Judicial what? Is Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union kidding us? No, of course he isn’t. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. The ACLU is known for many things, but a sense of humor isn’t one of them.
So the United States sent a drone aircraft into Yemen to take out one Anwar al-Awlaki, a member of al Qaeda who just happened to be born in the United States.
Technically, that makes al-Awlaki an American citizen. In my mind, his joining al Qaeda was tantamount to his renouncing his American citizenship and made him nothing more than a traitor.
But that’s not how the ACLU feels about al-Awlaki’s very timely demise. Here’s Jaffer’s statement, taken from the CBS News website:
“As we’ve seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield are executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public, but from the courts. The government’s authority to use lethal force against its own citizens should be limited to circumstances in which the threat to life is concrete, specific and imminent. It is a mistake to invest the president — any president — with the unreviewable power to kill any American he deems a threat to the country.”
When did we start celebrating “Be Kind to Traitors Week” in this country? And where does Jaffer get off with this business of any member of al Qaeda being “deemed” a threat?
Members of al Qaeda don’t have to be “deemed” threats to this country. They are threats. Their actions of Sept. 11, 2001, in which they killed nearly 3,000 U.S. citizens, were nothing less than a declaration of war on the United States of America.
Al Qaeda members wanted war. Now they have it.
War is about killing the enemy. It’s about killing as many of them as possible. And war isn’t pretty. Nasty things tend to happen.
Republican presidential candidates Ron Paul and Gary Johnson can’t quite grasp the concept that we’re at war with al Qaeda, either. The story on the CBS News website had this to say about Paul’s reaction to al-Awlaki’s killing:
“Paul, a staunch libertarian, said in New Hampshire Friday that it’s ‘sad’ if the American people accept this blindly and casually, adding that ‘nobody knows if [al-Awlaki] ever killed anybody.’ According to the Wall Street Journal, the Texas Republican lawmaker said U.S. officials ‘have never been specific about the crime.’ ”
Here’s Johnson’s two cents’ worth, from the same story:
“We cannot allow the war on terror to diminish our steadfast adherence to the notion of due process for American citizens. The protections under the Constitution for those accused of crimes do not just apply to people we like. They apply to everyone, including a terrorist like al-Awlaki. It is a question of due process for all American citizens.”
Peruse closely the language both Paul and Johnson used. According to Paul, al-Awlaki was never charged with a specific “crime.” According to Johnson, al-Awlaki deserved the same protections as other Americans accused of “crimes.”
So in the worldview of Paul, Johnson and the ACLU, the mass murder of American citizens isn’t war, but a “crime.” And the continued plotting and scheming to mass murder even more American citizens isn’t war, either. It’s a crime.
Somebody needs to send these folks a memo making it very clear that the mass murder of American citizens, and plotting and scheming to do so, aren’t quite the same thing as robbing the neighborhood liquor store.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
