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Assassination of US Muslim Cleric is Illegal, Immoral and Unwise
Assassinating Awlaki in the US would be murder, a capital crime, punishable by life in prison or even the death penalty. Morally, few would argue that agents of the FBI or the CIA could murder the cleric in the US. If it is illegal and immoral to kill a Muslim cleric in the US why would it be legal, moral or wise to do so in Yemen?
The Imam, who lived in the US for more than two decades, is accused of using his powerful speaking and teaching skills on behalf of terrorism. Authorities say he was in e-mail contact with the Army Major arrested for killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas. He is loosely linked to the Nigerian Christmas bomber. The Times Square SUV bomber is reported to have listened to the cleric's online lectures.
Assassination has been illegal since 1976.
In 1976 U.S. President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11905, Section 5(g) states "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination." President Reagan followed up to make the ban clearer in Executive Order 12333. Section 2.11 of that Order states "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination." Section 2.12 further says "Indirect participation. No agency of the Intelligence Community shall participate in or request any person to undertake activities forbidden by this Order."
The reason for the ban on assassinations was that the CIA was involved in attempts to assassinate national leaders opposed by the US. Among others, US forces sought to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam.
Since 2001, the US has returned to the assassination business. Along with its many other illegal actions, the Bush-Cheney administration revived the use of murder to eliminate political opponents across the world.
How can murder be allowed? The Congressional Research Service published a review of the ban on assassinations in 2002. The review weakly suggested "it might be sufficient" to interpret the War Power resolutions passed by Congress after September 11, 2001 as legal authority to allow assassinations outside the U.S. However, Congress authorized no war against Yemen, no military strikes against anyone in Yemen, nor authorized any assassination of anyone anywhere.
Defenders of assassination argue that murder is a legal part of the US strategy of "pre-emptive self-defense" authorized by Congress after 9-11. Under this argument, the US government is allowed to decide who represents a possible threat to our nation anywhere anytime and then exterminate them before they can damage the US. They also argue that the decision to target someone for assassination is legally secret. Because any threat to the US triggers these powers, under this line of argument, the US is in a permanent war state and has these powers forever.
This is perfect for the apologists for assassination because the government alone is thus investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. The public will never know because the government can do all this in secret. And since the war against terrorism is permanent, the government can murder people forever.
Thus the last traces of the rule of law evaporate. There is no transparency because no one gets to know. There is no accountability because the executive has unchecked authority.
Does anyone think the US would approve other nations acting like this? Would it be acceptable or even arguably legal for Iran or China or Israel or France to secretly decide who their enemies are and then execute them in the US if they find them here?
Apologists for assassination ease the way for the US to kill anyone anywhere anytime. What is then the logical next step in this argument? If we can secretly kill US citizens who we decide are our enemies outside the US, why not inside the US? And why not keep that secret as well?
The US cannot be allowed to continue to exercise secret authority to murder people. If the Bush administration was doing this as openly as the Obama administration is, people would be vocal about its illegality, immorality and its lack of wisdom.
Murdering anyone in the US is a criminal act that is prosecuted regularly in courts across this country. Why should secret cold-blooded murder by government forces outside the U.S. be treated any differently?
- Posted in
45 Comments so far
Show All"Would it be acceptable or even arguably legal for Iran or China or Israel or France to secretly decide who their enemies are and then execute them in the US if they find them here?"
Why is this stated as if Israel does not already do this?
By this logic it would be legitimate for Iran or any other country to assassinate any US citizen it deemed to be a threat. If this is allowed then the US has no right to say anything when US citizens are targeted and assassinated abroad and within the US by foreign agents. It will become open season on Americans worldwide.
"Would it be acceptable or even arguably legal for...Israel...to secretly decide who their enemies are and then execute them ...?"
Hello!!!
The lives of U.S. citizens have NO special sacred quality in anyone's eyes but their own.
