In a significant new blow to al-Qaida, U.S. airstrikes in Yemen on Friday killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American militant cleric who became a prominent figure in the terror network's most dangerous branch, using his fluent English and Internet savvy to draw recruits for attacks in the United States.
This, on the other hand, is just stupid:
The strike was the biggest U.S. success in hitting al-Qaida's leadership since the May killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. But it raises questions that other strikes did not: Al-Awlaki was an American citizen who has not been charged with any crime. Civil liberties groups have questioned the government's authority to kill an American without trial.
The idea that we shouldn't have killed an enemy waging war on us in the field because he is an American citizen is just plain stupid.
Awlaki got off the porch and the big dog chewed him up. My only regret is that we can't bury him at sea.
Talk to me if we ever use a drone strike within our borders or in a place where an ally will arrest the traitor and turn him over to us for a stay in Gitmo before a trial. Heck, since he was an American citizen, I'd even have been willing to consider the option of a treason trial if we had captured him. But that doesn't mean we can't shoot him while he is waging war on us.
Funny enough, the so-called "civil libertarians" who don't want anything less than a full civilian trial for jihadis rather than a military tribunal for an unlawful combatant probably sealed Awlaki's fate. The folly of a full-blown civilian trial as the only alternative to either killing him or letting him run free made the choice clear. President Obama can count on me to watch his six on this one.
UPDATE: This is a late update but it isn't something I want to start a bunch of blog posts on. So for my convenience I'll add Austin Bay's thoughts:
In practice, the lawfare extremists behave like religious cultists pursuing a litigated utopia. Extremists in some international human rights organizations argue that Predator strikes themselves violate international law; drone strikes "blur" and violate "applicable legal rules." Defending Awlaki is thus a means of restricting use of the weapons with the goal of eliminating them.
Ah, "dissent." They work hard to prevent us from defending ourselves and feel superior for taking such a position. Yet their feelings of moral superiority rely on failing to win that debate so our military can continue defending all of us--including the "dissenters." And I'm not even talking about the extreme long shot of the jihadis winning their caliphate as they say they fight for. Our civil liberties require victory in this war.
