The assassination of Anwar al -Awlaki, al Qaeda propagandist and American citizen

Background information on al-Awlaki here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

Basically, al-Awlaki was an American-born citizen of Yemeni parents who has lived both here in the US and in the Middle East on and off for some time. He has an American education with his doctorate in human resource development. He developed a radical, Islamist ideology as a young man, trained with the mujahideen for some time, and started speaking publicly as an imam to spread his religious, political, and social beliefs. It's unknown when he joined or allied himself with al Qaeda, but since 9/11 he has been linked with ideologies and recruiting for the 'organization' (it's not really an organization, but that's for another thread).

After the death of Osama bin Laden, senior US intelligence officials elevated al-Awlaki from what he was, a propagandist, to a fictional leadership position inside of al Qaeda. Today, in northern al-Jawf province of Yemen, American predator drones killed al-Awlaki and three other people in an attack.

Why is this a big deal? First, drone attacks have been a legally questionable strategy for some time now. UN investigator Philip Alston published a report for the U.N. Human Rights Council in which he alleged these drone killings are a breach of the rules of war and may violate international humanitarian law. Drone attacks especially lack transparency, and numerous times drones have been responsible for killing many innocent civilians, some times not even killing suspected terrorists in the process. Second, al-Awlaki is an American citizen that was just murdered by the US government without any of his constitutional rights being observed. There was no effort to indict him for any crimes, he was not tried, presented with the evidence against him, or found guilty by a group of his peers. There was simply an order from the president to have him assassinated and it was carried out. He was touted as the next bin Laden and as a senior leader of al Qaeda despite a lack of any evidence of this whatsoever, then he was killed. What a victory for freedom and amurika!

If I could speak to President Obama for five minutes about this I would simply ask him this: how do you think President Perry or President Bachmann would use the authority granted him/her by the precedent you just set? What about President Palin? Maybe al-Awlaki was a bad guy, but we have a system for people who break the law, a system we're all constitutionally bound to follow.

As usual, Glenn Greenwald was in front of this, championing civil rights and the rule of law: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/30/awlaki

What do you think?

 

The authority that created the precedent was the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that was passed by Congress (if I recall, only one Dem voted against it in both houses) and signed by Bush ten years ago.

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ040.107

The AUMF has provided legal cover for questionable detainee detention and treatment (torture), questionable surveillance of Americans, and now this.

Until a Congress and president revoke the AUMF, the sweeping and unchecked "authority" remains in place. Some had hoped Obama and the 2008 majority Democratic Congress would have done so, but it would been political suicide.

added:
Even Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul voted for it. The one dissenter was willtravels neighbor, Barbara Lee.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll342.xml

 

go u.s.a.
murder straight up.
and this without claiming anything remotely like support for what he is alleged to have said.
what have we turned into?
what have we become?

 

I don't see much of a problem here.

It can be easily argued that Awlaki was a conspirator in an organization/movement the United States has declared war on, and as an enemy combatant civilian treatment does not apply. Enemy combatants get killed in the battlefield, unless they surrender by themselves.

The points made on the issue of drone strikes are incomprehensible to me. By the same logic, bombers should be outlawed. That drones have killed innocent civilians, as bombers have, is due to nothing more than inaccurate intelligence. Besides, drone strikes have done extensive damage to the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Intelligence is great to have, but it's very hard to obtain in these parts. You can't just walk up to a suspected terrorist/insurgent lair and identify for certain who's an innocent civilian and who is not. Unless you know a better way to combat these people, you have little to argue against. That is, if you don't prefer your country admits defeat and gets the hell out.

I think it's great that a sea-change in the US administration has occurred in the past few years. It has been since early 2010 that your nation has really stepped up the effort to combat the enemies in this region, and you've done an enormous amount of damage that the average civilian has no idea about. With the change in attitude towards Pakistan, a country that actively funds and trains Taliban/al Qaeda/Haqqani insurgents who then go on to kill US civilians and military personnel (moreso the latter), I couldn't be happier.

 

so you're cool with state murdering citizens & bypassing that whole pesky due process thing?

 

What on earth do you believe "war" and "combat" to be?

