It's not about deserving it. His dad took him to a war zone while he was working for a non state military. Not everything is personal or even about the person who gets killed in a warzone. Soldiers call it rolling the dice for a reason. The bomb on the roadside goes off. Does it hit the humvee with the gun crew, or the cargo truck carrying refugees? Nobody knows until it happens. One is seen as a normal part of war and the other as something despicable. But the difference is less than a second. Nobody woke up that day and said, "today we're going to kill that kid".
Not like that. Satellites still can't see inside of hard cover. Hollywood really oversells how much the military can see and undersells how much explosions hurt.
Actually, joining an enemy military strips you of your citizenship. But even then, it's not a stable area. You can't just ring up the Yemeni police to go arrest them and the NYPD is going to laugh at you. So you call on the guys who can reach the area. Problem, they're the military and this is a war. So even without the first sentence we're back to using a missile instead of the police because nobody is going to commit suicide for this and we're not going to let them operate freely on the notion that we're not allowed to fight that particular enemy.
Which is why joining an enemy military is an automatic loss of citizenship.
When did Al-Qaeda become a military? It’s a terrorist organization.
And when did it become a war. Congress hasn’t declared a war since World War 2. Legally, all of killing in the Middle East has been done under the guise of military policing actions.
Are we going to drone strike proud boy leaders now? They did try to overthrow the US government a few years ago. Oh wait, they just got slaps on the wrist.
So do we only blow up US citizens and deny them their rights when it would be difficult to get them? I guess the FBI can stop spending so much money on training agents to apprehend suspects, if they’re running or have already fled the country, we’ll just assassinate them because that’s way easier and safer.
The fact that this guy, regardless of what he did, was assassinated on the orders of a US president, and nothing happened, should be deeply disturbing. You don’t have rights if someone can just blow you up from out of nowhere for any reason. You just have privileges that can be revoked at any time.
He had the right to a trial. Not a privilege to have one, a right. An attempt to apprehend him should have at least been made.
Nobody said you had to be connected to a geographic state to be a military.
An AUMF is a declaration of war. Read the War Powers Act. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. It does not require Congress to use a set of magic words.
The proud boys are fucking infants in comparison to Al Qaeda, they're also well within reach of law enforcement agents. But if you want to know for real, check out the times governors have deployed the National Guard for an armed stand off. There is absolutely a military remedy to a domestic insurrection in US law. We do try to avoid that but if someone really pushed it they would take the leash off the military.
This is also a far cry from FBI agents working with police in developing countries. This isn't trying to figure out which Argentinian cop would tip off the arrest target. This is the Yemeni militia laughing at the FBI agents while letting AQ know there are Americans around to be captured.
Again. Nobody is going to commit suicide to provide you with a trial if you are actively making war against the US. Nor have they ever been required to because that is an insane imposition to the defense of the country. Reducing this to a manhunt ended for the sake of convenience is a straw man. You'd have a point if this happened somewhere like India. But it didn't. And we're under no obligation to let the enemy keep operating on the hope they travel to the wrong country.
Who was with his terrorist father in Yemen at the time
According to the United States government, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki's father, Anwar al-Awlaki, was a leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.[2] Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a CIA drone strike several days before his son's death.[3]
You could try not being disingenuous and read a couple more sentences.
the target of the October 14, 2011, airstrike was Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian believed to be a senior operative in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.[7] Another U.S. administration official speaking on condition of anonymity described Abdulrahman al-Awlaki as a bystander who was "in the wrong place at the wrong time", stating that "the U.S. government did not know that Mr. Awlaki's son was there" before the airstrike was ordered.[
He was there because his father brought him there. Nobody was aiming for him.
Oh for shit's sake taking refuge in semantics when you know damn well the word could mean either thing is ridiculous. I'm not going to waste ten comments explaining the exact meaning of the word "time" in this specific case while you just keep throwing No True Scotsman at it.