Congrats to the CIA and the President for snuffing this cat.  8)

Ma'asalama Al-Walkie-Talkie!

http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/07/pfiade.gif

According to U.S. sources, the strike was carried out by Joint Special Operations Command, under the direction of the CIA. US President Barack Obama said: "The death of Awlaki is a major blow to Al Qaeda's most active operational affiliate. He took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans ... and he repeatedly called on individuals in the United States and around the globe to kill innocent men, women and children to advance a murderous agenda." He said the strike is "further proof that Al Qaeda and its affiliates will find no safe haven anywhere in the world"

The problem with this is that Anwar Al-Awlaki WAS a US citizen. He was executed by special orders from the pres without due process of the law. He was not indited on any charges.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-Y6c9ejuvc


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTHZFrBfw40



Cat

The problem with this is that Anwar Al-Awlaki WAS a US citizen. He was executed by special orders from the pres without due process of the law. He was not indited on any charges.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-Y6c9ejuvc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTHZFrBfw40

Cat


Didn't need to be indicted.  He was a member of a foreign, armed force that was conducting combat operations against the U.S. of A. from outside our borders, and was not bashful about bragging of his exploits.

While I am not a huge O'bama fan, I give him full props for doing what Clinton 1 and Bush 2 talked about... going after terrorists anywhere we find them. Dude doesn't screw around.

Both Ron Paul and Noam Chomsky spoke out against Obama whacking Al-Awlaki. 

Chomsky said Bush kidnapped people and tortured them, whereas Obama just kills them.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/04/fal.gif

Chomsky said Bush kidnapped people and tortured them, whereas Obama just kills them.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/04/fal.gif


On this point I agree with O'bama and disagree with Bush.

From the outset I saw Guantanamo as a losing proposition, as there was no exit strategy.  Much like Clinton's occasional bomb-lobbing into Iraq in the 1990's, Guantanamo simply became a festering sore and a source of negative PR.

The problem with this is that Anwar Al-Awlaki WAS a US citizen. He was executed by special orders from the pres without due process of the law. He was not indited on any charges.
Why should it matter whether he was a US citizen or not?  A life is a life - it shouldn't matter whether it's a US one.

What worries me is the amount of trust the world has to put in US intelligence that a) the guy they want is guilty of what they say he is, and b) that they got the right guy.

In this case, a) does seem beyond dispute: if you've got someone who openly boasts about what he's been planning.. also I have a special disdain for anyone who thinks that suicide bombing is a good idea for someone else, but not for them.  So here's hoping that b) is right, too.

Why should it matter whether he was a US citizen or not?  A life is a life - it shouldn't matter whether it's a US one.

What worries me is the amount of trust the world has to put in US intelligence that a) the guy they want is guilty of what they say he is, and b) that they got the right guy.

In this case, a) does seem beyond dispute: if you've got someone who openly boasts about what he's been planning.. also I have a special disdain for anyone who thinks that suicide bombing is a good idea for someone else, but not for them.  So here's hoping that b) is right, too.


I think what Cat was saying is that the guy's right s under our constitution were violated, and if his can be, so can everyone elses

I think what Cat was saying is that the guy's right s under our constitution were violated, and if his can be, so can everyone elses

Same point applies, though: why should it matter whether he was an American or not?

Does the US constitution say "it's OK to kill foreigners without due process, but not US citizens"?

Same point applies, though: why should it matter whether he was an American or not?

Does the US constitution say "it's OK to kill foreigners without due process, but not US citizens"?



Point taken. You are right that EVERYONE should be given due process under the law.

Can you say "Guantanamo"?



Cat

Same point applies, though: why should it matter whether he was an American or not?

Does the US constitution say "it's OK to kill foreigners without due process, but not US citizens"?


I'm afraid with that position we never would have entered into any offensive military operations during WW1 or WW2.  There is little room for "due process" during the conduct of war.  Once the enemy declares himself, he more or less voids his right to "due process".

I'm afraid with that position we never would have entered into any offensive military operations during WW1 or WW2.  There is little room for "due process" during the conduct of war.  Once the enemy declares himself, he more or less voids his right to "due process".


Therefore, a perpetual state of war negates due process for any and all people the government calls "enemy."
::)

Therefore, a perpetual state of war negates due process for any and all people the government calls "enemy."
::)


No, in this case the target of that Hellfire Missile had openly admitted to launching attacks against the United States and openly declared himself an enemy.

This isn't some guy who was on Nixon's sh*t list.  He declared himself as a violent enemy of the US of A.

O'bama did it right, and it does not pain me to say that.

Therefore, a perpetual state of war negates due process for any and all people the government calls "enemy." ::)


Nope.  Pains me to admit it, but I'm with LyricBoy on this one.  Even Bush II didn't get to go that far.