 

right. so you're cool with it. dispense with that whole pesky citizenship thing and just murder whomever the state decides--based on evidence that never needs to be presented anywhere---is a Problem?

seems to me this raises some difficult questions.

 

If such an argument was made, I suspect the counterargument would be that it was never established that al-Awlaki was a member of al Qaeda, or that he'd ever done anything other than inciting violence. If incitement earns a drone attack, I can probably find Rush Limbaugh's place on Google Maps. There's no evidence, nor is it alleged that al-Awlaki was ever a combatant. He was, at best, a tool for propaganda.

Drones allow for the expansion of a shadow war in places congress has not authorized the use of military force. They are harder to follow and document, thus meaning there's less transparency, and the result of this is unconfirmed and confirmed reports from many countries of massive civilian deaths. Worse still, because these craft are unmanned, when they kill many innocent civilians, we're looking at eventual blowback against the cowards who fight from the comfort of a base hundreds of miles away. It's like the next step after guided, long-range missiles. Finally, drones are making war too easy. I don't want our troops harmed, but with an army of robots, war would be and is much easier to allow by the warring, technologically superior country. If both sides were well-guarded and technologically similar, it might be different, but in many cases this is Star Wars vs. stone age.

Hopefully that makes the issue slightly less incomprehensible.

There's no credible evidence of this. The CIA is still, to this day, insisting that their drones have not killed one noncombatant, which we know is not true. Why would you trust these people when they insist that the people killed in a drone strike are all senior al Qaeda? Especially when it comes out almost immediately after in the international press that they were farmers and no evidence exists to link them to any terrorist activity or organizations?

 

We're not talking about a normal situation here. Again, when you support an organization/movement your own nation has declared war on (whether legally or not), all bets are off.

Propaganda is viable strategy on the battlefield. Propaganda recruits soldiers-to-be and and affects the morale of your troops. Hitler's Goebbels is a prime example of what propaganda can achieve. Much like the al-Qaeda/Taliban extremists we have today, the Nazis had brainwashed 17-year olds who would never surrender and keep on fighting until they were suddenly quadriplegic. Propaganda is a tool of psychological warfare. Your nation will have a very hard time to come up with a better and more radical propaganda than what Awlaki taught children and yound adults alike, and, consequently, only conventional means are left.

From my experience and knowledge, transparency is an issue in almost every country. You're nowhere near the German standard to claim your administration has acceptable regulations to allow for a satisfactory amount of transparency. Further, if your military wants to send bombers instead of drones, they can hide the number of their runs just as easily. This is not really something we can hamper on too much.

You underestimate the sophistication of the Taliban/al Qaeda groups. They are well-funded, well-trained and well-armed. That almost all of them subscribe to a radical and extremist version of Islam hardly gives any indication of their ability. After all, a group of 6 highly-trained al Qaeda insurgents held up an entire Pakistani naval base (incl. elite commandos) for 12+ hours. Say what you will about the Pakis, but their military is formidable.

Whatever the politcal games in public may be, I don't care much for them. Obviously I can't go into any detail about this, but the CIA has done very well in killing hundreds of mid-level and some high-level commanders, as well as destroying logistical hubs of the Taliban/al Qaeda in the past 18 months. I realize many civilians were killed in the process, but you cannot ignore their military achievements.

 

Can you elaborate on your statement that this is not a normal situation?

I feel like you're sidestepping what I posted a bit. Should being responsible for propaganda earn you an extra-judicial assassination? Is that how our justice system should work?

The way the American justice system is set up, in theory, is about ensuring that one is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt before carrying out a sentence that's neither cruel nor unusual. We gather evidence and we present that evidence to a jury of one's peers, following the law, in the hope that the truth will lead us to justice. The evidence against al-Awlaki? Classified. The methods of passing judgment? Classified. The decision as to why to put him to death? Classified.

I want you to imagine, now, that Rick Perry secures the nomination and is able to use the economic downturn to win a narrow victory over President Obama. He and the intelligence community decide to expand the wars in secret. Soon, senior governmental officials in Pakistan and Yemen and Iran are found dead. Then a few far-left American liberal bloggers. How in the world is he able to get away with this? Today, right now, is precedent. If the Democrats try to call him on it, he points back to today, when they were silent and a Democratic president acted like a king. This is a slippery slope we stand on.

