The assassination of Anwar al-Awliki, along a Saudi and a fellow US citizen via drone in Yemen last Friday has raised all sort of constitutional issues. The Obama Administration, like its Bush predeccessor, may argue that as "jihadists" have declared that they are "at war" with the "infidel" West and America in particular, it was no more than simple self- defence- and there were precedents dating as far back as WWII for the targeted killing of individuals( such as the shooting down of a plane carrying Japanese naval strategist Fleet Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto in 1943, reportedly on FDR's personal orders, and the assassination of SS functionary Reinhard "The Hangman" Heydrich by Czech commandos the previous year), but contrary to Ian Fleming's laconic anti-hero James Bond, the whole business of a "license to kill" whether up close and personal ( as the Israelis did to the "Black September" terrorists responsible for the killing of their Olympic athletes in 1972 or the shooting of three IRA activists in Gibraltar by the British SAS in March 1988) or by drone as was done to not just al-Awliki but over a score of his terrorist confreres, even in the extremity of wartime makes me uncomfortable. The net issue here is what constitutes a "state of war" and a "conventional military force "according to the terms of the 1949 and 1977 Geneva Conventions. That the Third Reich Mao's China(with the probable connivance of Stalin's Soviet Union), North Korea and North Vietnam ALL played fast and loose with the Convention( pace the infamous "Malmedy Massacre" of up to 70 US POWs by the SS during the Battle of the Bulge by the former, and the abominable treatment of Allied POWS by both Pyongyang and Hanoi during the Korean and Vietnam Wars) is NO excuse to declare the Convention "quaint" and "outmoded" as did Bush White House counsel John Yoo and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez- only an Administration where only one of its members- Secretary of State Colin Powell- had ever seen combat, could make such a decidedly asinine assertion). Is Al-Qaeda entitled to call itself a conventional military force, notwithstanidng its claims that it represents "the "kingdom" or "nation"of Islam- my opinion is NO, no more so than the Baader-Meinhof Gang, ETA, Action Directe and of course our own PIRA( Al Qaeda may argue that it should not be judged by "infidel" concepts of what constitutes a military force-just as North Korea and North Vietnam asserted that they could not be bound by "bourgeious" concepts such as the Geneva Convention- but neither could have its cake and eat it- it either subscribes wholeheartedly to such things or rejects them entirely).
As with "enhanced interrogation techniques", whatever America does, other nations ( such as Russia or Israel) will be tempted to cite as precedent for their own activities!
Anybody else think as I do?
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