That old arrogant fallacy of American exceptionalism is NOT shared by the U.S. government, nor by its capitalist corporate ownership, except as it applies to their own "personhood", not yours. If that isn't obvious to Americans by now, it never will be. It's certainly not shared by America's victims.
Human rights are HUMAN rights. When you condone their violation for others, you endanger your own. And brother, you're sure doing a fine job of endangering them all by yourselves with your "I'm okay 'cuz I'm American" complacency.
Good luck waving your U.S. passport at a predator drone -- or at a Blackwater/Xe robocop, for that matter. Try holding up a copy of the U.S. Constitution or even Magna Carta Libertatum next time, if there is a next time.
'Everyone who has ever built anywhere a "new heaven" first found the power thereto in his own hell'. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
If it is OK for Americans to murder foreigners, then it is also OK for foreigners to murder Americans.
Let then bloodbath commence!
The rest of the world is not armed to the teeth, and quite frankly we are not ready for this bloodbath.
ROOT CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM
RV:
“Human rights are HUMAN rights.”
Above is a fake morality, the idea that we humans have rights
above the animals, that we are “exceptional” and not an animal.
ULTIMATE CONCLUSION
We deserve to live more then the animals.
Therefore:
We deserve to eat and may live off of the animals.
We deserve to self-actualize, to be all we can be.
We deserve to own all the land we can own.
We deserve to be a dictator over all who are on land that we own.
We deserve to kill those who oppose our dictatorship.
We deserve to assassinate Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
If asking those who believe in exceptional rights for U.S. citizens to consider the rest of humanity is "fake morality", I guess I'll have to plead guilty, along with the United Nations and most of its member states, the U.S. being a notable exception for at least some of the human rights declared as universal.
Extending the same argument to every animal on earth, however, is pure sophistry. Why stop with animals? Does your infinite "truth and light" assign slugs and worms a higher right to life than trees and bacteria? Or are you just being infinitely ridiculous and obnoxious like some other distractions and diversions around here?
I believe that I do not deserve to live, from birth I have had that vision and the result, after 70 years of life, has always been my desire to give all I can give.
You on the other hand believe you deserve to live, deserve the wealth needed to be all you can be, and this causes a state of war between us two basically good and honest men.
Now, I always keep plenty of hay over my garden so that the worms have plenty of moisture and organic soil, so they may prosper and grow. So then, what have you ever done for the worms?
"I believe that I do not deserve to live, ..."
Well, I'm certainly not going to even try arguing with that perspective. Lacking the professional qualifications, I'm afraid I might do more harm than good.
As for worms, I pretty much let them fend for themselves along with all the other myriad lifeforms in my rural environment -- excepting the few to whom the dubious honor of serving as my grandkids' fishing bait is awarded from time to time.
TEACH KIDS TO KILL
RV:
"As for worms... the dubious honor of
serving as my grandkids' fishing bait
is awarded from time to time."
If one believes in evolution, then animals like worms, fish and man, they came from the organic soil. And if one believes in creation then,
"took the organic soil of the earth and breathed
into its nostrils the breath of life and man
became an animal called a soul."
So we teach little children that they are an exceptional animal, that they deserve to kill and eat the inferior animals. Result being, a very small step is to go from killing fish to killing man.
RULE OVER ANIMALS -- NOT EAT ANIMALS
“Now shall be made, from the organic matter of the earth and
the spirit of life, living creatures with each a unique one of a kind.
Livestock and pets, creatures that crawl and wild animals native
to the land, each a unique one of a kind…
mankind… you shall rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds
of the air, and all the animals in all of the land, even all the
creatures that crawl upon the earth…
Now, I give to you every plant reproducing by sowing seeds,
wherever they may be upon the earth, and every tree that has
in it’s fruit seeds that reproduce. Yours they will be for food.”
Genesis 1:24-29
Yeah, sure. I also confess to eating some of the fish the kids catch using those worms, and I might even shoot a gopher occasionally if it digs holes where one of the horses could break a leg. That's definitely a god-like (human-like?) judgment call, especially for an unexceptional non-USan. But I do try my best to avoid taking sinful dietary advice from talking snakes.