The AUMF applies specifically for anyone who rolls with the people who rolled us on 9/11.  Google it from somewhere secure - damned if I'm gonna google it tonight :)  But only 9/11 counts.  Subsequent attacks of terrorism don't count.  Asshats declaring themselves as "enemies" don't count.  To be open for targeting (and I'm squeamish about how fine a line it is and painfully aware of just how much like a lawyer I sound when I say this), you pretty much have to materially support not just "bad guys", but the specific bad guys who got lucky ten years ago.  Which is precisely what this guy did.  Assuming those accounts aren't complete fabrications, the target's citizenship was irrelevant, and the issue of whether or not he'd filed the paperwork associated with renouncing US citizenship - is even less relevant to whether or not he was a legitimate military target.

I'm afraid with that position we never would have entered into any offensive military operations during WW1 or WW2.  There is little room for "due process" during the conduct of war.  Once the enemy declares himself, he more or less voids his right to "due process".

er.. no: my question wasn't so much the "should we ever kill anybody" as asking why the distinction is drawn between US citizens and others.  I realize that there is a certain realpolitik here: think about coverage of US forces personnel (/US civilians, even) being killed in Afghanistan/Iraq, and compare it to coverage of deaths of locals, I'm sure you might possibly discern a bit of a difference.

The mililtary thinks it's inevitable for a certain level of civilian casualties by accident or collateral damage, and this appears to be acceptable to the general public & politicians, but they have a completely different view if casualties are American.  I just find that attitude distasteful.  An innocent person dies, it shouldn't matter what their nationality is; however, even though I'm against the death penalty, I find it hard to have any sympathy for someone such as Anwar Al-Awlaki - it was his choice to set himself up as a target the way he did, and killing him will likely have saved lives.  I just hope that those who provided the intelligence were absolutely positive they got the right guy.

Point taken. You are right that EVERYONE should be given due process under the law.

Can you say "Guantanamo"?



Cat

Say it?  I can even sing it.

Tried to find Marcus Brigstocke's excellent rant about Guantanamo.. will post later if I do.

The mililtary thinks it's inevitable for a certain level of civilian casualties by accident or collateral damage, and this appears to be acceptable to the general public & politicians, but they have a completely different view if casualties are American.  I just find that attitude distasteful.  An innocent person dies, it shouldn't matter what their nationality is;


I gotta stop you there.

I don't believe that's the view of the US military, that's the view of the US military's civilian leadership.  It's the view of the US civilian leadership because by and large it's the view of the US voting population.

95 years ago, nations accepted the deaths of millions of soldiers to gain (and lose, and retake, ad infinitum) a few square miles of territory.  Those troops went over the wall, even knowing that it was pointless.  

66 years ago, we decided that 100-200K dead enemy civilians beat 1-2M dead American warfighters and 5-10 dead Japanese civilians.  We're still issing Purple Heart medals from stock originally minted for an invasion that never happened.  

We'll skip Vietnam (even though we shouldn't - it's the first war in which the parents of the US soldiers saw just how hard war sucked, and voted accordingly) and fast-forward to today: the Baby Boomers and their progeny now constitute a voting pool of tens of millions of helicopter parents.  

To a helicopter parent, it doesn't matter if the war itself is lost, so long as Johnny Comes Marching Home.  To a helicopter parent, it also doesn't matter if a billion "enemy" civilians die, because "If It Saves Just One Life Who Might Be My Child's Life", it's worth it.  

And the votes of the helicopter parents outnumber the votes of the troops by an overwhelming margin.  Don't blame General Foo or Senator Bar.  Blame the voters who demanded that their politicians send a volunteer army to win a war, but who simultaneously demanded that everyone come home.

Here's your freaky self-analysis exercise for the night:  Instead of Operation Downfall (the invasion of Japan without the nuking of Hiroshima/Nagasaki), pretend it's September 12, 2001.  You are God Emperor Of America, and your first order of business is Operation Post-911.  As Emperor, re-election doesn't enter into it, nor do the laws of war.  Just your personal ethical calculus.  Suppose there's a million bad guys out there.  How many US troops' lives would you trade for a 50-100 year guarantee of no mass-casualty events?  How many foreign civilian lives would you be willing to trade?  Do the kill ratios matter more?  Or do the absolute numbers matter?  Maybe a bit of both?  Or maybe - compared against 30,000 dead in car accidents per year - you just chalk up 3000 of your own civilians every decade or so as the cost of doing business and ignore it?

Now suppose you're a politician, whose objective is to get re-elected.  Those numbers will change ("just ignore it" is no longer an option) -- how and why?

