"Anwar al-Awlaki: al Qaeda's rock star no more," CNN.com triumphantly crowed on September 30. That exuberance persists throughout the article: After all, "Al-Awlaki was at the heart of one of the most dangerous terror groups on earth." Many other headlines highlighted the unusual aspects of al-Awlaki's killing. He was an American citizen, killed by unmanned drones in Yemen.
His citizenship seems to have garnered the most attention. Later that afternoon, CNN.com reported that his killing "re-energized a national debate over the legal and moral quandaries of a government deliberately killing a citizen."
That debate didn't seem to last long. Two weeks on, political news is all about the Occupy Wall Street protests, the tenth anniversary of the Afghanistan War and the Republican primaries.
These things are important, of course, but so is the fact that our government just straight up killed one of its citizens without a shred of due process. We have a Bill of Rights to prevent such things. According to the Fifth Amendment, no one can be deprived of life without due process of law. That didn't seem to apply to al-Awlaki, though.
CNN, among other news outlets, reports that al-Awlaki was involved in violence directed against America and Americans. He apparently corresponded with Maj. Nidal Hassan, currently on trial for the shooting at Fort Hood. President Obama assured us that al-Awlaki "took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans." Both of those things may very well be true.
But where's the evidence? That question isn't rhetorical, it's logistical. The evidence against al-Awlaki cannot be found in any public record or court proceeding. No authorities arrested him, no court tried him and no judge or jury sentenced him. This sounds like the exact opposite of due process and the type of event the Fifth Amendment tries to prevent.
But, really, what's it matter? After all, as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta noted, "if you're a terrorist, you're a terrorist. And that means that we have the ability to go after those who would threaten to attack the United States and kill Americans." Al-Awlaki (probably) was involved with anti-American terrorism, so what's the problem?
Al-Awlaki is not the first American terrorist. The Oklahoma City bombing, the Olympic Park bombing and the Unabomber attacks were all attacks against American citizens by American citizens. Yet our government didn't bomb Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph or Theodore Kaczynski. They were tried, convicted and sentenced in courts of law. As a result, there is little room for doubt about their guilt. The same cannot be said for al-Awlaki and our justifications for killing him are weaker for it.
Washington, D.C. and Yemen may seem pretty far removed from the DePauw bubble, but what happens in those places affects us here. Remember how much Congress debated the Patriot Act's power to wiretap American citizens' phones without warrants?
I seem to remember people being upset at the idea that the government could listen on your calls on its own authority rather than judicial authority. That was bad enough. Now, we should be talking about the government's killing of one of its own citizens.
This development does not belong to some future world we will inherit when we leave the DePauw bubble for "real life." It belongs to the world we live in right now. As such, we must take it on now, while such government killings are controversies rather than givens.
— Holley-Kline is a senior from Anchorage, Alaska, majoring in Spanish and anthropology.
opinion@thedepauw.com