14 May 2010
Eliminating Al-Awlaki
There are right ways and wrong ways to do anything. Targeted assassination of the provocative Islamic cleric, Anwar Al-Awlaki, wherever he is in hiding, is not justified within our culture’s rule of law, even if his internationally followed rantings endanger American security. There have been many domestic demagogues who egged on violent allegiants while still protected by due process. As a citizen of the U.S., Al-Awlaki deserves similar treatment, despite his overseas location. But that is not the relevant issue.
In the present age of unfettered communications across borders worldwide, it is the responsibility of every national government to impose a measure of civility on its residents. How else, in the absence of world government, can we maintain the order needed to protect human life from arbitrary or misguided violence? Yemen, Al-Awlaki’s current host, is abdicating its duty to prevent its sovereignty from being used to shield an outlaw from the sanction of states that rightfully seek to guard the safety of their citizens.
Yemen, indeed, is a weak state. Moreover, it is part of a bloc of Islamic states that resent the economic, political and cultural predominance of the U.S., if not of the West in general. Even further, Al-Awlaki is a leader of the militant wing of the fundamentalist Islamic movement that threatens peaceful coexistence with people of other faiths or secular lifestyles. Forcing Yemen to fulfill its intergovernmental obligations and rein Al-Awlaki in can have painful economic and political consequences, even for the U.S. However, taking action to excise the canker sore of an Al-Awlaki through targeted assassination will at least run the same risk of retaliation. More importantly, it will cheapen our commitment to human rights and to civility in both our international and our domestic values.
There are right ways and wrong ways to do anything. Targeted assassination of the provocative Islamic cleric, Anwar Al-Awlaki, wherever he is in hiding, is not justified within our culture’s rule of law, even if his internationally followed rantings endanger American security. There have been many domestic demagogues who egged on violent allegiants while still protected by due process. As a citizen of the U.S., Al-Awlaki deserves similar treatment, despite his overseas location. But that is not the relevant issue.
In the present age of unfettered communications across borders worldwide, it is the responsibility of every national government to impose a measure of civility on its residents. How else, in the absence of world government, can we maintain the order needed to protect human life from arbitrary or misguided violence? Yemen, Al-Awlaki’s current host, is abdicating its duty to prevent its sovereignty from being used to shield an outlaw from the sanction of states that rightfully seek to guard the safety of their citizens.
Yemen, indeed, is a weak state. Moreover, it is part of a bloc of Islamic states that resent the economic, political and cultural predominance of the U.S., if not of the West in general. Even further, Al-Awlaki is a leader of the militant wing of the fundamentalist Islamic movement that threatens peaceful coexistence with people of other faiths or secular lifestyles. Forcing Yemen to fulfill its intergovernmental obligations and rein Al-Awlaki in can have painful economic and political consequences, even for the U.S. However, taking action to excise the canker sore of an Al-Awlaki through targeted assassination will at least run the same risk of retaliation. More importantly, it will cheapen our commitment to human rights and to civility in both our international and our domestic values.
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