Now suppose you're a general, whose personal objective is to win, but only insofar as it doesn't compromise orders given to you by the the civilian leadership and insofar as it doesn't compromise the rules - insofar as you interpret them - of war.  For each of the numbers your hypothetical "politician" scenario defined as "acceptable", what rules of engagement do you (as a General) order your troops to follow?  Are there orders that the civilian leadership give you that would require you to resign your commision?

If you feel conflicted as you ponder those questions, welcome to the club.  Nobody said it was easy.

I gotta stop you there.

I don't believe that's the view of the US military, that's the view of the US military's civilian leadership.  It's the view of the US civilian leadership because by and large it's the view of the US voting population.
I was basing that comment on an interview given by I think it was Gen. Petraeus, that while efforts are made to avoid civilian casualties, accidents are inevitable and we all need to be prepared for it rather than surprised/shocked/horrified.

Whichever way the motivation goes - whether it's inspired by the legions of helicopter mums influencing politicians who give the military their orders, or a military command with the attitude backed up by politicians and the voting public - it's still incredibly distasteful to me that it is considered a suitable response to 3,000 innocent people being killed to be killing many, many times more than that in the name of revenge/security when the overwhelming majority of the people killed had nothing to do with the original attacks and were no threat to security.

Or maybe - compared against 30,000 dead in car accidents per year - you just chalk up 3000 of your own civilians every decade or so as the cost of doing business and ignore it?
Hypothetically speaking, what a different world we would have today if the reaction to the Sep11 attacks had been "Meh - ten times that many people get killed on the roads each year, we're not gonna let that worry us?"

er.. no: my question wasn't so much the "should we ever kill anybody" as asking why the distinction is drawn between US citizens and others.  I realize that there is a certain realpolitik here: think about coverage of US forces personnel (/US civilians, even) being killed in Afghanistan/Iraq, and compare it to coverage of deaths of locals, I'm sure you might possibly discern a bit of a difference.


Oh, OK.  Yeah I kinda share your position.  I really don't care if Al-Awalaki or that other dude, Adam Nabhan (the guy in Afghanistan, from California) are US Citizens or not.  They have openly pledged their allegiance to a movement that commits violence upon Americans and provided material support to them.  So they are fair game for a drone visit wherever we happen to find them.

I do believe in avoiding civilian casualties.  But when the "civilians" are actively concealing and supporting the "participants", then they cease to be civilians and are simply logistics soldiers and, again, fair game.

It would be a disaster for Obama politically if he went about trying to get All-Whacky the right way and in before they could arrest him the crackpot bombed an embassy or something.
::)

Hypothetically speaking, what a different world we would have today if the reaction to the Sep11 attacks had been "Meh - ten times that many people get killed on the roads each year, we're not gonna let that worry us?"


I wouldn't have gone full-meh.  I'd draw the line at letting planes be used as weapons, and we accompished that the day we secured the cockpit doors.  I'd have secured the cockpit doors and left it at that.  After a decade of shoegazing and ball-fondling, TSA hasn't stopped one terrist: both Shoebomber and Crotchbomber were stopped by alert passengers and their own ineptness.  Even if the bad guys had been successful, we've always been willing to lose a plane or two per decade to bombers. 

And the opposition would have campaigned on "We're gonna be tough on terra", and my hypothetical administration would not have been re-elected.

But the United States would probably be a freer country than it is today.  Whether the opposition, upon finding itself in power, would have simply made a few token gestures and ignored its campaign promise, or whether it would have contrasted itself with the previous administration by going absolutely full-retard-draconian on the civilian population is a flip of the coin.  The safest bet is they'd have made a few loud noises and accepted the status quo.  (You know, just like they did when they were elected on "hope and change"...)

And when the big terrist attack of 2021 occurred, even the people who voted for me in 2000 would be among those whining about "why didn't we glass 'em and invade a few more of those countries 20 years ago when there was popular will, even if there was no political stomach for it!", so that probably makes it even.

The point is moot: the purpose of government is to stay in power, and the purpose of any politician is to make sure his gang stays in charge of that government.  Our system of politics permitted no response to 9/11 significantly different from than the one that happened.

We'll skip Vietnam (even though we shouldn't - it's the first war in which the parents of the US soldiers saw just how hard war sucked, and voted accordingly) and fast-forward to today: the Baby Boomers and their progeny now constitute a voting pool of tens of millions of helicopter parents.  



I like that term, "helicopter parents."  The problem was my dad carried napalm!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/15/tongue4.gif

I wouldn't have gone full-meh.  I'd draw the line at letting planes be used as weapons, and we accompished that the day we secured the cockpit doors.  I'd have secured the cockpit doors and left it at that.  After a decade of shoegazing and ball-fondling, TSA hasn't stopped one terrist: both Shoebomber and Crotchbomber were stopped by alert passengers and their own ineptness.  Even if the bad guys had been successful, we've always been willing to lose a plane or two per decade to bombers.
+1


And the opposition would have campaigned on "We're gonna be tough on terra", and my hypothetical administration would not have been re-elected.

