I don't give a rat's ass about foreigners even though my policy would be to offer citizenship to anyone who was willing to pay our taxes, obey our laws and help keep the peace throughout the Empire. But, I do care when a citizen is murdered by the President.
We have inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution for "due process" which means that everyone is held to be safe in his person. Does our elected leaders not realize that this respect goes both ways? No one is invulnerable if injustice is allowed to occur.
If Anwar al-Awlaki was guilty then he needed to be tried for treason and then executed. (I don't give a rat's ass about traitors, either!)
Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, The Great Charter, Its Fate, and Ours | TomDispatch
The issue arose after the presidentially ordered assassination-by-drone of Anwar al-Awlaki, accused of inciting jihad in speech, writing, and unspecified actions. A headline in the New York Times captured the general elite reaction when he was murdered in a drone attack, along with the usual collateral damage. It read: “The West celebrates a cleric’s death.” Some eyebrows were lifted, however, because he was an American citizen, which raised questions about due process -- considered irrelevant when non-citizens are murdered at the whim of the chief executive. And irrelevant for citizens, too, under Obama administration due-process legal innovations. Presumption of innocence has also been given a new and useful interpretation. As the New York Times reported, “Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” So post-assassination determination of innocence maintains the sacred principle of presumption of innocence.
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