U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. defended the current Obama administration's deadly action against top Al Qaeda leaders in a speech given to law students at Northwestern University. At the center of the controversy is Anwar al-Awlaki, who was one of the main minds behind the September 11th attacks and a supposed top recruiter, especially via the internet. The drone strike ordered by the President is considered controversial because Awlaki and other Al Qaeda members that were killed in the strike were born in the United States. Mr. Holder defended the President by saying that the Constitution requires due process and due process does not necessarily mean judicial process. He also said that Congress authorized the use of force against Al Qaeda after the September 11th attacks and that the use of force is not limited to Afghanistan. The use of force is legally acceptable when there is not a feasible way of capturing a known Al Qaeda member or ally, who is plotting attacks.
Given our recent unit on the Executive branch, I thought it would be interesting to see what people thought about this controversial issue. Has President Obama gone to far? Does Due process mean Judicial process? Or is it a waste of time and resources to try and capture a known terrorist and try them in front of a jury? Personally, I agree with the last statement. These terrorist are often difficult to find and to capture them would take a great deal of time and be a waste of resources if they are a known terrorist. I think the Government should have the power to take out known terrorist without Judicial process.
2 comments:
I must agree with Christian and say that because a known terrorist is trying to do harm to our country judicial process should not be necessary. I believe these attacks were justifiable because they were executed with the intent of national defence. What the terrorists really proved with the 9/11 attacks was that our country was vulnerable. And Obama did not go too far because his mission was sucessful, had it been unsucessful the conversation amongst citizens would be different, but for now he did not go too far.
I think that given the situation, the use of force was justified in order to take out a known terrorist. In this case, it seems that this was the only way that they could have achieved these results. It seems unlikely that the military could have done a Bin-Laden style operation in order to capture these terrorists. I think that if the military could have done that, then Awlaki deserves the right to a trial; however, given the circumstances, it was excusable. Nonetheless, this begs the question whether the government went with a drone strike to kill Awlaki outright and avoid having to give him a trial. This sounds a bit to conspiracy theorist to me though.
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