Uhm… that has literally zero to do with what I asked.
The US government gave orders to the US Air Force, which then flowed down the chain of command, to use a drone to fire a missile at Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen.
There was no judgement in a trial by his peers. He received no due process for the crimes he was accused of. He could have been tried in absentia with an appointed defense; there is a precedent to perform such actions. Yet that was not even entertained.
Instead it was done solely as a military operation by the executive branch. When the judicial branch should have been involved in such a case.
Was Al-Awlaki an anti-American piece of trash? Yes he was. But he was an American citizen and was not a member of the US military, where a person of his actions would tried by a form of military tribunal. He should have been tried for treason by civilian courts and if found guilty, then actions could have been taken to bring him into custody to serve a prison sentence or if necessary be given the death sentence and have it carried out in the method of which he was killed.
But it’s the lack of due process, the violations of his rights as an American citizen, that angered me. Not because of him personally; he was trash and the world is better without his presence. But because of the dangerous precedent that was set by those actions.
And he wasn’t the only one that was done to. And the executive branch grossly exceeded its authority, in my humble opinion.
It was the US government who made these decisions. Not a foreign power. So your examples have absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about.
We are not talking about your rights to protect you form the foreign government, we are talking about your protection from our government. Our government cannot violate your Constitutional Rights simply because we are outside the border. You cannot (legally, Constitutionally) be executed without due process by our government just because you are not in our country.
The US government assassinated Al Awlaki. He never got a chance to go to court. They unilaterally made a decision to kill an American citizen without so much as a grand jury indictment.
Do you have any idea what you can justify with your line of thinking? With your philosophy an American citizen doesn’t even have to be formally accused of a crime. They can be put on a kill list solely because of HUMINT or SIGINT reports that state he or she is a terrorist without an investigation.
What if the intelligence gets it wrong? What if after the fact they state they ■■■■■■ up? What then? It’s all ok because someone reported that they were a “terrorist” without even fully vetting the intel that put them on the list in the first place?
So should the Rosenbergs been put in front of firing squad without a trial? After all they committed treason just like Awlaki. Yet they got a full trial and were convicted and then the sentence was carried out by electrocution.
Well, that’s not true. Especially when the one deciding your American right to life is the American government. In that instance, you run up against treason, clear and present danger, etc.
But take heart: the only real reason they are concerned about this is because a democratic president ordered it. It’s totally in bad faith.
He discarded those rights, privileges, and protections when he took up arms against the US.
But again, this is all bad faith. The real issue is Obama. Had Trump done such a thing (and he may well have, but we can’t know), ya’ll would have been just fine with it.
Also, do you remember the right wing cacophony over the prisoner exchange for Bergdahl? I do. And ya’lls heads would have exploded had we sent a SEAL team to extract this guy for trial. And had that SEAL team taken casualties? Oh lordy.
