Posted on 10/02/2011 3:09:26 PM PDT by Starman417
Barack Obama ordered the assassination of two American citizens. No one is arguing that they weren't bad, but this is a terrible precedent.
An American President now can order the assassination of American citizens.
An American President can now suspend any American's constitutional rights at will.
Think about that.
Why did we give Timothy McVeigh a trial?
Why don't we just kill Case Anthony? We all know she's guilty.
Why do we even bother having trials?
Over at Huffington Post there is division on this issue. They quote Jane Harman:
"It's tricky that he was a U.S. citizen, but he clearly stated his intention to kill Americans and the Justice Department thoroughly vetted the legal issues and this strike was within the law,"
The Justice Department vetted this? Holder vetted this?
That borders on insanity. This is the same Holder "Justice Department" who put an end to the Black Panther intimidation case. The is the same Holder "Justice Department" which intentionally sent weapons into Mexico. This is the same Justice Department that sues states for attempting to protect their borders. This is the same "Justice Department" that wants a civil trial for Khalid Sheik Muhammamed.
HuffPo is allowing no comments that question Obama's decision to assassinate an American citizen. I suspect that even they know how wrong this was.
What is the threshold for ordering the death of American citizens?
Joe Biden likened Tea Party members to terrorists.
Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.
“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”
Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists.”
Golly, if they're terrorists, then Obama can have them killed, right?
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
Simple answer: The next one that proclaims himself to be a terrorist head and operates in Yemen, Somalia, etc. =.=
Yumping Yemenis!!
If they happily murder their own offspring, what makes you think they wont pay you the same respect?
The real wrong is calling political opponents terrorists.
This was a much cleaner and a more politically expedient for this administration. If they had captured Awlaki. Where would they have kept him? Gitmo? When Obama said we should close it down.
Can you imagine the political implications of what Obama would have to deal with if they had of captured this guy.
Basically I am trying to (other posts) state that if Bush had done this the Left would be calling for impeachment. Because there are some “conflicts” with the Constitution that are obvious.
Here here.
It is not as simple as that. One aspect of the issue is the utter hypocrisy of the liberal politicians.
The liberal elites and our current administration have expressed their disdain for other governments that have done exactly what ours just did. And they have punished the governments and people involved, including indicting some of them.
You see, when a government, like that of Columbia, or Chile, or El Salvador, is fighting a communist revolutionary army every bit as evil and terroristic as Al Queada, and they decide to eliminate someone who supports, leads, and motivates the rebels, its a crime in the eyes of liberal Democrats and reason to sanction the government and the people involved. But when the liberal politicians in the USA do the same thing they think its fine. The only difference of course is the political orientation of the target.
In addition, all of the campaign talk from President Obama and his liberal supporters about changing how the world looks at our country, and his contention that the kinds of anti-terror activities conducted by President Bush were damaging our nation's reputation internationally were obviously just hot air in the light of the recent killings.
Had a Republican president done what President Obama just did we'd all be reading endless articles about how illegal and unjustified it was. Remember the hearings and threatened arrests over interrogation tactics? Where are those Democratic representatives now? Why aren't they having hearings regarding the killing of individuals far from combat?
So while many of us understand that sometimes you do have to kill those who support your opponents, even if they are not in a combat situation, in order to win a war, there is no reason to give the hypocrisy of the present administration a free pass.
if, as the evidence suggests, this pos renounced his american citizenship by claiming to have been born in yemen in order to qualify for a foreign-born scholarship, the only real problem is governmental incompetence in not declaring hin a non-citizen when it became clear that he was an anti-civilizational splodey-dope
I didn't say I was sorry he's dead.
My main concern is abuse once we have let that genie out of the bottle, what about the Constitution? How do we know for certain we're targeting the right person with those drones?
Good post.
I think the liberal hypocrisy is what is at issue too.
Water boarding was an impeachable offense (BUSH). But blowing up two American citizens from a UAV is OK?
Someone needs to go after the thought process of this.
Actually, I have no problem with this at all. Any American citizen who leaves the country to join with an enemy to fight the US is an *enemy* combatant, which supersedes their right to trial as an American citizen, precisely because it comes under the rules of armed combat, *not* criminal offense.
Only if he is captured can he again be treated as a treasonous criminal, but there is no requirement that he be captured, if doing so would endanger the lives of US personnel.
And I would extend this even further. Enemy combatants that do not follow the rules of combat as described in the Geneva Conventions, and are thus subject to field trial and execution, deserve no right of criminal trial in the United States.
This goes all the way back to the days of the US Navy fighting the Barbary pirates. Though British policy was to try and hang pirates aboard their own slowly sinking ships, US federal judges were so egotistical that they demanded the US Navy return captured pirates to the US for criminal trial, so that the judge could order them hanged.
After feeding them and taking care of them for months while having to divert a warship from Africa to do so. A major pain in the rear end.
The US Navy instead hit on the idea that when it would capture pirates, it would “discover” that it had done so in British waters, so had to turn them over to the British, who would deal with them promptly.
But in any event, playing these stupid lawfare games put the US at such a disadvantage against the Barbary pirates that by 1800, payments in ransom and tribute to the Barbary states amounted to 20% of United States government annual expenditures.
So what should the US military be doing right now. Simply, to take “no great effort” in capturing al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists, as their detention is not justified by their Geneva status. It does not matter if they are Afghans fighting in Afghanistan, or Pakistanis fighting in Pakistan.
If captured, the responsible officer should give them a field trial, and if they find them in violation, give them an opportunity to fully identify themselves for the record, which they may take or refuse, then summarily execute them by firing squad.
Great thread. Thanks to all posters.
Drone-mail. Citizenship revoked.
We don’t. We have killed innocent civilians with drone attacks - usually “wedding parties”. Collateral damage, I guess. If drones start buzzing your house, let us know.
So your point is that liberals are hypocrites? That’s about as newsworthy as the sunrise. The people and institutions you’re indicting are not only complicit in the hypocrisy, they’re its CREATORS! It’s not likely they’ll admit it now. But you can bet they’ll ignore it where they can and justify it where they can’t.
The problem is, for conservatives to bicker about the administration’s methods while endorsing those same methods for a Republican administration reeks of the same level of hypocrisy. We should celebrate the fact that this vermin is dead, even if it happened on Omoron’s watch.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt to point out the puzzling disconnect between the ideological purity expected of a Republican president and the moral latitude accorded a liberal tool ...
No, my point is that giving them a free pass is a mistake, just because they happened to take the right action. Unless conservatives fight back against our portrayal as evil scoundrels by liberals who are doing the exact same things we propose we're going to have a hard time winning elections.
As you noted, it doesn’t hurt to point out the puzzling disconnect between the ideological purity expected of a Republican president and the moral latitude accorded a liberal tool. I think it is essential to do so when and wherever possible.
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