They debated this on the panel tonight with Krauthammer and Goldberg arguing that he was an enemy combatant working for an organization that we’ve declared war against, vs Kirsten Powers saying that Awlaki deserves due process because he’s an American citizen:
My personal belief is on the side of Krauthammer and Goldberg. There’s no way Awlaki was a ‘criminal’. He was an enemy combatant and in my opinion he gave up any constitutional rights he had when he began working for an organization that was responsible for the deaths of three thousand men and women on 9/11. He’s not just some two-bit criminal hiding from US law enforcement in Italy. He declared war on America by joining Al Qaeda and continued to foment insurrection in America. He is also tied to the deaths of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, and perhaps even more elsewhere.
Would I have liked him captured instead of killed? Absolutely. There’s plenty of information we could have gotten from him. However, I won’t lose any sleep tonight knowing that he died of ‘heartburn’.
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