But... he was an American citizen (born in New Mexico), he was in a country with which we are not at war, and there's obviously no evidence that American authorities attempted to apprehend him. We assassinated him, period.
Which I guess I'm all right with. Although we are not at war with al Qaeda, a terrorist organization, not a nation-state, they are at war with us, and so I don't have any problem with trying to disrupt their organization by decapitating their leadership. I think it sends the right message to the Middle East -- don't mess with the U.S.
On the other hand, I find it very interesting that the same people (liberals like Obama) who won't let us dunk a guy's head under water to get information without otherwise harming him, much less killing him; and who think that terrorists we've detained must have access to the full panoply of legal rights, including jury trials in federal court; nevertheless appear to think targeted extra-judicial assassinations around the world are just peachy.
Just sayin'.
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Oh, and by the way, the whole trope that poverty in the Middle East causes people to be drawn to radical Islam has always been hogwash, but it's particularly hogwash now. Al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents who were educated; as a child his family moved back to Yemen, where he father served as a professor at Sanaa University and as the agriculture minister. And al-Awlaki himself studied civil engineering at Colorado State University, education at San Diego State University, and did doctoral work at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., undoubtedly all on scholarships he obtained as a beneficiary of the schools' diversity programs. This wasn't a poor person angry because he didn't have basic needs. This was a middle-class or upper-middle-class, educated child of the elite in his country, who simply hated America and the West out of a virulent ideology.
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