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Anwar al-Awlaki's Extrajudicial Murder
The law on the use of lethal force by executive order is specific. This assassination broke it – that creates a terrifying precedent
Is this the world we want? Where the president of the United States can place an American citizen, or anyone else for that matter, living outside a war zone on a targeted assassination list, and then have him murdered by drone strike.
Anwar al-Awlaki in 2008; the radical Islamic cleric has reportedly been killed in Yemen by a US drone strike. (Photograph: AP)
This was the very result we at the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU feared when we brought a case in US federal court on behalf of Anwar al-Awlaki's father, hoping to prevent this targeted killing. We lost the case on procedural grounds, but the judge considered the implications of the practice as raising "serious questions", asking:
"Can the executive order the assassination of a US citizen without first affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organisation?"
Yes, Anwar al-Awlaki was a radical Muslim cleric. Yes, his language and speeches were incendiary. He may even have engaged in plots against the United States – but we do not know that because he was never indicted for a crime.
This profile should not have made him a target for a killing without due process and without any effort to capture, arrest and try him. The US government knew his location for purposes of a drone strike, so why was no effort made to arrest him in Yemen, a country that apparently was allied in the US efforts to track him down?
There are – or were – laws about the circumstances in which deadly force can be used, including against those who are bent on causing harm to the United States. Outside of a war zone, as Awlaki was, lethal force can only be employed in the narrowest and most extraordinary circumstances: when there is a concrete, specific and imminent threat of an attack; and even then, deadly force must be a last resort.
The claim, after the fact, by President Obama that Awlaki "operationally directed efforts" to attack the United States was never presented to a court before he was placed on the "kill" list and is untested. Even if President Obama's claim has some validity, unless Awlaki's alleged terrorists actions were imminent and unless deadly force employed as a last resort, this killing constitutes murder.
We know the government makes mistakes, lots of them, in giving people a "terrorist" label. Hundreds of men were wrongfully detained at Guantánamo. Should this same government, or any government, be allowed to order people's killing without due process?
The dire implications of this killing should not be lost on any of us. There appears to be no limit to the president's power to kill anywhere in the world, even if it involves killing a citizen of his own country. Today, it's in Yemen; tomorrow, it could be in the UK or even in the United States.
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78 Comments so far
Show AllThe USA government has declared war on all people -including all US citizens.
We have a "war on poverty". Does that authorize the president to kill every American citizen who causes more poverty? We also have a "war on drugs". Does that authorize the president to kill every American citizen who sells illegal drugs?
We have a "war on poverty".
As someone once said, "If the 'War on Poverty' was a real war there would be lots of money to spend on it.
The "war on poverty" does exist and the poor are losing it. Oursourcing, de-unionizing, the spreading of propaganda depicting the poor as lazy and shiftless, deserving of their impoverishment, are parts of this war. Those rich people and representatives of the rich who are howling about "class war" being waged against them are key figures in the war on poverty.
The "war on drugs" is so successful that the prisons are full of people convicted of only possession or low level dealing -- or possessing cannabis, the least destructive of all intoxicants -- which is evidence that this war is also being won by the Powers That Be. One work product of their victory is the disenfranchisement of ethnic minorities.
A move to "authorize the president to kill every American citizen who sells illegal drugs" is not at all impossible, and lots of money is being spent, or as I call it "wasted."
What was once a top secret is now openly stated policy.
And if you care to remember, the US has been murdering it's own citizens for decades.
Yes, Amerika has been torturing and murdering its people without due process since its inception, but as you correctly observe, instead of being in the province of some shadowy black-ops secret agency, it is now unabashedly the general policy of the Amerikan government to torture and murder its own citizens upon presidential whim.
This is a profound and horrifying perversion and distortion of the founding principals of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
But now they have obviously decided they don't have to care. And that is particularly terrifying.
Nothing new about presidents ordering the murder of U.S. citizens, that's for sure. But now Obama not only admits it but brags about it.
I can't believe there are any progressives left in this country who would defend this atrocious Wall Street-owned CIA-controlled hack.
Why does it count/ matter, more when fascist amerika murders its own citizens; when when since its inception amerika has slaughtered millions of world citizens ?
