Posted on 07/27/2010 12:02:49 PM PDT by maggiesnotebook
Anwar al-Awlaki holds dual citizenship with Yemen and the U.S., and is American-born. He is on a U.S. government targeted assassination list. He has not been indicted for treason. Is it constitutional to assassinate an American citizen?
American-born Adam Gadahn, an American citizen and member of al-Qaeda is charged with treason and is not on the government kill list.
Can you invision a time in America when the truth becomes treason?
Judge Andrew Napolitano and Glenn Beck discuss the conundrum.
(Excerpt) Read more at maggiesnotebook.blogspot.com ...
First, why do we allow dual citizenship? You can not be loyal to two countries.
@CIB-17eRDABN: Dual citizenship is especially egregious when the “other” is a terrorist state.
This is really a silly dispute. Each of those individuals is an active combatant against the United States in an ongoing, shooting war. That makes each a fair target, just as Admiral Yamamoto was in WWII. That each is a citizen and, hence, a traitor because he’s waging war against the United States, just makes him liable for criminal prosecution as such if he is ever captured; it does not diminish his legitimacy as a combat target.
Essentially execution without trial. Is it constitutional? Didn’t military leaders execute enemies without trials in our history?
NOBODY should be allowed dual citizenship.
If someone want to be American then the price is to give up all allegiances to any state or body that is not America. That also includes hyphenated modifiers in front of American.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
The problem with your argument that these are valid targets because they are 'treasonous' escapes that these people were not found to be guilty of Treason in an open court [to my knowledge: I've heard no testimony under-oath, only assertions that they are 'dangerous'] before their assassination-orders were given.
Admiral Yamamoto got stung in Bouganville by P-38s.
Right. What’s the problem? If you take up arms against the United States expect to get whacked.
You can if you are a citizen of the world. /sarc :(
The problem with your argument that these are valid targets because they are ‘treasonous’ escapes [is?} that these people were not found to be guilty of Treason in an open court...”
So by your criteria, every Union soldier that killed a Confederate soldier during the Civil War is guilty of murderering an American citizen unless the Southerner was found guilty in open court?
Shouldn’t common sense be in play here?
>>The problem with your argument that these are valid targets because they are ‘treasonous’ escapes [is?} that these people were not found to be guilty of Treason in an open court...”
>
>So by your criteria, every Union soldier that killed a Confederate soldier during the Civil War is guilty of murderering an American citizen unless the Southerner was found guilty in open court?
No, that’s not it at all. The orders cut for these assassinations are, supposedly, because of the danger presented by these individuals
(that is treason).
The orders cut for union soldiers were/are of arguable validity: if the southern states wanted to be free of the Federal government then, as the Constitution did not constrain the states by way of EXPLICITLY surrendering the state’s rights to the federal government, they should have been let go.
On the battlefield things are a bit different though: you *always* have the right to use lethal force in defense of yourself, your fellow-soldiers, and the people of your country.
>Shouldn’t common sense be in play here?
Common sense is crying at the travesty of how the Department of Justice is handling the Arizona “immigration-law” case verses the “sanctuary-city-law” case[s]. If the ‘criminality’ of an action is determined by whether the the Actor involved agrees or disagrees with a political mode-of-thought then... very bad things will happen, and civil war is probably the *least* bad option.
From Amendment the Fifth:
nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
I guess it then depends on how you define “due process”.
You’re missing the point. They’re active enemy combatants, just like Admiral Yamamoto, making them fair game as long as the war continues and they remain active combatants.
Wrong. Yamamoto was an enemy combatant on the field of combat in a declared war. The person in question is an American citizen who may or may not be on the field of battle.
Google up a little thing called The Fifth Amendment. Read it. Then get back to me and tell me precisely where in that Amendment or anywhere in the Constitution for that matter, the President is authorized to order the extra-judicial killing of an American citizen.
You want to think very long and very, very hard about whether or not you think a President, any President, should be able to simply order the killing of a US Citizen.
