Daily Paul is abuzz with the “Assassination of an American citizen.” Though I have not read these, I assume the argument goes that we can’t simply kill suspected terrorists, but must give them a fair trial.
My question is how this is different from police shooting at a murder suspect when he’s holding hostages. We already have cases where there is no trial? Is killing terrorists that different?
You have an American citizen abroad who is protesting the actions of the government, and you send a flying robot in to kill him. I think that is the problem here. If someone takes a hostage, they have initiated violence and threatened more violence. Where is the threat?
I have not studied the case in depth, but a cursory survey of recent news articles suggests that Anwar al-Alaki was not even charged with a crime. I suppose this alone merits further investigation.
Your murder suspect would not be a suspected hostage taker.
He wasn’t suspected of terrorism, he was suspected of giving anti-American speeches. You should talk less, it will lessen the amount of tripe coming out of your mouth. I suggest you read the arguments people make not just “assume” how they go.
Awlaki was a detestable person we believe helped recruit and inspire others to kill Americans through terrorist acts.
There’s a significant a priori difference between serving an arrest warrant with the expectation that the suspect won’t come quietly, and serving an assassination order.
I’m not saying that the police have much respect for this notional difference in practice, but that wasn’t really your question…
Of course the United States government has effectively assassinated a significant number of American citizens before, but not openly and as such.
Even in the case of a murder suspect holding hostages, I think it’s better to (try to) subdue him rather than kill him outright. Holding hostages per se does not mean any or all of the hostages’ lives are in (immediate) danger.
In the case of Al-Awlaki, where is the evidence that he did more than agitate against the American people and (more importantly to TPTB) the US government? Oh, the government won’t release the evidence because of “national security” concerns? How convenient.
In the meantime, I think your analogy is flawed. A more accurate one would be killing someone who you think may want to murder someone and could be holding hostages at some point in the future.
Also, a hostage situation is very brief, you can’t try and convict someone is a few hours. Awlaki has been on a kill list for months, his father and the ACLU sued the government to stop it, but they were ignored.
I think the situation may have been a lot better had the government provided any proof of his guilt. But as you can see here, at least this guy doesn’t:
I initially thought it was a parody. Looking it up, it’s real.
Why is anyone expecting the government to act morally? Better yet, why do some expect them to follow their own laws? If a law opposes the desired action of the state, the state reserves the option to either change the law or ignore it all together.
Because people believe in “the rule of law” - the notion that everyone is equally accountable under the law. Hans-Hermann Hoppe gives the best dismantling of this notion vis-a-vis government that I’ve read so far.
“through terrorist acts.”
We’re saying the media is lying about that part. or at minimum, implying he committed violent acts against people, which people on this forum are saying, no he didn’t. Because if he did, they would have evidence of such acts, and they do not. So, the media is at most, lying, at minimum being extremely deceptive.
He is only a citizen in so far as the state has a method of determining who is under it’s jurisdiction. He had papers within that system, but that doesn’t really mean anything in any absolute sense.
He also had papers for Yemeni citizenship, and they do not like him either.
I’m sure there is a difference between complaining about the state’s actions, and being a statist Islamist like this guy. What is the methodology behind complaining about the state? I would ask the same for communists who don’t like the state and call the police ‘fascists’, but yet support any and all uses of force for their own pet causes.
In this case it is merely two types of statism in dialectical threat-down. With the loser being whoever was weaker.
I think we have to distinguish between people who are defending the rights of people. Versus those who are intellectual cowards in the face of a dark ages anti-rational movement like that in radical Islam. While you consider him a fellow ‘citizen’, he considers all of you a kufar who cannot be trusted and must be killed for the establishment of a religious world order. And this is an ideology which is not national, but international.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe gives the best dismantling of this notion vis-a-vis government that I’ve read so far.
Link please?
We’re saying the media is lying about that part. or at minimum, implying he committed violent acts against people, which people on this forum are saying, no he didn’t.
The article I quoted was RP himself.
I’m not sure which one he’s talking about, but Hasnas’ is pretty popular:
EDIT
Total typo. I always hear “Hasnas” in my head but the finger didn’t push the button.
*Hasnas
Extended warning: all of them are very big 
I’ll add those to my list after the 1955 history of Standard Oil.
Edit: re-read this post and am wondering what I’m doing with my life.