Then there are the attendant killings--those killed along with the alleged perpetrator. Frequently they are dismissed as "operatives," a term that dehumanizes them. They have not been accused of crimes and are guilty only of being close to the target. Some are bystanders while others might be drivers of vehicles. Still others are family members, some of them children. The greatest terrorist threat in the world is the United States of America.
Excellent point. Somehow, the US govt has even legitimized the killing of drivers, with the implication being that if you are even driving a terrorist, you are just as guilty as the terrorist. I wonder whether this rationalization also applies to taxi drivers. You pick some guy up hailing a cab, who happens to be on the kill list, and boom! You're dead. There's literally no end to this madness... You better bow down, kiss the flag, pledge allegiance and burn a Koran or you might be next.
President Obama must stand trial for this murder. Otherwise we have anarchy.
No offense, Ocean, but written in the big black cloud within the silver lining of the Watergate scandal was this message: Constitution, schmonstitution-- Presidents don't stand trial for high crimes.
Beneath his "amiable doofus" façade, Gerald Ford was the quintessential "Good German" brutal fixer; he was a key facilitator of the Warren Commission whitewash of the JFK assassination, though that accomplishment was eclipsed by his scurrilous pardon of Nixon.
This is now a settled precedent, occasional harrumphings and the wailing and gnashing of teeth notwithstanding. It's implicit in Obama's smarmy euphemism of "Looking Forward".
Even impeachment has been diminished to a tool of last resort for partisan political demagoguery.
And although I think I understand what you mean, I respectfully suggest that your concluding sentence is better expressed as "Otherwise we have tyranny."
Which, sadly, we already do.
It's anarchy for the ruling elite, law & order and draconian punishments for the rest of us. Also, they get socialism while we get free market capitalism. So yeah, tyranny, basically.
I think it was Nixon who said "When the President does it, it's legal."
Notice how the 'news' reporters are getting this all wrong. They continue to report that this is the first such killing. They have forgotten that Bush did the same thing.
Prosecute the murderers. That includes those who finance, manufacture, and operate the drones. Those who voted for Obama are complicit.
"Prosecute the murderers. That includes those who finance, manufacture, and operate the drones. Those who voted for Obama are complicit."
I agree with your first two sentences although I know it will never happen. But your last sentence is wrong. I thought he was a vacuous character in that he gave absolutely no idea of his projected policies and his supporters were more like pop-star groupies than engaged, politicised adults. But nobody (possibly excepting people who personally knew him well) could have known that Obama would turn out to be a sociopathic killer and panderer to the top one percent of super-rich Americans.
Absolutely agree with you!
if we as americans do not strike & protest, we are accessories after fact. basic law 101.
Many people knew and predicted what would happen if Obama was elected. How could anyone NOT know??? After all he is a member of the Democratic Party. Remember how many Iraqi children died because of policies during the Clinton years - and then M. Albright said that the deaths of the children were worth it. It is hard to figure out which Party kills more - the dems or the repubs.
Really? When did he order the assassination of a US citizen? I know he locked a couple up as enemy combatants, but I don't remember him killing any.
Bush wrote the Executive Order. Then he assassinated a USA citizen riding in a car in Yemen. He was challenged on the legality of this type of assassination, but the Executive Order has NOT been recinded.
With the president ordering the killing of an Amerikan citizen, at his sole discretion without review or any semblance of due process, the former democracy once known as the United States of America, crossed the line to a totalitarian police-state.
The only step remaining to complete the governmental transformation from what the founders of the nation envisioned to the horrors of the most authoritarian governments on the planet is for the government to declare martial law. This is the formula that the Milton Friedman-disaster-capitalism crowd has been perfecting for 50 years.
Remember, if the government can pervert the system of government to meet its own agenda without any discussion from We the People, any of us can be the next target of disappearance, torture and murder.
Has it ever occurred to you that the president does not have the authority to order the killing of a non-American citizen except under quite precisely defined conditions. With regards to the currently internet-soaking accusation that AA was a "traitor", let us remember that not a single leader of the Confederate States of America was even put on trial as a traitor let alone hanged and they certainly advocated the killing of US soldiers (and ordered the firing of the first shots). With regards to the currently internet-soaking and Obama averring accusation that AA was a "combatant in war" I consider a "combatant in war" to be an armed person trained to kill enemy soldiers or a person who directly commands the firing of arms (say the commander of an artillery unit who does not load or fire the cannons himself). From all I have learned about Mr. AA he was not such a "combatant". He may have been a sort of Joseph Goebbels of Al Qaeda but he was not its Hermann Goering or Heinrich Himmler.