Transparency is an issue with most if not all nations in the world, but not all nations are the United States. Not all nations spend a trillion dollars a year for the singular purpose of war. Not all nations could go toe to toe with any military in the world and win easily. Not all nations are engaged in wars all over the Middle East. Not all nations are murdering their own citizens, violating their own justice systems. We are not other nations.

You can't just lump al Qaeda and the Taliban together as if they're one entity. They were allied temporarily for a few months before 9/11, and the Taliban only did it to gain advantage in their own (at the time) civil war. Ideologically, the Taliban and al Qaeda stand separately. The Taliban, since its inception, has wanted to control Afghanistan, to install and maintain their religious government, and to be left alone. al Qaeda, on the other hand, wanted all Western influence out of the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, and was more than willing to bring the fight to the West. The Taliban wanted no part in a war against the West, which is why they offered to hand over bin Laden shortly after 9/11, as a way to get out of the very large microscope they'd found themselves under. The United States refused to present evidence of bin Laden's guilt and started bombing Taliban training camps (not al Qaeda training camps), followed shortly by a military invasion of Afghanistan. Then and only then did the Taliban become a threat to American lives. Before then, they were just radical religious nutjobs that were only trying to ruin their own country.

As for sophistication? I don't buy it. I've seen no evidence of sophistication in the 10 years we've been fighting this war. 9/11 was clearly a fluke, a convergence of a ballsy plan from KSM and shitty anti-terrorist policy by the Bush administration from January to September of 2001. You need look no further than al Qaeda''s activities since 2001 to get a clear picture of just how ineffectual it really is. And you have to remember that the number of people calling themselves al Qaeda who have never had any contact of any kind with any sort of central leadership represents the majority of what we call al Qaeda. It's barely an organization. There's no grand strategy being disseminated to the tens of thousands of al Qaeda troops. In fact, if the US were to pull out of the Middle East today, al Qaeda would start to fall apart tomorrow in large part because US presence on "Muslim lands" is their biggest recruitment tool. I'm not saying they're not dangerous, they are, but we can't pretend they're something that they're not.

And you cannot ignore the substantial collateral damage, nor can you ignore the fact that many individuals named as mid-level commanders have turned out to be no such thing.

 

An attack on an active and influential supporter of the enemy side during a state of war with the same.

Again, within the framework of war and available means, given that he was an active element of the enemy; yes.

This goes back to your nation's transparency issues. I remember reading an article recently which cited a report criticizing the US government's far-reaching classification criteria and application thereof, where entirely useless information is classified for the sheer sake of bureaucratic protocol, rather than relevance.

Your entire argument above appears to be about risk containment of future presidents' actions. While it concerns itself with the precedent being set by Obama's actions, it does not take into consideration the state of war your nation is in and the methodology one must employ to strike the enemy as hard as you can. Further, it seems irrational and highly irrelevant to attempt to apply due process of the judiciary on a known enemy element. As I said before, propaganda is a military tool, it must be identified as a military threat and removed in a manner appropriate to a military threat.

You seem to overestimate your nation's military strength and global importance. Let me point you towards China: all the same points except "trillion dollars a year" and "(official) war in the Middle East".

But to be on topic here: your nation lacks the political will to hold the military and intelligentsia fully to account. Hell, your past political elite quietly authorized them to commit the many atrocities they committed. It's political suicide for the elite and just as bad for those in the field. You won't see much improvement in transparency when it comes to these sensitive matters, in the near future at least.

I lumped them together for the sake of simplicity. I know the history of the Taliban in detail, and know a fair amount about al-Qaeda. The Taliban in its own, shrewd philosophy may be what you mentioned, but it was not the purpose of their inception. First they were America's tool to stop Soviet regional expansion. Second, they were intended to provide US oil companies easy access to Afghanistan to build pipelines through it, but they refused, angering their CIA supervisors. Third, some elements of it is still the tool for America, but used now to justify continued presence in Afghanistan, threaten Afghan and Pakistani figures with it and to limit China's growing influence in these parts. Other parts of the Taliban are tools of Pakistan's ISI. You're not giving half the picture in your depictions.

Pakistan's ISI supports al Qaeda, the mentioned Taliban elements and the Haqqani network. Your real enemy at this point in time is the ISI, as the continued action against your soldiers and civilians are funded and prepared by them.