Anyhow, if you derive any comfort from the biblical (Hebrew) adaptations of aincient mythologies, carry on. I suppose there are worse sources for a moral philosophy if one can reconcile all the contradictions and ambiguities. Perhaps you might even find something relevant to the actual topic if you try hard.
I like your philosphy, Truth Light.
It's true. That false idea that we are better than anyone or anything is poison.
TL - You need a better sorting system.
This has nothing to do with animals. It is completely silent on the subject of animals.
This issue is purely about people's protections as human beings - from other human beings. the issue here is - can the US unilaterally and without recourse to established universal codes of law and declarations of human rights, declare someone a "terrorist" (whatever that means these days), hunt him down, execute him without recourse to a recognized judicial system - innocent before proven guilty, right to a trial, right to habeas corpus, right to speedy trial, access to a lawyer and defense, examination of evidence in a public trial - all of those rights that the US insists it still repects and claims to want to apply universally. Also, do his rights as a US citizen end when he leaves the country?
Do you not see any danger to all US citizens in such a policy?
Your points 2-6 apply independently of any reference to animal rights.
John, thats got to be you ,,
It might be "illegal, immoral and unwise", but that's what the US, seemingly, does. Look at Afghanistan and Iraq. US summararily invaded and has been killing, torturing, disappearing people ever since.
What's the difference doing it on US soil? After all, wiping out whole villages and the people in them in unmanned air craft (drones) apparently so amuses the Nobel winning President, that he jokes about it.
Reality is stark and scary.
Mr. Quigley, such quaint and obsolescent thinking is EXACTLY why you'll never be on Team Obama's SCOTUS nominee list.
It's obvious that our monarchical Unitary Executive and the vast post 9/11 apparatus of the authoritarian security state needs every tool possible to decisively Win the Global War on Terror!
Dontcha SEE?
exactly, why should Obama listen to reasoned legal arguments when he can simply appoint yes(women), with zero experience as judges, to the bench who will rubber-stamp whatever he wants?
Excuse me, but you forgot to place the GWOT trademark in your post.
WHITE HUMANS -- PURE CORRUPTION
We race of white humans who rule Empire USA, we are the most corrupt
society the world has ever known.
And how it works is our leaders keep us brainwashed into thinking its all
because our leaders are so corrupt, all to keep us from talking about the
root cause of the problem, how we are so corrupt.
Over 20% of children in America last year suffered malnutrition.
Since 1920 the laboring class has been destroyed and enslaved by
divorce court, with not hardly a man who dropped out of high school
not having to live separate from his minor children.
Surely we white Americans are a stench in the nostrils of anyone
with integrity.
The stench is globalized, too.
I can smell it here in Central Mexico.
I know, it's true. And I am so ashamed.
Looks like fascism to me.
Or perhaps the "divine right of kings" to hold and exercise arbitrary powers of life and death and torture and imprisonment without trial. Seems to me that I recall reading somewhere about a colonial revolution against that kind of tyrannical governance. Maybe someone will be kind enough to update us about that and how it all worked out.
Yes its called "democracy" where the 51% highest
income earners are the voting majority, and always
pass laws that allow them to be enrich upon the
misery of the lower class.
Malcolm X, also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was assassinated in Chicago in 1965. He was a Muslim Minister, and was recovered in a COINTELPRO Division 5 of the FBI assassination. Malcolm was a US citizen too.
Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated by the US Government's FBI and US Army to prevent the US Anti War movement and US Civil Rights Movement from being united at the 1968 National Democratic Convention in Chicago. He was assassinated at month later, and that unity never happened consequently.
Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated in his chapel in El Salvador by the Reagan-Bush regime, as was many priest and nuns,by US funded, armed, and lead death squads.
So here we have an American citizen, assassinated to weaken the Anti War Movement, for a war they knew was as predicted, doomed to failure. The country went ablaze in protest, it was not mass arson, but mass outrage and human dignity that demanded something be done, a human cry, of how dare you, how could you, why did you???