Certainly, a relevant point! And traitors were the South or the North? What the North did to the South with their Carpetbaggers should decide traitorous behavior, for sure.
It was just rape CONDONED BY THE FEDERAL U.S. OF A.
Carpetbaggers?
You mean the poeple who went south to successfully assured the black freed-slave majority in places like Mississippi has proper represntation in the states government? And also, had access to land and business opportunities so, for a while, before before the murderous jim crow backlash starting in the 1880's, many black southerners prospered?
The Confederates maybe were not put on trial, but you let them die in Elmira. And, the Confederates (as their name implies) believed in Confederacy, not the Federal, idiotic country that we have become. If Europe adopts the "Confederate" mentality about Europe, Europe will probably survive.
gee, Crow, but the president was explicitly granted the authority to direct the use of military force against any member of al Qaeda on Sept 18, 2001....so maybe he does have the authority.
Well said, Tom Joad.
It's interesting that this article appears in The Guardian, NOT a U.S. paper.
The U.S. is being seen increasingly as a rogue nation, and since millions may now feel at risk... how long will it be before another force emerges to counter this nation run amok? Whether actions taken become covert, or are otherwise based on a coalition of nations concerned with the Amerikan government's naked abuses of power? They may be compelled to step in to neutralize it... just as forces thwarted Hitler or other tyrants who operated as if law need not apply to them.
To the poster who made the comment about how could "progressives" support Obama, it's been related numerous times in this forum that the labels being used are quite deceiving. Even the illusion of two parties has become a great (and grave) deception. Does any progressive support war? That is the litmus test... the Democratic party, as a whole, has moved so far to the right that it qualifies as Republican, whereas today's Republicans are like some kind of Nazi-John Birch Society amalgam, repackaged and hidden behind populist sounding concepts like "The Tea Party." It's ALL a gigantic, DEADLY hoax!
BTW: If boxcutters could take down planes and wage an impressive attack on U.S. monuments to power, imagine the cyber equivalent turning the US MIC arsenal on itself. Given that US students are not scoring as high (or with the same frequency) as students in Europe and Asia, what's to say that some computer-savvy brain-trust will not emerge with the savoir faire to intercept US computer systems? So many weapons are now run off THAT grid...
So just as boxcutters allegedly inverted US defense of our physical structures, the cyber equivalent could create havoc by directing these US resources onto the homeland. Is this not the ultimate Martial Arts axiom applied to modern warfare? Use the enemy's strength and resources against himself?
Karma always finds ways to bomerang back... or as Chalmers Johnson termed it, blowback results from war and those nefarious actions aimed at destabilizing other sovereign lands.
Oh, and about that Nobel Peace Prize... is this not grounds to demand that it be returned?
Definitely, he should give back his Nobel Peace Prize. If Obama thinks that by murdering an Arab American, God forbid, who had the temerity to live in Yemen without being ordered to by some government of the world as a diplomat (that alone should have won this guy entry into heaven), will win him kudos with the American electorate, I think that he has fallen into a trap by whomever is advising him. That American in Yemen had the right to voice his opinions; for Pete's sake, voicing an opinion or taking a stance does not make one an enemy of the U.S. unless the U.S. has become a dictatorship.
If Obama had more information than we the public know about, then he should abolish all of the secrecy laws of foreign policy that prevent us from rightfully knowing the truth about what is happening to us!
"voicing an opinion or taking a stance does not make one an enemy of the U.S. unless the U.S. has become a dictatorship." Stated another way: If voicing an opinion makes one an enemy of the US, then the US has become a dictatorship. By killing al-Awlaki, essentially an anti-US propagandist, without a semblance of due process, the US has declared itself a dictatorship. It is now a capital offense to express views not approved of by the US govt. This is the definition of dictatorship.
The more kills that Obama can get the more votes he will get. Dylan talked about a politician in "Summer Days" that sounds just like Obama.
