Quote:
Originally Posted by Tmall
Not at all. I'm saying, none of you seemed to ever talk about it when it was a foreigner. Now you seem to care because it's at your door step.
You reap what you sow...  |
There is a fundamental difference between our government acknowledging enemy combatants who have declared war on our country by making war on them, and our government killing American citizens without due process.
If an American were killed by a foreign government or any foreign entity through covert means or by way of foreign-owned long-range weapon attacks, that might fit the definition of "reaping what you sow." But that is a whole other argument: whether or not the US government is justified in killing non-American (in most cases self-admitted) terrorists as enemy combatants through military force.*
The "care" that is being expressed in the case of al-Awlaki and the other guy (whose name escapes me) is not that they were killed, it's that they were US citizens killed by the US government without due process. In other words, where most Americans probably dismiss UAV attacks, cruise missile strikes, and other non-conventional attacks as legitimate warfare against enemies who have publicly declared war on us and actively sought to kill us, when those enemies happen to be American citizens there is an extra complication in our minds. A complication that I personally don't think is adequately addressed by secret panels of un-named government officials.**
Do you feel that the Afghans killed by Canadian forces throughout Operation Enduring Freedom should have been afforded the same due process that Canadian citizens are?
*I will say, the timeline as I understand it had speed-boats exploding on US Navy vessels and planes slamming into the WTC
before UAV's were deployed in Pakistan and Yemen. Who is reaping and who is sowing?
**All that said, I don't have a good resolution. As goof2 pointed out, how would we have extradited or arrested him? As a US citizen he can't be tried in absentia, so it seems like any legal approach save magically teleporting him to the courtroom would be as invalid as the next. But a little more transparency from the president who campaigned on transparency in government would be welcome...