The US was twice convicted of War Crimes in Nicaragua by the judicial arm of the United Nations, The International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The point is, the US does not care about violating the US War Crimes Act of 1996 which carries the death penalty; the US Constitution, International Law, The Nuremberg Principles, Geneva Conventions, Treaty Against Genocide, The Laws of Land Warfare, or respect the will of We, the people.
Plus, I do not subscribe to the fake perpetrators sent by this guy, it is all a psychological warfare boys who brought us 9/11 alright, but their passports are US and Israeli, dual citizens for the most part, how else could it have pulled off and covered up with such precision and complete cooperation?
Power grabs to torture, deny Constitutionally Protected Rights, which is unconstitutional as they are all acts of high treason.
Impeachment is mandatory legally and morally!!! It is not about personalities, but policy, and false-flag wars of aggression must end in exposure and outrage; or it will be kept endlessly with little media events or a big eventually, to intimidate the wise, and fool the fools.
Right and wrong; moral and immoral; just and unjust - these are actually irrelevant concepts here. El-Awlaki must have gotten too close, seen something he shouldn't have, and p*ssed off somebody rich and well-placed with something to lose.
I know I talked about humanistic concepts of right and wrong in a post supra, but I'm reaching the conclusion that trying to apply all those important things we learned back in the day really do not apply at all - in their world. It makes more sense, when looking at world events/politics, to recognize it all as a giant power struggle among obscenely wealthy and connected international gangs. What works, works. They don't follow the rules they impose on us. Human rights, labour unions, the commons, the boy scout oath, truth justice and the american way - yada yada - all irrelevant except to keep order in the lower ranks. Eyewash for the masses - like religion. I'm no conspiracy buff, but that unimaginably rich and powerful slice of society that we never see have no problem with genocides, massacres, environmental devastation (as long as it's not in their neighbourhood), extrajudicial killings, child labour, bombs, drones, torture, and all the horrors we've seen daily; those are the ones giving orders to our politicians and class aspirants. It doesn't matter what Obama says - he knows who his masters are, whose house he tiptoes around in, and he's working for them. All of politics makes sense again only if you think of our political class and media as lackeys of the hidden oligarchs, among whom Buffett and Soros are only minor lights. (My view is if we're aware of them at all, they're not that big or important in the grand schema.) It all makes me sentimental for the Mafia - at least they were honest about their intentions.
Like Vanunu, el-Awlaki must have seen or heard something he wasn't supposed to; that hidden upper crust is very protective of its turf. Somebody in America will derive some reward for offing him. All the noise about human rights is just a distraction.
I do find a change, though: 0 has moved to a very distinct although surely strictly limited openness about this act.
Let us remember that the act has not happened yet. Surely if the point were to kill this one cleric, 0 would not tip his hand.
No, the point is that COINTELPRO-style domestic assassination and Condor-style foreign assassination have been rendered expensive and complicated by the necessity of working under cover. 0bama apparently wishes to prepare the ground for large-scale Pinochet-style murders of US citizens, and does not wish to face later Pinochet-style prosecution by a US court concerned, however fitfully, with democratic values and human rights.
So what we see here is the slim edge of the dagger as 0 pushes it into the population. He chooses the test case as a single person, a man, bearded, an expatriate, a Muslim, a person 0 apparently feels confident of accusing as a terrorist. The persona of the target could be somewhat legitimate or completely fabricated. The assassination may or may not take place. Either way, the important thing from 0's POV is public nonresponse to a very publicly staged assassination.
Next, when 0 stages a few more, something a bit more daring, and points to the growing precedent. In this way, he hopes to dismantle the effective tradition of habeas corpus and public trial, since the legal demise of these things is only partial and is incompletely effective: the government still does not torture with complete impunity.
