Let's be clear about this: the nation that arrests suspects without first going before a judge to make its case is no respecter of human rights. Just the opposite. Its violation of international law is precisely what it accuses those it arrests of doing. Al-Awlaki's slaying by the U.S. "is a real body blow against the United States Constitution by the Obama administration---the murder and assassination of a U.S. citizen in gross violation of the Fifth Amendment," says Francis Boyle, the distinguished authority on international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign. This states: "No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."
Instead, Boyle says, this was a "Mafia-style 'hit'" on a U.S. citizen authorized by President Obama, a graduate of Harvard Law School and former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago whose action "proves how degraded and bankrupt legal education at such elite institutions has become." Harvard's moral bankruptcy, though, is the least of it.
The killing of al-Awlaki is no cause for rejoicing by the American people. Not only has President Obama once again authorized a murder but by denying al-Awlaki any chance of a fair trial Obama cheats the American people of their right to hear what the defendant has to say. One of the great blessings of trial by jury enshrined in centuries of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence is its educational aspect. There is not only sworn testimony presented by the involved parties but the opportunity to examine and cross-examine witnesses and to get at the motives for their conduct and to determine the truth of their positions. There is the opportunity to hear opening and closing arguments by both the defendant and the prosecution and to evaluate them calmly and weigh them one against the other. In the present situation, the prosecution is trying al-Awlaki, like bin Laden before him, in the compliant media of the American Warfare State.
Boyle charges that as the CIA originally established Al Qaeda to fight in Afghanistan, "they are aware of all the dirty work we have been involved in around the world since about 1980 that we have had them doing, most recently in Libya. Hence, they all get Kangaroo Courts on Gitmo that are under the complete control of the Pentagon to silence and control whatever they have to say as well as their lawyers." In short, bin Laden and al-Awlaki knew too much.
Finally, just as President Bush's attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq created a precedent for waging deceitful and illegal "preventive wars," so, too, has President Obama's latest assassination established a precedent for the murder of Americans by the White House without jury trial, opening the door to the killing, say, of any president's political opponents and dissenters. Where Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo failed miserably, Presidents Bush and Obama have brilliantly succeeded in turning America into a totalitarian state that can execute on a president's whim. With luck, other peoples and nations will halt the spread of this American empire using creative non-violence rather than the use of force. The way to fight fire is with water.
e, instead of shia... either way, I dont think any of the C-8's would know the difference or significance anyways. I could have put Gumby and Pokey and they would have thought they were the same iraqis who put him on trial.
