Patterico's Pontifications

5/23/2010

Al-Awlaki Responds: Kill Americans

Filed under: Obama,Terrorism,War — DRJ @ 12:46 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

In response to the Obama Administration’s decision to put Yemeni clerk Anwar al-Awlaki on a priority list for capture or assassination, al-Awlaki has called on Muslims to kill American citizens:

“The U.S.-born al-Awlaki moved to Yemen in 2004 and is in hiding there after being linked to the suspects in the November shooting at an Army base in Fort Hood, Texas, and the December attempt to blow up a U.S. jetliner bound for Detroit.

“Those who might be killed in a plane are merely a drop of water in a sea,” he said in the video in response to a question about Muslim groups that disapproved of the airliner plot because it targeted civilians.

Al-Awlaki used the 45-minute video to justify civilian deaths – and encourage them – by accusing the United States of intentionally killing a million Muslim civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

American civilians are to blame, he said, because “the American people, in general, are taking part in this and they elected this administration and they are financing the war.”

Obama’s decision to target al-Awlaki produced widespread concern among America’s European allies and raised serious questions here at home:

“To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the National Security Council’s approval, required no judicial review.

“Congress has protected Awlaki’s cellphone calls,” said Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer who now teaches at the United States Naval Academy. “But it has not provided any protections for his life. That makes no sense.”

Administration officials take the view that no legal or constitutional rights can protect Mr. Awlaki, a charismatic preacher who has said it is a religious duty to attack the United States and who the C.I.A. believes is actively plotting violence. The attempted bombing of Times Square on May 1 is the latest of more than a dozen terrorist plots in the West that investigators believe were inspired in part by Mr. Awlaki’s rhetoric.

“American citizenship doesn’t give you carte blanche to wage war against your own country,” said a counterterrorism official who discussed the classified program on condition of anonymity. “If you cast your lot with its enemies, you may well share their fate.”

I wish the Obama Administration good hunting in the quest to kill our enemies but, while Obama and his supporters will never admit it, he’s relying on the same Bush Administration policies he once blasted as unconstitutional.

— DRJ

2 Responses to “Al-Awlaki Responds: Kill Americans”

  1. I don’t know Awlaki, and I do believe that he hates America and wants to wage war against us, but killing people at the slightest excuse is bad manners, not to mention a bad habit. And I trust Obama just as much as Bush to decide which American citizen he should assassinate.

    And I don’t know where that “we cannot monitor his phone calls” came from. If they’re overseas, the NSA already does it, warrant or no warrant, and if domestic the NSA already does it but it needs a warrant if it wants them admitted into evindence.

    nk (db4a41)

  2. Anwar al-Awlaki has “taken the field” against the country of his birth, an Act of Treason, and deserves every bad thing that happens to him upon that field. This doesn’t even take into account the numerous counts of fraud that he has perpetrated against various government entities of the United States in claiming foreign allegiance to enable his acquisition of a student visa (to visit the country of his birth) and the granting of student loans reserved for foreigners.

    But, much the same accusations are directed against a student who attended Occidental College under similar circumstances:
    An allegedly Indonesian student named Barry Soetero.

    AD - RtR/OS! (bb1c62)


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