And with this we might recall the expansion of immigration-related prisons in the Southwest, the recent experiments with crowd-control armaments in Pittsburgh, arrests of targeted reporters at the recent RNC, the unleashing of Blackwater-Xe upon Americans after Katrina, the stationing of American combat troops in the United States during time of supposed war, and so forth.
We had best note two things.
1. Our leaders think we will soon have very palpable reasons to become far less happy with them than we are.
2. They have decided to respond to us with violence.
I would conclude that early action of some sort will be less costly than later action, and that almost anything that contributes to anyone likely to side with these rightist and statist forces likely makes things worse.
Here's to impeachment!
PS -
I find today's www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/11-1 about 0 sending drones to Texas more than a little significant.
A new form of Freedom of Speech in the U.S.A. and in the mid-east for citizens and non-citizens alike: You are free to speak. However, if the government -- the C.I.A. and Blackwater too -- don't like what you are saying, they are FREE to kill you right on the spot. And even if you have shut up temporarily and are sitting on the toilet, if they can shoot you through the bathroom window, they can and very likely will, because you are apt to say something that the U.S. government doesn't like within fifteen minutes of leaving the bathroom.
This is called practicing Freedom and Democracy, and the reason non-citizens of the U.S. don't like us is that they are jealous.
And for someone like you Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, who is a U.S. citizen, you must only say nice things about the government of the United States especially when you are wearing a turban in Yemen; otherwise the government of the United States may get the wrong idea about you and decide you are a menace to true democracy and freedom and just demonstrating a case of "sour grapes" because some of your Pakistani friends and family, who the government of the United States considered jealous-of-freedom-and-democracy terrorists, were killed in the country of your origin.
What's good to know is that the rules have changed a little. The U.S. Constitution has been flushed down that toilet you were recently sitting on, and the replacement rule and rules of the U.S. have become: Anything goes. And most important, there are no rules.
Anything more free and democratic than that?
Take care and keep a low profile, Imam Aw-Alaki. May Allah's blessing and mercy be with you to the end of your days of a very long life.
/cm
Bill Quigley gives us a valuable, concise legal and historical analysis of the laws prohibiting assassination by the executive branch of the US government outside the context of a declared state of war. The Ford and Reagan executive Orders were enacted to forestall passage of a federal statute expressly declaring such activity to be a crime.
Thus, the remedy for the current sick, macabre state of affairs is remarkably straightforward. Congress should get off its ass, hold a hearing on assasination efforts past and policies of the present of the CIA and JSOC special forces, and then pass a law making murder murder once again (unless a formal declaration of war under Article I of the Constitution has first taken place).
Clearly, presidential executive orders, interpreted in secret and carried out in secret by the executive branch, are an insufficient legal safeguard.
This seems perfectly simple to me. It was self-evident to those who drafted and ratified the US Constitution in the first place - delegating to no branch of the federal government a power to draw up a hit list, while guaranteeing life shall not be taken without due process of law - that only tyrant monarchs would even dream of using assassins to murder their rivals, clandestinely or openly, in the name of keeping the kingdom safe.
Bill from Saginaw
"Thus, the remedy ... is remarkably straightforward. Congress should get off its ass, ..."
Right! That will certainly fix all the problems.
Can't you see that they're already doing their best to help with their bipartisan proposal for suspected "terrorists" to be peremptorily deprived of U.S. citizenship without trial. That way, the imperial decrees and royal death warrants need only apply to foreigners in future.
Yup. The congressional remedy certainly is straightforward, although it doesn't seem much more remarkable than most others with the same sponsorship.
NATION OF VEGETARIANS -- ALL WARS END
RV:
“I also confess to eating some of the
fish the kids catch using those worms.”
RV LOGIC
Even though not eating dead flesh would make us more healthy,
even though killing animals makes us think killing people is harmless,
is not the purpose of life to seek all pleasure?
LIGHT
Just think of what would happen if killing animals in America
for pleasure or profit were against the law, if the only food
allowed to be sold was nuts, grains, beans, fruits and
vegetables. Surely bankruptcy for the medical industry,
the war industry and the rich.