"Politician got on his jogging shoes
He must be running for office, got no time to lose
He been suckin’ the blood out of the genius of generosity
You been rolling your eyes—you been teasing me."
Hoa binh
We have become barbarians, techno barbarians.
This one murder has gathered much attention by pointing out the obvious lawlessness of the Oilybomber but let's not kid ourselves - ask any Native American or minority about extra-judicial killings and murders - our country's foundation is built upon those bloody bricks.
Par for the course -
MT DON: Yes and no. And here's why:
It's been observed that serial killers develop a "taste" for the thing, and their crimes tend to escalate and become more bold over time.
The U.S. government IS that serial killer, on a far greater scale.
Secondly, 200 years ago the target faced a rifle or maybe canon. Today, there are weapons we don't even know about (think DARPA) that can break minds and bodies; and with so many BILLIONS upon BILLIONS invested in the ways to kill... the arsenal is enormous, can murder every sentient thing many times over, and still, it is to this "achievement" that the lion's share of US tax monies is directed.
Once that A-bomb came into the possession of US officials, the dark side was unleashed. They go about the work of destruction, as if they were gods, endowed with the right to determine who shall live and who shall die.
I happen to prefer California red wine, but it dawned on me that pretty soon, those grapes of wrath will start to deliver karmic blowback in the form of radiation. For the winds that sweep from Japan to California--a major deliverer of food (and wine) to our nation--will be tainted. The radiation once delivered unto the Japanese people is being slowly returned to US in kind.
All things come full circle, so it pays to play fair and honor decency at all times. Every master has taught this "do unto others" as... principle. Yet in the US Xtian nation, where churches fill up with millions, it is instead a credo of vengeance that is religiously practiced... with rare & notabl exceptions.
Truly amazing. The extrajudicial execution of a single American seems to rate greater outrage than all the other murderous attacks on mere "furreners" that have been going on for decades.
Is anyone even aware that U.S. constitutional due process protections apply to all "persons" and not just to "citizens"? Or is it simply that Americans just don't give a damn about anyone but themselves? (Rhetorical question.)
Actually, there is considerable natural justice involved as some of the chickens begin to come home to roost. It was bound to happen, but Americans never wake up until they themselves become the victims. And even then the awakening is seldom very effectual.
Agreed that the outrage is limited in general. Nevertheless, such reporting as I've seen, both here and elsewhere, does seem to place heavy emphasis on distiguishing this particular case as being somehow exceptional due to the fact that the individual involved was a U.S. citizen.
The real point is that the relevant constitutional law provisions are applicable to any "person" and make no such distinctions between U.S. citizens and non-citizens. At least that's what they say, for all it matters these days.
It's the Rubicon-crossing aspect of it that I think has roused people's attention. It's also blatantly uncostitutional, as opposed to just a violation of international law and basic morality. But yeah, your point is well taken. The US should stop murdering everyone, not just US citizens.
The U.S. government has been killing its own citizens for quite some time. A classic example is the conspiracy involving the FBI, Cook County State Attorney, & the Chicago police to assassinate Fred Hampton. (Cointelpro and the war on the Black Panthers is full of numerous other examples.)
Of course the key difference is that they had to mask their assassinations and murders behind a cloak of legality. Hampton shot first (in his sleep) -- "we had to defend ourselves from this black maniac!"
Now a black (allegedly) President has claimed the right to boldly murder enemies of Amerika --anywhere, anytime, of any citizenship-- without any due process or legal rights.
This can be done boldly in the bright sunshine of corporate talking heads without judicial review.
Rest assured that this not an anomaly or a momentary aberration. This is the nose of the camel under the tent flap.
It will eventually be applied to other Amerikans-- who are beardless, do not sport weird names, practice bazaar religions, and hide out in faraway heathen lands.
The use of drones is probably too messy and expensive to become widespread. Easier to send in a SWAT team and take out the 'terrorists' and troublemakers in the good old fashioned way -- in a hailstorm of bullets.
However, with the advance of drone computer technology and miniaturization, we can foresee a time when a drone the size of a baseball can stealthily visit sleeping 'terror mongers' and fire a poisonous dart directly into their temples. No fuss, no muss.
