Gary Johnson, Ron Paul criticize killing of alleged terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki by U.S. drone attack

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“Well I as President of the United States I would have been a lot more transparent about what, and I understand all of the accusations against al-Awlaki and they are very significant and I don’t want to minimize at all the threat that he was posing to the United States. But he is a U.S. citizen, he was a U.S. citizen, and never before have we targeted a US citizen for death,” the former New Mexico governor said on Fox News.

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“Nobody knows if he ever killed anybody,” Mr. Paul said after a breakfast at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics. “If the American people accept this blindly and casually…I think that’s sad.”

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As we’ve seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts.

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The government’s authority to use lethal force against its own citizens should be limited to circumstances in which the threat to life is concrete, specific and imminent. It is a mistake to invest the president – any president – with the unreviewable power to kill any American whom he deems to present a threat to the country.

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Despite substantial doubtamong Yemen expertsabout whether he even has any operational rolein Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt. When Awlaki’s father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were “state secrets” and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts. He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner. When Awlaki’s inclusion on President Obama’s hit list was confirmed, The New York Timesnotedthat “it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing.”

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After several unsuccessful effortsto assassinate its own citizen, the U.S. succeeded today(and it wasthe U.S.). It almost certainly was able to find and kill Awlaki with the help of its long-time close friend President Saleh, who took a little time off from murdering his own citizensto help the U.S. murder its. The U.S. thus transformed someone who was, at best, a marginal figure into a martyr, and again showed its true face to the world. The government and media search for The Next bin Ladenhas undoubtedly already commenced.