Dick Cheney in a recent talk regarding Obama’s ordering the death of Anwar al-Awlaki claimed that the President should apologize to the Bush Administration for claiming that they overreacted to 911 because he’s dong the same thing.
That’s right Dick, Obama has now ordered and carried out the killings of the two heads of Al Queda. That’s certainly the same thing as starting two wars over these guys and not finding either one of them. Time to get your head out of that dark place.
Let’s see. On one side we have thousands of American boys plus hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghanistan people killed and maimed. On the other side we have two terrorists leaders executed. On one side we have over a trillion in tax dollars wasted and on the other a couple of thousand bucks worth of drones. One administration sent troops into those countries and this one is pulling them out. Gee Dick, sure looks like the same thing to me. Glad you pointed it out.
On the same front but from a different angle, salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald has attacked the President for killing Awlaki without due process.
Greenwald makes a striking argument. Surely he is on the side of the angels. Unfortunately we live in a world where angels are sadly absent. In their places are evil or sometimes just misguided men who seek to harm us. Anwar al-Awlaki was one of them.
Greenwald begs for due process. I guess he wasn’t paying attention when it was happening, when Al-Awlaki presented the evidence against himself, over and over. He was an American citizen who begged his Muslim mignons to attack America and its people, seeking the death and destruction of both. Unless I am sorely mistaken this is treason, for which the penalty is death. No the decision didn’t go through the courts but we are at war with a terrorist organization of which al-Awlaki was the new leader and whose aim was to kill Americans. When someone draws a gun on you, you don’t wait for due process, you shoot first or you die first.
I am, for the sake of brevity, going to assume that we all understand that we are engaged in a very untraditional war with these terrorist organizations. One of the ways wars have always been won is to kill or capture the leaders of the other side, which, plain and simple is what happened here. Al-Awlaki took over from bin-Laden and preached death and destruction for America. He eloquently presented our case against him. All we had to do was agree and kill him.
Greenwald quotes the NY Times, “it is extremely rare if not unprecedented for an American to be approved for targeted killing.” True, but its rarity does not make it wrong, only rare. Greenwald tries to equate Obama ordering al-Awlaki’s killing with the moves Bush made against American citizens, many of whom had no alliance with terrorists or anyone else. I think it’s a failed analogy. Al-Awlaki gave us all the evidence we needed to condemn him. Obama would have been derelict in his duty to protect the state, not to have acted.
And of course, Ron Paul had to get in on this too. Running for President means you have to get your face on TV as often as possible, so Ron took advantage of the situation to condemn Obama for not waiting for a court decision on Awlaki’s guilt. I really think it’s time for all the politicians and pundits to cut the crap and grab hold of reality. This guy preached the destruction of the United States. Did he actually shoot someone? I don’t know. Did Hitler actually shoot anyone? I don’t know. Did they both deserve to die? What do you think?