I'm not going to argue 9/11. I know what I have learned here, nothing more or less. They (and with "they" I mean al Qaeda, Taliban and Haqqani) have hour-long firefights with ISAF soldiers and attack choppers on a daily basis, hold up an entire Pakistani naval base for the good part of a day, and just recently "wounded" 77, mostly American, ISAF soldiers in a single attack.

Furthermore, how on earth would you, Willravel, know how sophisticated they are?

Not ignoring the collateral damage. I clearly stated there were many civilian casualties in the process. As to whether alleged mid-level commanders were what the US claimed, that's hardly something you can verify. There may be select cases though, I don't deny that.

 

Oh, I thought when you said this isn't a normal situation you meant that the United States is engaged with an enemy that isn't an organized force, but is rather more complex and thus is more difficult to understand and define. And that because of that, this is relatively new territory both philosophically and legally.

I have a problem with this. The only information I actually have on al-Awlaki is his hateful sermons calling for violence and such. While I do have a problem with what he's saying, and personally believe that he's passed what should be covered by freedom of speech and has moved into inciting violence, I do not believe that the American judicial system is too weak to deal with him. If I, here in the United States, called for violence against the state for my own political reasons, should I be shot in my home or should I be arrested, tried on the evidence and appropriately sentenced? If yes, why does al-Awlaki's location mean the difference between normal judicial procedure and murdering him?

My argument is both about this case and about future cases. al-Awlaki should have been indicted and an attempt should have been made to retrieve him for trial, as a way to demonstrate that we still value our justice system (and, by extension, our principles). In addition, in the future if the government accuses someone of being an enemy of the state, even with a lack of evidence and bypassing our legal system entirely, they have the right to kill you.

My nation is not at war. The last war the United States was in was World War II. We're in a vaguely defined military conflict with individuals and organizations at best. But even if we were at war, inter arma enim silent leges is a clear indication of fundamental hypocrisy. There is no more important a time to follow the rule of law than war time because it indicates that you're worthy of surviving, that your laws and principles should win out at the end of the day. Abandoning them just because you're in danger only demonstrates that we don't actually value the principles upon which our nation was founded and upon which our laws are currently based.

As for propaganda, yes, it's dangerous. It's dangerous when the United States government uses propaganda on our own citizens, insisting that a low-level propagandist is the next bin Laden despite the fact that such a claim is absurd if you know the facts. It's wrong to label a relatively unimportant figure as the leader of our enemy and then kill him to demonstrate that we can kill our enemy. If you truly believe that propaganda is worthy of extrajudicial execution, what about our own propagandists?

I'm not talking about what's politically expedient, though, I'm talking about what I believe is right.

That's not precisely the way I see it. My real enemy, if I have one, is the military, intelligence, and political ideologies that have developed in the United States over the past few decades. The global war on terror is not broadly and vaguely defined accidentally, but intentionally for the purpose of allowing endless war and conflict, which is both profitable for some, and also allows the continuing expansion of power by the American elite. I wouldn't need to worry about the ISI if the United States hadn't decided to invade Afghanistan and Pakistan, creating enemies where few if any previously existed. The inevitable blowback from these foolish operations will only lead to further military excursions and further consolidation of power.

Speaking more to your point, I do understand that a great deal of the reason the United States has failed so badly in Iraq and Afghanistan, other than not understanding how to fight insurgencies, is because of backing from elements in foreign governments like Pakistan and Iran. I get that. That doesn't necessarily suggest sophistication, though, just shared interests. Iran wanted control over Iraq and saw an opportunity after Saddam's fall to back the insurgency and make allies. It kinda worked. Elements in the Pakistani military and intelligence do not like that the United States invaded Afghanistan because many of them believe that Pakistan and Afghanistan are fundamentally linked and knew that the conflict would eventually spill over into Pakistan. I'm sure some of them also share the ideology of the Taliban (at least the Taliban we're fighting, it turns out there are several Talibans), regarding the increased presence of their brand of Islamic ideology in government and society. But again, this doesn't necessarily suggest that our enemies are so very sophisticated. When you pull back a bit and look for patterns to suggest wider strategies, the picture actually becomes blurrier. Between the exaggerations of Western governments and media of the Taliban and al Qaeda to the infrequency of attacks to the basic lack of an overarching strategy to sets of strategies, it seems fairly apparent that what we're facing is not monolithic, but disjointed and really only connected by one commonality: they want the United States out. Interestingly enough, that's also what the majority of Americans have wanted for years, which goes back to the point I made in the paragraph above.

