re: #61 Justanotherhuman

As far as I’m concerned, Al-Awlaki had given up his American citizenship a long time ago, even before he left the US permanently in 2002. At one time, as a student, he had even obtained SS benefits fraudulently as a “foreign student” to attend school in the US, stating that he had been born in Yemen (he was born to Yememi parents in New Mexico).

Yet, these dudebro types continue to second guess what the DOJ and the intelligence community knew about him and the extent of his operations.

The thing is, it’s hard to justify why his citizenship should matter when you think about it. The whole issue is meant to be inflammatory and not much else.

Should the US have lower standards for attacks against non-US citizens under the laws of war? I don’t remember the allies checking axis passports in the D-day assault, and there were definitely a few Americans fighting for the Germans. How about if he had a green card: does that mean we could just wing him?

Or are they saying that he should be arrested under US laws even though he’s in a foreign country? Yemen had a dead-or-alive warrant out for him already, which would be the sovereign authority there, since, you know, it’s their country. Essentially, if you take this tack you’re asserting American sovereignty over all its citizens over the entire planet, which is imperialist enough to give the neocon wingnuts vapors.

So the whole thing is a sort of bizarro world American exceptionalism when you get down to it, which tracks nicely with the overall bizarro world American exceptionalism of the Snowwald/Wikileaks cabal.