I find myself torn...

As US citizens, we are supposed to be guaranteed a trial by a jury of our peers.  The gov't is supposed to arrest us, if at all possible.  It is not supposed to assassinate us.  Yet, the current administration has used drones to kill US citizens abroad. They've assassinated them as they were driving down the road, blowing them to smithereens...

Yes, it is true that SOME of those assassinated were traitors and had committed crimes against the state. They were bad people.  However, they were still citizens and, when they were killed, they were not shooting at anyone...  they posed NO IMMEDIATE THREAT.

I find myself torn...  And, in this case, as bad as SOME of these people were, I have to agree with the ACLU in that their civil rights, as guaranteed by the Constitution with regard to due process, were trampled by the current administration.   But, what else is new.  This administration has trampled upon our freedoms and rights since its first day in office, but this is sanctioned murder under the guise of patriotism...  of a fight against "terrorists".  And now it has been sanctioned, skeptically, by a Federal judge, Colleen McMahon (US District Judge, Southern District of New York).

In her 75-page ruling issued on Wednesday, January 2, one can hear her skepticism and the frustration in her written words, which declares the US Justice Department does not have a legal obligation to explain the rationale behind killing Americans with targeted drone strikes.  Judge McMahon wrote in her finding that the Obama administration was in the right by rejecting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and The New York Times for materials pertaining to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to execute, to assassinate, to murder three US citizens abroad in late 2011.

"I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret," she wrote. 

Having read the decision (linked above), there is NOTHING in it that prevents the killing of US Citizens on US soil... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!  Make no mistake, this is an extremely dangerous precedent.

 “The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me,” Judge McMahon wrote, adding that she was operating in a legal environment that amounted to “a veritable Catch-22.”

Earlier, I stated that only "SOME" of the people killed in drone strikes were bad.  I stand by that statement as also killed in drone strikes were innocent bystanders and the son of al-Awlaki. It's unknown whether Awlaki's son, who was born in Colorado, was a terrorist or not.  He had no choice in his parentage and was executed strictly because of his parentage, as was his teenage friend who was visiting him. This was a 16 yr old kid, a kid who hadn't seen his father in 2 years...  A kid who snuck out of the house to try and find his father...  his dad.  I think Tom Junod, Esquire Magazine, covers the story of the kid the best and I find the quote below poignant.

"He was a boy who hadn't seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who snuck out of his family's home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him. He was a boy who was still searching for his father when his father was killed, and who, on the night he himself was killed, was saying goodbye to the second cousin with whom he'd lived while on his search, and the friends he'd made. He was a boy among boys, then; a boy among boys eating dinner by an open fire along the side of a road when an American drone came out of the sky and fired the missiles that killed them all."

What really, really bothers me about all this is that it appears we no longer live in the United States, a nation founded on personal freedom and the right to LIFE, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness.  Instead, we have become a nation where the President of the United States has the last word in deciding who lives and who dies.  A President who has been quoted as saying that the decision to put Anwar al-Awlaki on the kill list — and then to kill him — was "an easy one".  Taking the life of another should NEVER be an "easy" decision.

Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, 1996-2012

Al-Awlaki's son, Abdulrahman, was a natural born United States citizen. He was NEVER on the "kill list".  He was NOT a member of Al-Qaeda.  He did NOT renounce his citizenship.  He was a 16 year old MINOR, a child by ALL LEGAL definitions.  His crime?  NONE except for being born of a father gone bad. So, why was the boy killed 2 weeks after his father?  That's right, he was NOT killed in the same drone strike which killed his father.  He was killed 2 weeks later.  

Where is the outrage?  

One has to wonder, especially after the Obama administration has threatened a journalist, Bob Woodward, who will be the next United States citizen to be targeted for assassination?  Will it be Bob Woodward because of his temerity to state that sequestration was Obama's idea and that Obama has "moved the goalposts"?  Or, will it be another United States citizen who has the temerity to defy Obama's efforts at gun grabbing?  Who refuses to pay increased taxes?  Who speaks out against this evil and abusive tyrant posing as a President?

Who will be next???