Assignment task:
Under President Obama the executive branch continued to use executive actions to target suspected terrorists. On a September morning in 2011, a group of men had just finished eating breakfast in a remote desert in Yemen. One of them was Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American citizen who was, to counterterrorism officials, "a rock star propagandist for al-Qaeda's arm in Yemen who recruited followers over the Internet. He posted fiery sermons in idiomatic English and called on all who listened to attack the West."
Two Predator drones marked the men's trucks with lasers, and larger Reaper drones launched three Hellfire missiles. Al-Awlaki's vehicle "was totally torn up into pieces," according to reports from unidentified witnesses to the strike. The missiles "left nothing of the target but small human parts, which were later collected together and buried in one tomb."' Also killed in the strike was another American citizen named Samir Khan, "who had moved to Yemen from North Carolina and was the creative force behind Inspire, the militant group's English-language magazine."
For more than a year and a half following the strike, the administration of President Barack Obama remained officially silent about the targets. Under pressure from members of Congress, including some key Democrats, Attorney General Eric Holder formally acknowledged in May 2013 that the 2011 strike had targeted an American citizen: Al-Awlaki. According to the New York Times, "For what was apparently the first time since the Civil War, the United States government had carried out the deliberate killing of an American citizen as a wartime enemy and without a trial."' Al-Awlaki's name had been placed at the top of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) list of individuals to be captured if possible, or killed, if not. Many of the details about how individuals made this list were secret. One journalist reported that "officials said that every name added to the list underwent a careful, if secret, legal review. Because of Mr. Awlaki's [U.S.] citizenship, the decision to add him to the target list was approved by the National Security Council as well."
The administration's secret decision to target al-Awlaki made many uncomfortable, In a speech in 2012, Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, reassured his audience that individuals, including Americans, were only targeted for killing if capture was not a realistic option and only after a careful and thorough review. "Of course," he added, "how we identify an individual naturally involves intelligence sources and methods, which I will not discuss."
Two weeks after the killing of al-Awlaki, "his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman-also an American citizen, who had gone to the Yemeni desert in search of his father-was killed in a drone strike meant for someone else. That strike was similarly unacknowledged, although a senior administration official privately characterized it as a 'mistake.' "The target, a senior al-Qaeda official, was not in the area at the time of the strike. Abdulrahman, who "liked sports and music and kept his Facebook page regularly updated," was apparently an unintended casualty of the war on terror." In less than a month, the United States government had killed three American citizens with drone strikes on foreign soil, though the death of one, the younger al-Awlaki, was likely unintentional.
The Obama administration argued that the targeted killing of al-Awlaki was the only option to protect national security. Under the Authorization for Use of Military Force Act of 2001 (AUMF),'* passed in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, presidents have the authority to use military force against terrorists and their associates. According to officials, Al-Awlaki had become a clear and present danger to the United States. In 2010, an anonymous counterterrorism official in the Obama administration told the New York Times, "American citizenship doesn't give you carte blanche to wage war against your own country."The AUMF was passed in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and yet was still being used to conduct drone strikes more than ten years later. Some in Congress, including Representative Barbara Lee from California, worried that the AUMF gives presidents a blank check to wage war without congressional approval.
Should the President be allowed to use deadly force against citizens accused of terrorism?
- Choose a side of the argument
- Support your side with argument
- Provide analysis to enhance your argument