L
So orders cut for US Soldiers don’t count because you don’t agree with them 100+ years after the fact... That’s an interesting way of looking at things. I missed where the Supreme Court invalidated all the Civil War orders.
>So orders cut for US Soldiers don’t count because you don’t agree with them 100+ years after the fact...
No, the orders don’t count because as the US said in the Nurmburg trials “I was only following orders” does not constitute an adiquate justification for the [soldier’s] execution of illegal orders. {Or do you want to debate me on that?}
Now, let’s take a look at the nature of authority from a soldier’s viewpoint: a soldier is given orders to guard a certain spot [say a portion of some base] and let no unauthorized person through. Simple enough, right? So, let’s “complicate” things by saying the base’s commander shows up and wants access; would the soldier be “in the right” granting him access if he is not on the ‘authorized’ list?
This is not actually a far-fetched scenario; I was assigned to guard a nuclear facility on a certain base and the base-commander was not on the authorized list. If such a scenario ever happened, I would have been in-the-right denying him access and alerting the captain of the guard... who may have even been his subordinate. (This is the proper response; it may have been a clerical-error that the commander was not on the list... or it could be intentional, preventing terrorists from being able to “just capture the base-commander’s family” and extort his help in that manner, either way the “burden of authorization” chains higher and higher until it is resolved.)
The extension goes even to the President of the United States and, even though he is the Commander in Chief, he is bound by a still-higher authority: the Constitution. Any orders which are contrary to the Constitution are illegal, by the definition of the Constitution being the *Supreme* Law of the Land. Furthermore, any orders which the president issues which exceed the scope delegated to him/the-federal-government by the Constitution are invalid.
On this premise I base my assertion that the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution, which state explicitly that the federal government has no powers other than that delegated by the states [and the people thereof], reserve the right of voluntary succession to the States themselves. Furthermore, is a contract still valid when one party refuses to abide by the terms therein and yet demands the terms followed by the other entity?
>That’s an interesting way of looking at things. I missed where the Supreme Court invalidated all the Civil War orders.
See above.
>You’re missing the point. They’re active enemy combatants, just like Admiral Yamamoto, making them fair game as long as the war continues and they remain active combatants.
No, they aren’t. That’s like saying the german people of WWII were mass-murderers, some were undoubtedly... but would you be willing to call the “average joe” who wanted to “support the troops” a murderer? Would you say that the average citizen was an “active enemy combatant?” {And let’s not forget that many of these “average citizens” did help smuggle jews, at risk to themselves, out of harm’s way.}
Just because someone vehemontly disagrees with the position the country takes does not make them a traitor. There is an exact definition of that in the Constitution; it is by this definition of treason that someone must be judged *before* they are condemned... again, as specified in the Constitution. The assassination of these people is the circumvention of that requirement.
It would be different if they were on the field of battle. It would be different if they were ACTUALLY colluding/conspiring with the enemy [this is *EXTREMELY* dangerous as the government could define those so that any of its citizens that disagree with it and hold a “bitch session” where possible solutions/actions are described/hashed-out as conspiracy/collusion] which we should make EVERY effort to ensure before taking action upon; that is one of the geniuses the far-seeing founders put into the Constitution, a safeguard against the government being able to unilaterally declare someone a ‘traitor’ and have them killed. {Being that treason is a criminal case and criminal cases are supposed to be guaranteed to [the option of] a jury trial, this *is* a check against the government itself.}
The field of battle in this war is just about everywhere, by the enemy's own choice, as shown by 9/11 and the Islamofascist massacre at Fort Hood. These individuals are actively sustaining and working for the enemy every way they can and, indeed, are active enemy combatants wherever they are and, hence, fair targets, just as Yamamoto would have been if he was at home in Japan on leave.
And what about the pesky 5th Amendment thingy? You’re willing to toss that in the trash every time a President makes a ‘declaration’?
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