I think, at the very least, there should be “due process” before the President is allowed to kill US citizens. What does “due process” require for military action against an Al Qaeda member, I’m not sure. But I would be so much more comfortable with a military tribunal going over the evidence and having the determination reviewed by an appellate court BEFORE we go about killing US citizens.
I tend to agree that (assuming Yemen wasn’t going to let us arrest him) he had to be killed- but you are overlooking the fact that the CIA is not part of the military. Not to mention that even Frank Luntz couldn’t spin some terrorists in a car as an “enemy formation”.
And your assertion that Anwar Al-Awlaki didn’t do anything except make YouTube videos is also not true just because you said it is. See if you can figure out the difference between something that hasn’t been proved in a court of law (he spent about a decade being involved with Al Qaeda, with wannabe terrorists, and with a guy who murdered 13 people) and something that is simply incomplete and wrong (he didn’t do anything but make YouTube videos).
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize enemy formations were exclusively defined as POW camps ringed by wooden watchtowers and machine gun nests. I didn’t learn that during my time at the U.S. Military Academy nor have I ever heard such an argument in 30+ years of reading military histories and treatises. Interesting idea, though.
If someone has voluntarily returned to the country from which he was descended, is preaching violent Jihad against the United States and has undertaken an operational role that has resulted in the intended or actual deaths of Americans, military and civilian alike, I have no problem with an assumption he has effectively renounced his American citizenship.
What does any of this have to do with the valid military strike in Yemen?
If you believe some part of the Constitution has been violated, please tell me which specific part.
If you believe a specific crime has been committed by someone, please cite the U.S. Code.
Further, once you’ve done that please contact the FBI. If you don’t suspect they will take you seriously then I strongly suggest you write a letter to the Department of Justice, or if that does not seem ideal then write your Congressman and ask him to open an investigation–if you believe the President is responsible that will probably be where you have to start so we can get impeachment proceedings going.
What part of the Constitution gives anyone the power to require the President hold tribunals before using military force against the enemy?
Congress approved military action, the President executes the will of the Congress in the manner he sees fit. The only valid limitation on that is if Congress disagrees with how he is behaving they can rescind the approval. Or if you believe the President has violated criminal law he can be investigated and prosecuted.
I don’t think Al Qaeda fits as an “foreign state” for the purposes of the statute, but the Code does say:
“(7) committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States, violating or conspiring to violate any of the provisions of section 2383 of title 18, or willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of title 18, or violating section 2384 of title 18 by engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction.”
The slight problem is that Al Awlaki was never “convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction”. You can’t simply strip nationality because you want to kill a person.
Although maybe there is a middle ground. Maybe the President could have conducted a court martial, or called a military tribunal a “court of comptetent jurisdiction” to hear the evidence against Al Awlaki and make a determination as to loss of citizenship. He would then lose his citizenship and thus the rights of a US citizen abroad.
But he didn’t. Instead, he just killed him without oversight.
I’m pretty sure that the Confederates were also still considered American citizens, albeit living in rebel states. Didn’t stop the government from killing thousands of them on the battlefield without trial back then, and I don’t see why there’s any distinction now for this guy.
I can prove that he made YouTube videos. If making YouTube videos was a crime, Awlaki could be successfully prosecuted for it. Yet despite all the suspicions and the arrest warrants that were ultimately rescinded, nobody has proven that Awlaki had an operational role in Al Qaeda. All that’s left is his speech.
The code you cited was criminal code, no one was trying to punish him under criminal code but was instead using force against a valid military target under the aegis of the GWOT AUMF which has been in force for some years now.
Valid military action, someone got killed. Happens all the time, not unconstitutional, absolutely not subject to tribunal pre-approval of any kind under our current laws or constitution.
Proof is something in court, military strikes are done against the enemy. The enemy will be broadly defined by the Congress when they grant permission for the President to wage war, identifying specific enemies is the job of the President.
“On the Battlefield”. Unless you extend the “battlefield” analogy to the entire world, including the US, killing a US citizen requires constitutional oversight. And I like to think that the US Civil War and all the constitutional problems it invoked, would not be a shining example for what the Constitution requires.
In what way were the 4th and 5th Amendments violated.
We actually had a discussion about this a few months ago, and you outright refused to answer several of my hypotheticals citing them as irrelevant. Well, in this case yours is irrelevant, we aren’t talking about anything that happened on U.S. soil.
Bullshit. With all due respect, of course. Terrorists and terrorist sympathizers have been in the crosshairs for decades, regardless of who is in office. Fuck them: when they choose to support and condone the killing of innocents, they paint a giant target on their backs and the planet is a better place without them. So sayeth this “libtard”.