Honestly, reading foreign media is probably enough to get a handle on the wars. The American press may be in bed with government and military because of their hunger for ratings at any cost, but British, German, and Middle Eastern media outlets have been outstanding at getting information on the wars out to the people. On top of that, alternative American media, and the soldiers themselves often serve as a great resource for information.

Actually, I can verify it in this specific case. al-Awlaki was said specifically by the American government to be the head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. That's untrue. In fact, Nasir al-Wuhayshi is. We have repeated verification of this. While it's true that al Qaeda took advantage of his free advertising, not only is there no evidence of any leadership role within al Qaeda, but there's no evidence of him being a part of al Qaeda.

 

When did "easily argued" translate into "guilty of". I must have missed that.

I'm assuming you mean -as long as it's not your civilian family that becomes the unintended collateral damage. Certainly no one would be a proponent of that. I mean, it's a-ok for all those other schlups but not us chosen folk.

Imagine, if you can, a time far, far in the future (10 years?). There's a serial killer loose in the town of Buttfuck, USA or maybe where ever you are. He's a sneaky and illusive little devil. He must be stopped but we can't get at him and the locals are all too afraid to talk. Suddenly there's a drone skimming it's way through a lovely blue sky over beautiful downtown Buttfuck. Without a lick of notice, Buttfuck is blown off the map along with it's politically insignificant farming population of 250.

"Unless you know a better way to combat these people, you have little to argue with".

When the toilet flushes, gravity pulls shit down, not sideways.

 

Your point is a non-sequitur.

Strategic importance must be considered. A serial killer may be a serious problem to the local community he/she kills in, but he/she is hardly worth the action you stated. Your nation is politically at war with the al Qaeda movement. Elements such as Awlaki have much farther reaching consequences than the material world you live in.

Nice one. I won't continue to waste my time. There's others, such as Willravel and roachboy, who make points worthwhile to respond to.

 

What does "politically at war" mean? What are the rules of engagement?

 

Then let me clarify the non - non-sequitur. Here in the US, guilt or innocence rests on whether the evidence provided bears out the accusation. We generally tend to think that way regardless of the circumstances. A prosecuting attorney may believe that he can "easily argue" the case against the accused but without supporting evidence presented in an open courtroom, the accused is usually found to be innocent or at least "not guilty" of the charges against him. Hence "easily argued" and "guilty of" are not connected by simply drawing a straight line.

I've yet to determine if you are an American citizen (soldier maybe) currently serving in Afghanistan or an Afghani citizen.
If it's the latter, I believe you may be arguing points for which you may have little experience with. If it's the former, you are entitled to your opinion.

So please, I'm curious to know if you'd sponsor the same war-rhetoric if your civilian family had been killed in the cause.

I'm sorry you didn't appreciate my slippery slope analogy. Can't win 'em all.

 

You keep making me write long replies. Damn you! Also, apparently we have a 10,000 character limit, so I summarized your quotes.

Your analogy does not apply, as you would 1) still undoubtedly be considered a civilian, 2) (so far) did not conspire with others to attack your nation, and 3) (so far) did not take direct action yourself to cause harm to your nation. Awlaki did all three and went way beyond incitement of hatred. As is purported below, he himself declared war on the US:

The main difference between your train of though and mine, is that you see Awlaki in civilian terms and I see him in military terms.

Here's the dealbreaker for me: Assuming you're right and rule of law should be applied, the likelihood of Awlaki surrendering to your government in order to stand trial is extremely low. Is the enforcement of rule of law important enough to send two special forces/marines squads after him, resulting in hour-long firefights and the deaths of numerous people, in order to capture and extradite him forcefully back to the US?

