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Awlaki is dead - what now?
October 3rd, 2011, Kasas City - talking about triple edged swords |
Anwar al Awlaki is dead - that should give all Americans some reason to cheer. Say it clearly, the man called for violence against Americans, he recruited extremists in America and he is losely linked to the Ft Hood shooting, the underwear bomber and also to the attempt to blow up a car bomb on Times Square. Lets say it clearly, Awlaki was not a nice man and the world is definitively better off without him.
However, there is also another side to the story. It's the way, how it happened. An US President wrote simply a death warrant. Now, such death lists are not unknown from the past. But Awlaki was a born US citizen. So, the latest historical first in the achievement list of President Obama is to be the first President, who ever signed a death warrant, unchecked by courts, against an US citizen.
Technically, President Obama broke the law. There was once a revolution because the American colonies had such an autocratic ruler named King George, who was known to do such things, bending the law in all cases, he deemed the law inconveninet for the situation. Obama did the same. The intent may was good, the way to do it, proves a dangerous slope.
The problem is not, that we have to mourn Awalki as a poor victim of murder. The guy had a killer nature on his own, only he preferred letting the pawns do the dirty work and get shot or arrested. The problem is on an entirely different level: We disgust people like Awlaki, who live and act beyond the law with the argument, their cause is beyond the law. But with writing this death warrant, Obama has put himself and the cause of the war against terror beyond the law in exactly the same way. Bush's Guantanmo Bay wasn't nice. This policy included kidnapping, holding prisoners without trial and even torture. Once, before he was President, Obama loudly critisized all of that and, even a conservative like me has to admit to it, rightfully so. But now, Obama went even a step further. Killing Obama was a tactically correct decision, but the way it was done pulls the USA down on the same level as the people, we have to fight. | The USA were once founded as a nation based on laws, which were supposed for all US citizens the same.
 Anwar al Awlaki and Barrack Hussein Obama
The problem is not, that Awalaki is dead. The problem is, we went down on the level of ordinary terrorists, and the more, we cheer about this victory, the more we look like those Palestinians dancing in the streets and feeding each other with sweetcakes in celebration of the 9/11 attacks. And once more the old word of the man fighting his enemy so long and so hard that he becomes the enemy, proves true.
But even that, scary enough, is only the peak of the iceberg. President Obama wrote a death warrant, unchecked by any other constitutional body. And this death warrant was executed without objections and without questions. This is the ultimate use of power against an individual. If we don't stop it here, where will we stop it? Do you remember Nixon? What if he would have had the power simply to write two death warrants against those two nosey Washington Post reporters? Case closed, no questions allowed, Watergate did never happen.
Even if President Obama never does it again, who can guarantee, the next or the overnext President won't? What, if President XY writes death warrants against the candidates of the opposition in 2052? He can, because we have now a precedence case.
There will be those claiming, this is all about Obama-bashing. Think again! If one President can get the power to write death warrants based on soft facts, without control, the next and the overnext can do. Any freedom, you give up voluntary, it will never return. Any protection by law an individual loses, he will never get back. | Because that's the first law of unmitigated power.
However, there is another side to it all. Men like Anwar al Awlaki will never act in the open. They will suggest, manipulate, whisper in the ears of the gullible. You will never catch them openly with the weapon in the hand. Men like Anwar al Awlaki, Osama bin Laden or Ayman al Zawahiri are cowards, they act from hiding, surrounded by guards, while they manipulate their pawns into blowing themselves up, getting shot and last but not least, become killers.
The truth is, our current laws are insufficient to deal with that kind of men. But that doesn't mean, one man can just write death warrants, because in the eyes of the law, even the President is just one man and personally, I don't want to give this kind of power to a single man, who has already proven, he is obsessed by power, because that's the reason, he came into the job in the first place.
So, there are two ways to deal with that kind of trouble properly. Either, the government has to put the defendant to a trial in absence and prove, there is enough evidence justifying a death sentence. This would be possible with current law, but we know how such things worked out for Holder lately. Or, we need a gremium which includes President, a group of elected lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and even maybe a judge to make decisions like that. Involve all three constitutional bodies. Just writing death warrants isn't the way.
Now, as far as things really still concern President Obama, he has done it once. He has done it in a situation, where there were only theoretical rules. Anwar al Awlaki was responsible for the dead and injured at Ft. Hood and he was responsible for the attempts to kill even more people un the attempted Underwear bombing and the attempted Times Square bombing. So, this case to a degree is forgivable if Obama now goes and tries to find a lawfull solution for future problems of that kind. If he doesn't, of course, he loses that little of credibility, left to him anyway.-Peter Brendt- |
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