Posted on 02/07/2013 12:41:53 PM PST by Sir Napsalot
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I really don't understand this sort of hysteria over the idea of killing Americans who have taken up arms against the United States. Thousands of Americans, Southerners, died in Antietam without any due process. When we stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-day, and Americans approached German bunkers, I don't think anybody asked if they were any German-Americans here, I want to read you the Miranda rights. If you take up arms against the United States you were a target because it was an act of war and you forfeited those rights.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Why invent such silly hypotheticals? Thus discussion is about specifically targeting individuals for assassination, not going out of our way to ensure individuals aren’t harmed in the normal course of warfare. There may be something wrong with the normal course of warfare, and we definitely do kill too many innocents. But the rights of US citizens abroad is another matter.
Why invent such silly hypotheticals? This discussion is about specifically targeting individuals for assassination, not going out of our way to ensure individuals aren’t harmed in the normal course of warfare. There may be something wrong with the normal course of warfare, and we definitely do kill too many innocents. But the rights of US citizens abroad is another matter.
It’s not that the laws aren’t suitable. It’s that we fight wars like criminals. Have ever since the Civil War, consistently.
I’m pretty satisfied that Anwar al-Awlaki had firmly joined al-Qaeda based on his public declarations of that fact. He had not only joined, al-Awlaki was a pretty big deal in that particular terrorist group.
I’d have to take it on a case by case basis, but if a US citizen runs off and joins a violent terrorist group bent on attacking America, I am not troubled if the government
blows them up right along with their terrorist buddies.
I agree with Bolton. This seems consistent with Bush’s policies in the war against terror, and my hunch is that if al-Awlaki was dispatched during Bush’s time in office the overwhelming vast majority of conservatives would have applauded (as is I think the majority support drone strikes to take out these terrorist scum). Additionally, this policy has broad public support and fighting with Obama over it only makes him look like some kind of foreign/defense policy tough guy and conservatives appear weak. Do we really want to cede the tough-on-defense image to Obama here in order to protect the likes of Anwar al-Awlaki? I don’t think so. Krauthammer and Bolton are right in my opinion.
What nonsense, what twaddle worrying about the "citizenship" of people joining a foreign army actively engaged in fighting our own people.
No wonder we are a dying people as many have lost the ability to exclude. Sick!
I think some of the objections are more than reflex. I agree that when they killed Anwar al-Awlaki it was justified because he was a proven leader in al Qaeda and deserved it. I really don't care if he was a US citizen or not. He was a proven terrorist, at war with America. But they also blew his 16 year old son Adulrahman (born in Colorado with no known al Qaeda ties) into a million pieces with a HellFire missile in a separate attack. I guess it's like the Tom Cruise movie where they prosecute people for “pre-crime”. I am not ok with that. Of course, this is from CNN reports so who knows what the truth really is.
There mere fact that Obama decides who lives and who dies is extremely disturbing to me.
http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/05/grandfather-grieves-teenage-grandson-killed-by-u-s-drone/
>> If you take up arms against the United States you were a target because it was an act of war and you forfeited those rights.
Puerile, inconsistent tense, and erroneous.
For a US citizen to be at war with the United States, Congress would need to make that declaration.
I think the kid was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sounds like we killed al-Qaeda leader Ibrahim al-Banna in the same strike along with others. Look the kid is running around with al-Qaeda, I'm sorry but I have no sympathy for him and I don't mind at all that the US government is taking these schmucks out.
K apparently is blind to the fact that obama is guilty of treason on many levels himself, and he should blow others away for treason?
Um...not for nothing, but the Branch Davidians torched that compound, not the government.
No you are dead wrong.
It was the government that burned out the people in Waco.
Now that you have signed up here at Free Republic, go back into the archives to see what really happened to Vernon Howell and his followers.
Nobody here buys into the government’s whitwash of their brutal murder of men, women and children.
Nineteen eighty-four was almost thirty years ago: "Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia."
Orwell recognized the convenience to a tyrannical government of always having an enemy whose existence justifies any means to an end that will never be reached.
We are well on the way to becoming the largest lynch mob in history. As with lynchings, it is the seriousness of the charges which justifies the elimination of due process.
First of all he was offered to us, legally, twice by two different countries. It is laughable to think that 9-11, or any other attack, would not have happened if he had been killed prior to them. Nor was bin Laden an American citizen. I think that covers most of the straw men in your argument.
Well if Homeland inSecurity had not classifed Christians, vets and constitution activists as ‘domestic terrorists’ and had the military not run civil war games against the Tea Party, and if DHS was not arming itself for a civil war and sexually molesting Americans at the airports, maybe I would understand this ‘smart’ guy’s lofty opinion.
What he is missing is that our dear government has expanded the war on terror to a war on Americans they don’t like. It’s politically incorrect to just kill the Islamic terrorists.
Every now and then Krauthammer steps in crap. This is one of those times. The POTUS is not the king. He can not point his scepter and OK the murder of American citizens. Exigent circumstance is one thing, death by drone for 16 year olds because of the sins of their Daddy’s is something else. The first is war, the second is murder.
You better read the white paper before you support it.
The precedent was set with Jose Padilla. A U.S. citizen who was held for almost four years without access to lawyers or the courts, subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, and who basically was denied his Constitutional protections. Why? Because he was a known Taliban operative who was actively engaged in planning acts of terror against innocent U.S. citizens. And because of that the administation argued that he was an enemy combattant and was not entitled to due process protections. And they were right. Citizenship ceases to become a factor when the individual is warring against the United States. They then become a target, just like any other enemy soldier or leader. And in war you win by killing more of the enemy than you lose, and killing them before they have a chance to kill you. Any U.S. citizen working for al Qaida accepts the risks that that involves. And if those risks include having a drone put a missile through your window, without a warrant, without access to legal counsel first, without due process, then so be it.
He is right about that, but the problem is Obama is targeting people not actively engaged in an attack. Obama is killing Americans he THINKS are cooperating with terrorists and Obama believes he can do that here in the US as well.
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