PoWs are subject to military tribunals. PoWs surrender to the enemy voluntarily. Awlaki was not a PoW, nor does his citizenship affect what treatment he should have received. Rule of law applies to both your citizens and those non-citizens you deem to fall under the jurisdiction of your legal system. If you adhere to your principles and values, US citizenship of a person matters little.

Further, regarding the point you made about the government accusing people of being an enemy of the state: Awlaki declared war on the US. He incited violence against the US. Your government did not need to accuse him of anything, as he set the precedent himself. See this for reference:

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-17/..._1_awlaki-qaeda-islam-and-muslims?_s=PM:WORLD

I'm not going to argue whether your country declared war legally or not. I'm not an expert on that matter. Politically on the international stage, your country is recognized as being at war with al Qaeda and, by all means, that counts just as much.

I'm also not getting your point about the application of the rule of law during war. Military conflict has a clear set of rules of engagement. They serve, for all purposes and intentions, as the battlefield-equivalent of the codified laws of your legal system. An enemy soldier/combatant is considered a PoW when he/she surrenders peacefully and voluntarily. Otherwise they die. Most countries follow identical or similar rules for these matters. There's not much of a gray area here.

You cannot seriously claim propaganda on Awlaki's purported role within al Qaeda. I agree with you that Awlaki was likely a lower-ranking figure than your government made him out to be, but your analogy doesn't apply as 1) he was a member of al Qaeda, 2) he declared jihad on your country and 3) actually created propaganda to the adverse overall effect for your armed forces.

It just sounds better politically to have killed off a "senior al Qaeda figure". Such PR rhetoric can hardly be considered propaganda, as even without such proclamations they could easily have killed him as a mid-level al Qaeda thinker.

I can't comment on who you do or don't perceive to be your enemies. I can comment on the US's actions in this region:

When the US actively funded and supported the creation of the Taliban back in the 1970s, it was in the middle of the Cold War with the Soviets. The Soviet Union kept expanding its influence and the US took action to hamper their progress. The Taliban was born through a join cooperation between the CIA and the ISI. Their venture was a success, as Taliban/Mujahideen support by both entities, coupled with the Soviet's own economic and political crisis in the late-1980s, eventually caused their withdrawal from Afghanistan. Everything after that was a screw-up. However, the strategic implications for the US were considerable, and the action they took not at all unreasonable.

Regarding Pakistan and their Taliban, your country would eventually have fallen out with them. You're a declining superpower, but your global influence is still very strong. So is the international image you have, which, politically, is extremely important. It is inevitable that you will engage the Indians more and more in the coming years. On one hand, to aid your broken economy and on the other hand, to counteract growing Russian influence and cooperation with India.

I don't have much to say about the Iran situation.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are not fundamentally linked. They are culturally adverse to each other, and in the past Afghanistan has had numerous military confrontations with Pakistan. Pakistan has a long history of wreaking destruction and chaos in Afghanistan, especially since a large chunk of what we today consider Pakistan is actually Afghan territory (North Waziristan down to, and including, the city and port of Karachi). The whole story of how Pakistan acquired that land is irrelevant, but suffice to say, Afghanistan gave that chunk of land to Pakistan under a 99-year lease term in a ridiculous treaty the then-Afghan king signed.

Pakistan fears that the US/ISAF involvement in Afghanistan may eventually lead to Afghanistan becoming a stable and assertive country, to one day hold the capacity to demand their own territory back.

Pakistan's military and ISI are sophisticated regional entities, and under their supervision have funded, trained and armed local insurgent groups to fight with sophistication. In order to evaluate how sophisticated al Qaeda/Taliban/HAqqani are takes expert knowledge in military tactics, not journalism.

In some aspects I agree. BBC, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera and local Afghan media have covered the events in this region in an excellent manner. However, by being here and having the right network, I know exactly just how many cases of attacks go unnoticed and unreported by the news media. One of them I actually covered in my status updates in TFP, giving information NOT ONE news media outlet was publicizing for the 12 hours that followed it. All I can say: Don't rely on them too much to give you a clear picture of the situation in this region.

We were talking about the drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal regions. Notwithstanding the previous, as I mentioned before, the actual position Awlaki held within al Qaeda is largely irrelevant.
--- merged: Oct 1, 2011 8:12 PM ---

I used "politically at war" to avoid the question of the legality by which Dubya declared war on "terror". It's not relevant to me how they did it, it matters that the international community recognizes the US to be in a state of war, no matter how vaguely defined it may be.

