Why Isn't The Murder Of an American Boy An impeachable Offense?
04 February 2013
By Jacob G. Hornberger
Article 2, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution reads
as follows: The President, Vice President and all
civil officers of the United States, shall be removed
from office on impeachment for, and conviction of,
treason, bribery, or other high crimes and
misdemeanors."
In 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached for
perjury and obstruction of justice for matters arising
out of the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.
If perjury and obstruction of justice constitute high
crimes or misdemeanors, then doesn't it seem rather
obvious that the murder of an American citizen by the
president would also constitute a high crime or
misdemeanor, especially if the citizen is a child?
That's precisely what President Obama, acting through
U.S. national-security state agents, did on October
14, 2011. He murdered a 16-year-old American boy who
was traveling in Yemen. The boy was Abdulrahman al-Awlaki,
who was the son of accused terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki,
who the CIA had assassinated two weeks before.
Why did President Obama and the CIA or the military
kill Abdulrahman? The president, the CIA, and the
Pentagon have all chosen to remain silent on the
matter, refusing to even acknowledge that they killed
the boy. But White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs
implicitly provided the justification: "I would
suggest that you should have a far more responsible
father if they are truly concerned about the well
being of their children. I don't think becoming an al
Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about
doing your business."
So, there you have it: the boy was apparently killed
because he was considered to have the wrong father.
But if that's a legitimate justification for killing a
child, there are obviously a lot more children at risk
in this country.
Proponents of the war on terrorism argue that the
killing of the teenager wasn't really a murder but
rather an assassination. But isn't that a distinction
without a difference?
After all, compare Obama's killing of Abdulrahman with
Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet's killing of Orlando
Letelier. Pinochet took power in 1973, during the time
that the Cold War and the war on communism were being
waged. Pinochet, who the U.S. national-security state
had helped install into power, not only began rounding
up, incarcerating, torturing, abusing, and executing
suspected communists without any judicial process, he
also embarked on an program to assassinate Chilean
communists found overseas.
Agents of Pinochet's counterpart to the CIA, a secret
police force called DINA, planned and orchestrated the
killing of Orlando Letelier on the streets of
Washington, D.C. Why was Letelier targeted for death?
He was a socialist, a Chilean citizen who had served
in the administration of President Salvador Allende,
the democratically elected Marxist president whom
Pinochet, President Richard Nixon, the CIA, and the
U.S. military ousted from power and replaced with
Pinochet's military dictatorship. Therefore, as part
of the war on communism, Letelier was considered to be
a legitimate target for assassination.
On September 21, 1976, an assassination team headed by
a man named Michael Townley exploded a bomb that the
team had planted under Letelier's car. Letelier was
killed, along with his American assistant who was also
in the car, 25-year-old Ronni Moffitt.
Interestingly, the U.S. Justice Department did not
consider the assassination to be legitimate under the
concept of war and enemy combatants, notwithstanding
the fact that the Cold War and global war on communism
were still being waged. The Justice Department treated
the killings of Letelier and Moffitt as murders.
Townley and his team were indicted and prosecuted for
the murders of Letelier and Moffitt.
How is Obama's killing of Abdulrahman any different
from Pinochet's murder of Orlando Letelier and Ronni
Moffitt? In the one case, a 16-year-old boy has had
his life snuffed out because he had the wrong father.
In the other case, a man had his life snuffed out
because he had the wrong philosophical beliefs. Given
that the Letelier and Moffitt killings were treated as
murders, why shouldn't the Abdulraham killing be
treated as murder too?
An interesting twist to these killings is a common
denominator — the CIA. It turned out that Townley was
an agent of the CIA. He claimed that at the time he
set off the bomb he was no longer working for the CIA,
which, not surprisingly, is what the CIA claimed also.
But the problem, of course, is that they would say
that even if he was still employed by the CIA. And, in
fact, the CIA was supporting and working closely with
DINA after Pinochet came to power. It says a lot that
for the pre-meditated, cold-blooded murder of Letelier
and Moffitt, Townley served a grand total of about
five years in jail before being released — get this —
into the federal witness protection program, where he
remains safely ensconced and anonymous today.
We also shouldn't forget that the U.S.
national-security state also participated in the
execution of 31-year-old American journalist Charles
Horman during the Pinochet coup, a crime that U.S.
officials have never investigated or prosecuted CIA
officials or U.S. military officials for. What was the
justification for murdering Horman? We can't know for
sure because U.S. military and CIA officials have
never provided it, but most likely it was because
Horman had acquired secret information about U.S.
involvement in the coup and because Horman was a
socialist who supported the Allende regime. (See here
and here.) In an interesting twist, just recently
Chilean officials charged a U.S. military officer with
conspiracy to murder Horman during the coup.
What remedy do the family members of an American who
has been murdered by the president and the
national-security state have?
They obviously can't look to the Justice Department,
which answers to the president and which isn't ever
going to take on the CIA with a criminal prosecution
for a crime that was ordered by the president.
They also can't look to the federal courts, which
display the same deference and submissiveness to the
military and the CIA that Chilean courts displayed
toward the Pinochet's military and DINA. In any
wrongful death action brought by the victim's family,
all the military and CIA have to do is announce to the
presiding judge the same sorts of things that
Pinochet's people would announce to Chilean federal
judges: "National security, war on terrorism, and
state secrets, your honor," and every federal judge in
the land will quickly slam down his gavel and declare,
"Case dismissed."
That leaves the families of the victim with only one
course of action: impeachment and removal from office
by Congress. It's not only the right thing to do, it's
also the only practical way to induce President Obama
to explain why a child's father provides the
justification for murdering his child.
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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