by ROBIN KOERNER
themoderatevoice.com
Oct 14th, 2011
*** This is the first article I’ve ever submitted to the Huffington Post that they have refused to publish. I await their response as to why. Meanwhile, I am delighted to be able to post it here. ***
Most comments of those who disagree that the manner of killing of
Al-Awlaki should not be acceptable to Americans assume two things:
first, that the killing was necessary to keep us safe, and second, that
the executive branch of government can be trusted to make that
assessment without legal constraint.
The issue is not the killing of an American person per se. I
recognize the legitimacy of killing as punishment for capital crime
after presentation of evidence, due process and a jury trial. I
recognize the legitimacy of killing in self-defense, which is a killing
by someone likely to be harmed by an aggressor. I recognize the
legitimacy of killing in the course of securing a military objective in a
just conflict that is being waged in self-defense. Moreover, I do not
believe in a moral duty to respond “proportionately” to an intrusion or
attack, and I do believe in a military than can deliver crushing force
in defense of the nation.
That said, let’s look at the assumptions on which the argument of those who support the killing of Al-Awlaki rest.
The first is that it was necessary to keep us safe.
It was necessary only if Al-Awlaki was in the process of
committing a violent crime against the USA with a “detectable”
probability of harming American civilians. Was he? We only have the word
of the executive branch. Is that word enough? If you find the
President trustworthy, then it is enough for you. If you do not, then it
is not. But the institutions of a democratic republic are designed to
protect us from abuse by leaders we do not trust.
In my last article,
I drew a comparison between Bush’s invasion of Iraq and the killing on
Al-Awlaki. The point was that in both cases, all we had to go on
regarding the imminent threat posed by the target was the word of a
president, which turned out to be wrong. This is why I stated that the
extra-judicial killing of Awlaki can be justified only if Obama
goes to pains to present evidence of the imminent threat posed by
Al-Awlaki — and that evidence must be orders of magnitude stronger than
that used to go to war in Iraq, which was wrong and led to the deaths of
100,000s of innocent people.
We should demand some evidence because 1) the US has something of a
history of being wrong on who to support and who to kill in so-called
self-defense 2) many non-American commentators, including in Yemen, seem
very unconvinced by the fact that Al-Awlaki was operationally
significant in Al-Qaeda and 3) the US government has a vested interest
in keeping the American nation believing that we are under immediate
threat from people in the Middle East
— as a justification for continued projection of power around the
world. If you like Obama and can’t imagine that the current
administration could have such a murky motivation, just imagine that
Bush had ordered the killing.(CONTINUE READING)