TheHammer wrote:Yes the next person could be ANYBODY
The idea of Awlaki somehow being a domino that will lead to us to oppression is among the most retarded slippery slope bullshit arguments there is. As argued ad nausem, Awlaki was a unique circumstance. And the very fact that so many people are making such a big deal about killing someone like Awlaki should tell you that this is not going to become a common occurence.
Ham, the problem isn't "ANYONE COULD BE NEXT INCLUDING YOUR GRANDMOTHER!"
The problem is that this sets a precedent. Precedent matters in law.
Sooner or later, we will face a domestic political force which destabilizes the political system. There will be big protests, lots of kooky rhetoric flying around, and a violent fringe to the movement. We know this will happen in the future because it has
already happened, more than once, in the history of the republic.
It happened in the '90s with the militia movement. It happened in the '60s with race riots, campus radicals, and antiwar demonstrators. It almost happened in the '30s with politics of every color under the rainbow, because of the sheer misery of Depression-era conditions. It happened around 1900, with the Progressives being opposed to the trusts and financial crashes of the 1890s, and the anarchists and Reds wanting to overthrow everything and start fresh. It happened before, about every 30-40 years. It will happen again. When (not if,
when) it happens again, one thing will have changed.
The US government will have a history of killing American citizens affiliated with groups that claim to have "declared war" on the United States and which spout 'dangerous rhetoric.' It will not feel a need to wait for those citizens to take up weapons against the government, to engage in
overt, lethal attacks.
Instead, the fact that the group has "declared war" (what is the definition of a private group's declaration of war?) on the status quo, and is associated with killers (even lone nut killers) is enough to make any member of the group an outlaw. The government may kill the outlaw at any time it pleases, if it feels that person is dangerous enough to justify an assassination. Danger does not mean danger of actual attacks committed by this person. A man who says things that make others want to attack can be this dangerous. Someone that a violent terrorist views as a mentor is
a priori dangerous enough to kill.
Once the decision has been made, and this person has been identified as a dangerous radical, there is no trial, no appeal. There is only the Hellfire missile from the drone.
This is way the law stands, if you accept that killing al-Awlaki is something the US government should have the power to do. Because this is the reasoning used by the US government to make the attack in the first place. If you support doing it this time, it's hard to see why you don't support doing it again in the future, whenever the US is at any risk of violent, politically motivated acts from any source, foreign or domestic.
So the question is indeed "who's next?" Al-Awlaki is supposed to be a unique case, though I'm told there are other American citizens on that assassination list. But Al-Qaeda will not be the last organization in the world which the US government dislikes. What happens during the next round of civil unrest, at the violent fringe of that movement? If the US government has permission to kill the people a domestic terrorist cites as his mentors, how far will they go?
You can assure us that the government
won't want to go very far. This does not make the answer "as far as they want" very reassuring, in light of some of the tactics the government has used before- the FBI's attempts to use
agent provocateur tactics on terror suspects in the US, the history of Red-baiting, illegal wiretapping, and fabrication of allegations used in the '20s and the '60s, and so on.
What would someone like J. Edgar Hoover be like if he knew he could get away with simply having "dangerous radical hatemongers"
killed, without trial?
Will this lead to the "death of the republic?" Beats me. But I'm very sure that if this kind of thinking, which you seem to endorse, becomes widespread and popular, the next round of civil unrest in the US will see a drastic escalation in the kind of oppression and violence used by the state's security forces to squash the unrest. American people are more likely to die, more likely to be "disappeared," more likely to be tortured, because of all these contorted efforts to turn anyone on our Very Bad Men list into a diabolical villain that we can treat as we please.
We're at war, except when we're not, we're fighting for freedom, except when freedom has to be sacrificed for security, we're at risk, except when we're not, we're fighting a global war which doesn't take priority over all the other things the government is doing to the point of requiring serious mobilization.
Do you not see the internal contradictions here, and how trying to insist that both sides of the contradiction are true can drive a government mad?
Americas radical left, right and center nutters don't really give a damn. Extremists may be paranoid, but they probably see this as killing a radical terrorist who is a threat to America. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Sorry I didn't read your post throughly before, but the US government has killed, tortured and done all sorts of other fun stuff. We have secret prisons for god sakes- I think it is ridiculous to worry that this will be the thing that sets people off. 
