Liability
Locked Account.
If/since he was a known quantity it should not have been hard to get a conviction.
If it would have been hard to get a conviction then there was something wrong with our intel and that would have been grounds to proceed with greater caution.
Our constitution didn't apply to Goebbels. It did apply to Awlaki. At least it should have.
Now I don't know who it applies to. Where is the line now?
It was not a criminal matter. We don't try leaders of the enemy any more because they happen to have been born in the United States than we'd try a fuckwad like Goebbels.
We don't look to "convict" the enemy in Courts of law. We look to defeat them in war.
Our Constitution does not apply to any person who is waging war against us. Such a person is not covered by the 5th or 6th Amendment. The reality is much more basic and stark. The enemy in war has a right to die at our hands. Period.
Wow.
You trust a politician who is trying to establish himself as a force to be reckoned with to decide which American citizens are enemies and sentence them to death without charges or trial?
Wow wow wow.
You have totally missed the point of the Bill of Rights.
No. You have totally missed the point of the Constitution.
It is there to limit the authority of government. It is not now -- and never was -- intended to be a suicide pact. I know. I read the Court decision that said so.
The notion that we would be obligated to have the JUDICIAL Branch of government tell us when we may and when we may not attack a leader of the enemy at war with us is so absurd as to require people who "get" the point of the Constitution to sadly shake their heads.
All your "wows" don't change any of that.
The COURTS are limited in the scope of their Constitutional authority. And deciding the conduct of war, by and large, is not within their purview.