And just as surely RV has his brains pickled in butter fat.
Using this line of rationalization, it would be defensible for me to 'pre-emptively' defend my country (Canada) from invasion and exploitation by US military forces by getting visiting US soldiers/Marines/sailors or Air Force pilots drunk off their asses and then stripping them to their skivvies and leaving them lying on the roadside ten feet from the US/Canada border.
Can any of you over over 50 out there have ever imagined in the 1970's that 35 years later we would be matter-of-factly discussing our own government committing extrajudicial executions and not even feeling the need to do it covertly?
In those days, if someone asked me what the year 2010 would be like, I would have said that we would be talking about such things like we talked about slavery in the 1970's.
Sure I though the pace of social progress would be uneven, but never did I think the USA would have regressed over 30 years to such levels of barbarity and brutishness.
Now, I return you to the kooky rantings on everything except the topic of this article.
I did, Sabo, but I was severely paranoid.
"If it is illegal and immoral to kill a Muslim cleric in the US why would it be legal, moral or wise to do so in Yemen?"
Mr. Quigley, you're pretending that the USA is still a united group of mutually-respecting citizens. This is simply not the case. If you haven't noticed, there is a class war raging in the USA, today, tearing it apart. The two sides are not speaking to each other. The elites are doing what they want, while thumbing their noses at the people. This has been going on ever since the thug squad stole the 2000 election. Haven't you noticed? And so your question is moot. The elites are delinquent, outlaw. The emperor is butt-naked and everyone knows it.
Wow, you bought the whole Marx thing, eh?
Maybe, maybe not.
But if there's no class war, it is certainly not because management is not fighting.
HUMAN ANIMALS
RedBalloon:
“This has nothing to do with animals…
This issue is purely about people's protections as human beings…
Can the US unilaterally… declare someone a terrorist…
hunt him down, execute him without recourse”
REAL ISSUE
(1) What is the root cause of a fake morality that allows our
Empire to plunder helpless nations?
(2) Eating the adrenalin in dead flesh, as it causes the brain to be
more hostile and aggressive, should this be declared against the law?
(3) Teaching children to kill animals for pleasure or profit,
does this make it easier to teach them how to kill people
who harm a rich man’s profit?
(4) As a vegetarian diet makes for the most moral society, the least
health costs for society and the least damage to the environment,
should it be illegal to kill helpless animals for food?
(5) Is it moral, logical or beneficial for human animals to have the
right to kill for pleasure other kinds of animals?
(6) If a law was passed giving us the right to defend animals, to use
deadly force against humans who kill for sadistic greed the harmless
and beneficial animals, would the world be a better place?
"The US cannot be allowed to continue to exercise secret authority to murder people."
Mr. Quigley, the USA has no authority, secret or otherwise. Nobody respects or recognizes it. Only a few remain engaged with it for economic reasons. It's just another merchant to them.
Mr. Quigley, you are presuming that their is something, legal, moral or wise about the Obama administration. Even many of the people that voted for him are beginning to realize their mistake! Obama will be gone in 2012, the trick will be not to replace him with a Republican or a Democrat, but with a true Progressive. It is time to force the pendulum to swing all the way back to the left, instead of allowing it to stop in the center.
By the way Mr. Quigley, Israel does on a regular basis, conducts secret assassinations of foreign nationals. They did so just recently in Dubai. And yes, the illegal, immoral and unwise Obama administration turned a blind eye.
This development of assassinating and murdering U.S. citizens is a truly scary Orwellian big-brother state of affairs.....
Unless I missed it, Q does not assume any morality on the part of 0 at all.
Let's get some election reform in 2012 so that we have the possibility of democratically electing a representative at some point thereafter.
Extra-judicial assassination is clearly illegal, immoral, and wrong, but there are no words to describe the horror of what the u.s. does. When drones strike and hit their "targets," all those who happen to be nearby get taken out as well, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed and maimed.