Why not take out a few of these Earth First type 'terrorists' or some of these extreme 'animal rights' terrorists or a few key members of this 'Occupy Wall Street' terrorist uprising?
Are these not threats to Homeland Security?
The logic of state terror and totalitarianism has its own arc and inertia.
From the 1820s onward, the slave-owning-southern-skewed Congress was besieged by petition after petition opposing slavery, until the delicately-sensitive slave-owner representatives could stand the offense no longer, and banned the petitions and gagged the troublesome few representatives submitting the petitions. John Quincy Adams, former president, was in the forefront of the petitioning.
Today, the Democratic and Republican parties occupy the place of the southern slave-holder Democrats of those times, and a pitiful few legislators stand in opposition to them.Obviously, no articles of impeachment (well, except for an Oval Office blow-job) are going to get a hearing before our illustrious Congress. But, taking a leaf from history, the few in the legislature with some dim memory of a Constitution should be filing article after article against every participant in this misbegotten administration's usurpation of constitutional power...and against the congressional leadership that thwarts the hearing of the articles,
At least make the vermin squirm.
Drone attacks on us coming soon to you. Unfortunately, we did not offically declare was as per the US Congress or this wouldn't even be an issue. We assinated Americans who went Germany or Japan in WW2 to fight against the Allies. They were declared traitors and enemies of the country thus could be assinated. Did this man renounce his US citizenship?
That Anwar al-Awlaki was an American is not important. The labeling of him as a "terrorist" when his only act was to inspire others with an anti-American message is the problem. This man was a preacher and the US didn't like what he was preaching. He never committed a crime. There is no evidence to suggest that he did anything beyond inspire others. Where's the evidence that he told anyone to kill innocent civilians?
In Iraq the Sunnis used terrorism in the form of a massive bombing campaign that killed thousands of Shiites. We never labeled them terrorist. Instead, we allied ourselves with them and bribed them into stopping the killing.
In Gaza, Hamas resists Israel and launches a few homemade rockets at the criminal occupier, and they're put on the terrorist list. Hamas is an elected political entity that has a military component, and we broad-brush them all as terrorist---with no consideration of the situation. Hamas is resisting an illegal occupation that is imprisoning millions and slowing destroying an entire people.
Nelson Mandela and the ANC were once labeled "terrorists". Does this mean we would be justified in dropping a missile on him? Todays terrorist is tomorrows freedom fighter.
This is not about terrorism, it's about those who would stand against imperialism and the neoliberal, capitalist agenda. Terror is a tactic used by the disenfranchised against those who would exploit them.
----"In Gaza, Hamas resists Israel and launches a few homemade rockets at the criminal occupier, and they're put on the terrorist list."---
Higgs, not that you're likely to care but that's a crock of shit. Hamas was declared a terrorist organization in 1995, more than a year after Hamas started sending suicide bombers into Israel to kill civilians.
Rockets from Gaza was way, way later.
Thanks so much for fighting this fight. Obama's actions are despicable and shocking.
if you thought the considerable rage against this country was intense prior to 9/11, the invasions and occupations, the callous disregard for innocent lives and remote controlled assassinations have pretty much sealed the deal. there will be payback, blowback, what have you for generations to come.
not that this represents the bigger threat to citizens of this country mind you......that (dis)honor still falls on the domestic enemies in our midst.
"there will be payback, blowback, what have you for generations to come"
To those who profit from our corporate imperialist wars, "payback" is the most apt word.
" Today it is in Yemen; tomorrow, it could be in the UK or even the United States". Yes Mr. Ratner. What if BO and Foxy News labeled the Center for Constitutional Rights a terrorist organization? As soon as they can, they will make anyone a terrorist who does not conform, because all the real terrorists are in Washington De Ceit!
Come on, folks, if it's ok to invade a country because it might have WMDs, what's the big deal on snuffing out some bad dude Mafia style?
Conservatives should ask themselves how they would feel if the situations at Waco and Ruby Ridge were simply dealt with using Drone Strikes
If Drone Strikes had been available during Ruby Ridge and Waco, they would have been used. The amount of lethal force mounted against the Branch Dividians was appalling. The conservatives of today would cheer.