Unless I got your second question wrong, I believe you wanted clarification on whether there's any difference between the "politically at war" and the proper state of war rules of engagement. I don't believe there is, as the US military certainly treats al Qaeda/Taliban/Haqqani as a default enemy side to fight and kill. Insurgent fighters who surrender are kept in ISAF/CIA facilities and are promised survival, much akin to the treatment PoWs would receive.

 

Oh this is nothing. Back in my TFP heyday, I'd be going back with someone with tens upon tens of thousands of characters. The walls of text we created could have withstood the horns of the Israelites. And then there was the mightiest of them all, host, but I digress.

This does seem to be the central theme of our differing perspectives. The case I can make is that al-Awlaki never killed anyone, was never directly associated with any act of violence, and there's no real evidence of him being a member of a terrorist organization, just a sort of parallel figure, a man who agreed with their philosophy and preached hatred and violence. He's guilty of preaching hatred and violence, nothing more, nothing less. When people preach hatred and violence in the United States, they're charged with a crime (Brandenburg v. Ohio established legal precedent for incitement of "imminent lawless action" is not Constitutionally protected speech), tried, and sentenced. They're not branded traitors and dragged in front of a military commission or extrajudicially murdered. You insist he's a soldier, but I say he wasn't. He was a propagandist, a spreader of hatred, and perhaps an ally of al Qaeda by virtue of his teachings aligning with the ideologies of al Qaeda.

We should only follow the Fifth Amendment when it's convenient? "No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law" leaves absolutely no wiggle room, not for propaganda, not for hate speech, not for incitement, and not even for terrorism. Yes, it probably would have been very difficult to retrieve him to stand trial. Of course no attempt was even made to do so. It's not like we've been trying to capture him for some time, in fact, we've been trying to murder him for months.

I simply don't understand this mindset. The Constitution protects all Americans; every single last one of us, without any exceptions. No action or word or thought short of no longer being a citizen can discount an American from constitutional protections. If al-Awlaki had ordered the planes themselves to strike the towers on 9/11, he would still have been a citizen, protected by the Constitution. In short, his citizenship absolutely doe affect what treatment he should have received, legally. On an ethical level, I'd argue the same thing. Our justice system is (excuse my language) fucking strong. The principles upon which our legal system rest are righteous and worth dying for. That we would cast them aside out of vengeance demonstrates that we don't have the faith in our justice system that we should. Had al-Awlaki stood trial, he would have been presented with the evidence against him, had the opportunity to defend himself, and, if found guilty, would be found so based on the truth and sentenced in accordance with his crimes. The system would have... could have worked.

There are military rules of engagement when fighting another government, certainly. There are rules about how to treat prisoners and civilians, and all that jazz. Fighting an international terrorist organization? Not so much. The term 'unlawful combatant' is evidence that we have no intention to apply the same rules of war between nations to military conflicts with independent guerrilla organizations. We'll just make it up as we go! That's why we've seen the return of torture and international kidnapping and indefinite detention and, now, extrajudicial assassinations. We're flying by the seat of our pants, and it's clearly people with no respect for the Geneva Conventions or US laws that are writing the rules as we go.

There's no evidence he was a member of al Qaeda. No information exists in the public sphere on any operational role he had in al Qaeda, and those saying we should trust them on his role have zero credibility, in fact they've been caught lying about al-Awlaki already. Until there's evidence presented to the public that he was in al Qaeda, I refuse to simply take these people at their word. I would be incredibly naive to just believe them.

This is the same thing I hear from the government and intelligence propagandists, though. "Oh, we're telling the truth. Trust us." I've seen that time and time again these sources have proven themselves to be untrustworthy, particularly with the GWoT. Christ, do you remember yellowcake uranium? They suffer from a lack of credibility that they've well earned after years of lying. My best sources of information are select players in the media, so that's what I have to go with. If the government wants me to listen, they have to stop lying.[/quote]

 

On one hand, I dream of the day when war will cease to exist. On the other hand, I dread it because it will mean that the global capitalist machine has achieved it's goals and finds war an unprofitable interruption in business.

This hour's non-sequitur.