There’s something interesting going on in the ongoing right/left debate these days.
One Anwar al-Awlaki has made Obama’s Hit Parade – to be terminated with extreme prejudice as soon as located with a reasonable degree of precision. Precision defined by the blast radius of the explosives a cruise missile can carry. Not a good idea to be standing next to Mr. al-Awlaki when his translation to the garden of delights awaiting the martyrs is effected.
What makes this terminate-on-sight order interesting is, al-Awlaki is technically an American citizen.
So? Then he’s a traitor and deserves death, right?
Nobody is arguing that. Conservatives complain Bush would have been crucified while Obama gets a free pass, and of course they’re right. But that’s not the point.
What’s interesting, and what shows a lot about the place each side is coming from is, conservatives are objecting to the process and procedure involved in making one measly traitor dead.
Kevin D. Williamson commented, “The penalty for treason is not assassination without trial, and there is nothing in our Constitution or tradition to suggest that it is.”
Williamson elaborated in National Review “If Awlaki were to be killed on a battlefield, I’d shed no tears. But ordering the premeditated, extrajudicial killing of an American citizen in Yemen or Pakistan is no different from ordering the premeditated, extrajudicial killing of an American citizen in New York or Washington or Topeka — American citizens are American citizens, wherever they go. I’m an old-fashioned limited-government guy, and I am not willing to grant Washington the power to assassinate U.S. citizens, even rotten ones. The three most powerful people in government at this moment are Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, a fact that should give pause even to the most hawkish conservative. I would hope that other conservatives see this at least as a matter of prudence, if not a burning moral question.”
David Harsanyi in The Denver Post said, “At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I have to wonder: If a president — any president — has the authority to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without oversight, what exactly can’t a president do?
Now, as a matter of foreign policy, I am quite comfortable when Islamic extremists, militants and terrorists meet their atomized ends through the work of unmanned flying contraptions operated remotely by the U.S. government.
Then again, I can also unequivocally state that the thought of an American citizen being placed on one of these terrorist hit lists without due process of law or any oversight is a precedent that I find disconcerting.
My unease over the case of Anwar Awlaki — an American citizen penciled in for targeted assassination by the Obama administration — isn’t based on any conspiratorial daydreams about Barack Obama wanting to randomly knock off citizens.
There is no doubt, in fact, that Awlaki is a despicable character, a member of radical Islamic networks, dangerous and deserving of a most gruesome fate.”
Now see Jonah Goldberg.
“Does Anwar al-Awlaki deserve to die? Would it be good for America and the world if, through some combination of fate, luck, justice, and the arsenal of democracy, his heart stopped beating tomorrow? Does Barack Obama have America’s best interests at heart when he endeavors to make that happen?
The answer to each of these questions is, as far as I can tell, yes.
For starters, the very idea of a secret presidential assassination list is creepy in a country committed to democracy and the rule of law.
There’s ample precedent — and common sense — to support the claim that the executive branch can kill American citizens when they are sworn members of enemy forces and avowed traitors working with the enemy.
But those precedents start to fray at the edges when the whole world is the war zone and the war doesn’t end until a diffuse, committed, and often camouflaged army of suicidal religious fanatics defy their god and agree to leave the Dark Ages. And the common sense starts to drain away like water through your fingers when you contemplate that we may be facing these kinds of problems for half a century. So while it strikes me as a no-brainer that al-Awlaki should go, what about the next guy? Or the next?
And we know there will be a next guy.
So, let’s have Congress and the president come up with some clear, public rules. Better to start the debate over an easy case than a hard one.”
Good point Jonah. There’s a legal saying, “Hard cases make bad law.”
Now here’s the point, all these guys want to see al-Awlaki dead (me too.) It’s how he gets dead that matters.
So what? Dead’s dead, right?
That strikes me as a crucial part of the left/right divide. The importance they place on how it gets done.
The right thinks power is dangerous when unchecked by formal processes and procedures. The left thinks unchecked power is a jim-dandy thing to have, if you’re the right sort with the right intentions.
That’s why they are neither inconsistent nor hypocritical when they remain mute or actively justify Obama’s exercise of power they’d (rightly) crucify Bush for.
And note this: the above-quoted conservatives and libertarians (Harsanyi could be described as a “libertarian hawk”) are concerned about what could happen if they were on the receiving end of that policy. That implies they consider the change of political power to be normal, natural, and by and large a good thing.
What does it say about someone who is not worried that a grant of power of that sort would ever be used against them? That once granted, they’d never give it up?
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