The Omnipotent Power To Assassinate Any Of Us: Obama's Decision To Assassinate The 16-year-old Son Of Anwar al-Awlaki
23 January 2013
By Jacob G. Hornberger
Suppose an American citizen who is openly critical of
governmental policy decides to take a trip overseas,
say to Yemen. Suppose that President Obama orders the
military and the CIA to assassinate him while he is
traveling within Yemen. Suppose the order is carried
out and that that American is, in fact, assassinated.
Most Americans would consider such an assassination to
be a grave wrong. They might not like the criticism
that the American was leveling against the federal
government, but they would ardently oppose the idea of
assassinating the man based simply on the fact that he
was criticizing the government.
Yet, in post-9/11 America nothing could be done to
rectify this wrong. The sad truth is that we now live
in a country in which the president has the omnipotent
power to assassinate any of us for any reason he
wants. We simply have to trust him with this supreme
power. We have to hope and pray that when he
assassinates Americans (or anyone else), he exercises
wisdom and prudence.
Yet, when the president's military and intelligence
assassination team does carry out an assassination,
there is no way to know why the president ordered the
hit. The reason for that is that president doesn't
have to provide any explanation whatsoever. Indeed, he
doesn't even have to acknowledge that his
assassination team actually did the assassinating. The
president can simply remain mum and go about his
business without ever mentioning the assassination.
As we have seen, neither Congress nor the federal
courts involve themselves in the president's
assassination of American citizens or anyone else. All
the president has to do is provide the magic phrases —
"national security" and "war on terrorism" — and the
other two branches of government quickly go silent,
roll over, and accept the assassination (as they have
done with the U.S. national-security state's
participation in the extra-judicial execution of
31-year-old American citizen Charles Horman during the
U.S.-supported military coup in Chile some 40 years
ago.)
We have, of course, witnessed this phenomenon with the
assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen
who was assassinated in Yemen. Did President Obama
order the hit? It is commonly believed that he did but
we don't really know for sure because the president,
as Georgetown University law professor David Cole
pointed out in an op-ed in last Sunday's Washington
Post, has chosen to remain silent about the matter.
And neither Congress, the courts, nor the press is
making him talk. Under our post-9/11 system of
government, President Obama is free to remain silent
for the rest of his life about whether he ordered the
assassination of an American citizen.
What did Awlaki do to justify his assassination? We
don't know because, again, the president isn't
talking. He's choosing to exercise his right to remain
silent. We know that Awlaki had been criticizing the
federal government, even going so far as to exhort
foreigners to forcibly resist the U.S. government's
violent interventionism in the Middle East and
Afghanistan.
Did he go further than that and actually participate
in acts of violence against U.S. forces? Was he doing
so at the time he was assassinated? There certainly
have been rumors to that effect. But again, we just
don't know because the president steadfastly chooses
to remain silent or provide any evidence that he
believes warranted Awlaki's assassination.
Why doesn't President Obama come clean and acknowledge
that he killed Awlaki and explain why he assassinated
him? My hunch is that the reason has much more to do
with the assassination of Awlaki's 16-year-old son,
Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, than it does with the
assassination of his father. Surely Obama realizes
that if he acknowledged the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki
and explained the reasons for assassinating him, as a
practical matter he would have to do the same with
respect to the assassination of Awlaki's teenage son.
Remaining silent on the Anwar al-Awlaki assassination
enables the president to continue remaining silent on
the assassination of Abdulrahman.
After all, the president's assassination of
16-year-old Abdulrahman seems to have all the
characteristics of an assassination of an innocent
person. At most, it seems that Abdulrahman was an
American citizen who might have shared his father's
criticisms of U.S. foreign policy who happened to be
traveling in Yemen in search of his father, when his
life was extinguished by Obama's assassination team.
That's essentially the scenario I outlined at the
inception of this article regarding the president's
omnipotent power to assassinate any American he wants
for whatever reason he desires and never have to
account for it.
In the movie The Godfather, Vito Corleone's mother
pleads with the murderer of her husband to spare the
life of her young son. The man refuses the request,
explaining to the mother that if he were to let her
son live, the boy might grow up and seek revenge.
Thus, the man explained, it was necessary to kill the
boy.
Was that the reason for Obama's decision to
assassinate the 16-year-old son of Anwar al-Awlaki
after Obama had assassinated his father? It's
impossible to know because Obama isn't talking, and
under our post-9/11 system of government he doesn't
have to.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The
Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised
in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics
from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree
from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney
for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct
professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught
law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the
practice of law to become director of programs at the
Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced
freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all
across the country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto
and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a
regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show
Freedom Watch. View these interviews at
LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.
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