But the United States would probably be a freer country than it is today.  Whether the opposition, upon finding itself in power, would have simply made a few token gestures and ignored its campaign promise, or whether it would have contrasted itself with the previous administration by going absolutely full-retard-draconian on the civilian population is a flip of the coin.  The safest bet is they'd have made a few loud noises and accepted the status quo.  (You know, just like they did when they were elected on "hope and change"...)

And when the big terrist attack of 2021 occurred, even the people who voted for me in 2000 would be among those whining about "why didn't we glass 'em and invade a few more of those countries 20 years ago when there was popular will, even if there was no political stomach for it!", so that probably makes it even.

The point is moot: the purpose of government is to stay in power, and the purpose of any politician is to make sure his gang stays in charge of that government.  Our system of politics permitted no response to 9/11 significantly different from than the one that happened.

It's not often I come across someone every bit as cynical as me :)

But what might be termed "political Darwinism" if it existed as a theory would conclude that the politicians who get into power are the ones who are most successful at manipulating the public into voting them into power: it has been very noticeable over the last few decades that competence and figuring out the consequences of ones actions in advance are not part of the criteria the public uses to make its decisions.

America loves to have this international tough guy image, yet when when something like 9/11 happens seems to think acts of violence against others is what being "tough" means.  Sometimes being tough means laughing back at the guy who hit you and saying "is that all you got?" - hysterical demands for revenge against nobody in particular should be treated exactly as the emotional and counterproductive responses they are.

+1 It's not often I come across someone every bit as cynical as me :)


It takes work, but it's a living :)


But what might be termed "political Darwinism" if it existed as a theory would conclude that the politicians who get into power are the ones who are most successful at manipulating the public into voting them into power: it has been very noticeable over the last few decades that competence and figuring out the consequences of ones actions in advance are not part of the criteria the public uses to make its decisions.


That's the hypothesis of many, including Dr. Martha Stout, author of The Sociopath Next Door, and Dr. Robert Hare, who practically wrote the book on the subject. 


America loves to have this international tough guy image, yet when when something like 9/11 happens seems to think acts of violence against others is what being "tough" means.  Sometimes being tough means laughing back at the guy who hit you and saying "is that all you got?" - hysterical demands for revenge against nobody in particular should be treated exactly as the emotional and counterproductive responses they are.


Well, there's always the other way of standing up to a bully... the problem with that is that half measures don't count.  Even the Soviets in the 80s (and the Russians in Chechnya) weren't brutal enough to knock the "bully" back on his ass. 

A billion dead might do the trick, but the other kids all ganged up and beat the tar out of Hitler and Hirohito for less than a tenth of that.  (And the Brits and the Yanks are still taking guff for that one last punch - Dresden and Nagasaki - we swung just before our respective bullies said 'uncle'.  They hadn't actually said 'uncle' yet, so it was a fair punch!)

Schoolyard tactics don't scale to the planetary level.

They say the unexamined life is not worth living but those living the unexamined life don't know it's not worth living.

How is that for a tautology?
:-\\

Well, there's always the other way of standing up to a bully... the problem with that is that half measures don't count.  Even the Soviets in the 80s (and the Russians in Chechnya) weren't brutal enough to knock the "bully" back on his ass. 

That's if you look at a tiny number of Islamist terrorists taking on the US as "bullying" - I see it more as the scrawny little kid going up to the biggest quarterback in the school and trying to punch him in the stomach.  However the US may view it, the terrorists see themselves as trying to do something about being the victims of bullying.


Schoolyard tactics don't scale to the planetary level.

If only they did.. but then, you'd have Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan etc. all crowding round going "Fight! Fight!".
And tying Ahmadinejad's shoelaces together might just work...


They say the unexamined life is not worth living but those living the unexamined life don't know it's not worth living.

How is that for a tautology?
:-\\

That's remarkably similar to catch-22..

Which "they" is that, though?

That's if you look at a tiny number of Islamist terrorists taking on the US as "bullying" - I see it more as the scrawny little kid going up to the biggest quarterback in the school and trying to punch him in the stomach.  However the US may view it, the terrorists see themselves as trying to do something about being the victims of bullying.
If only they did.. but then, you'd have Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan etc. all crowding round going "Fight! Fight!".
And tying Ahmadinejad's shoelaces together might just work...
That's remarkably similar to catch-22..

Which "they" is that, though?


Apology -- by "they" I mean "them."
:-\\