Obama Considers Killing a US Citizen with a Drone Strike

The US Justice Department and the Obama administration say there is an American citizen with ties to Al-Qaeda who is planning attacks on the US from overseas. And they badly want to kill him with a drone strike. But current laws are making that a little tricky.

The suspected terrorist is in a country that is both unwilling to allow American military action within its borders and unable to capture the suspect. Obama’s new targeting policies dictate that American terrorism suspects overseas are allowed to be taken out by only the military, not the CIA. Drone strikes currently fall under the purview of the CIA apparently, so as of right now, killing this terrorism suspect with a drone strike is mostly out of the question. The Obama administration has been pushing to transfer the drone program over to the military (perhaps because of this prohibition on the CIA), but the military has its own set of rules to limit military engagements in unwilling countries.

Whether or not this suspect is actually a terrorist, this case should give you pause. The situation we find ourselves in is crazy. Our administration is currently deciding on the death penalty for an American citizen without a trial. This is known as a summary execution. It’s when the executive department decides someone is guilty and pretty much kills them on the spot. The executives of America have already killed many people overseas without trials, based on purported intelligence that no average American has access to. This in itself is troubling, especially given the fact that many innocent people have been killed in the process—including a few Americans. But explicitly targeting and killing American citizens without a trial opens the floodgates for even more widespread and terrifying tyranny and abuse.

And let’s not forget who put us in this mess in the first place. The PATRIOT Act and a slew of other acts following 9/11 have basically destroyed American liberty. Altogether. Whether it is  our widespread surveillance state, the removal of individual protections from judicial abuse, TSA molestations, or the rise of drone warfare, we are in a pickle because we sold our freedom for a sense of security. Not actual security, mind you. Just a false sense of it.

We are being told to merely trust our civil government. We are not being asked. We are being told. And all along, they have done nothing to garner trust. It would be better for us to increase the possibility of a terrorist attack and secure our liberty than allow our civil government to run roughshod over the rule of law.

We cannot be at war with the world. We must do our best to control and secure our borders and protect this country as best we can. But setting precendents like this is dangerous to the highest degree. If this administration ends up authorizing the execution of an American citizen with a drone strike, it will be another major blow to the foundation of American freedom. What are we protecting from terror if we destroy our country’s rule of law in the process of cutting down its purported enemies?

18 responses

    • He won’t need to.
      He’s pissed off enough people with his drone strikes that some of the relatives of those murdered should already be planning how to put him on the receiving end of one of these strikes.

      • Beats me why none of the 100 million Second Amendment fans hasn’t taken Joe Biden’s hint and got a shotgun to the criminal-in-chief

  1. No doubt in my mind how much he wants the drone program transferred to the military. Just as the National Guard is training for action against 2nd Amendment and Constitution supporters as well as buying up all the ammo to keep citizens from having it, this thug-in-chief needs those drones to use on Americans inside our borders. Mark my word…he’ll be coming after dissenters to his dictatorship.

  2. Lets connect the dots.
    – The US is using drone strikes to kill “enemy combatants” substantially wherever and whenever the CIA pleases.
    – Before long the same policy will be adopted by one of the countries that the “enemy combatants” blown up by the CIA [along with whoever else was within the blast radius] came from.
    – The Iranians have announced that they will be sending military vessels to International Waters just outside of US Territorial Limits, including a helicopter platform ship.
    – It isn’t much of a stretch to imagine a scenario where a drone is launched from one of these vessels and a target, possibly a key infrastructure component, well inland and far removed from the launch vessel is blown up by our avowed enemy.
    – Forensic Analysis of the debris won’t be able to directly link the attack to the Iranians because all of the components will have come from European and Asian sources.
    – The U.N. folds their hands in their lap based on the “They [the US] did it first” doctrine.

  3. So a rag head has an American citizenship. Well that’s convenient, maybe they should all get one. No one gets up one morning and decides to make a drone strike. There’s intelligence gathering, a process, and decisioning. American, American citizen, two different things and the latter does not mean what it used to.

    • Nevertheless allowing a U.S. president to unilaterally decide to murder a U.S. citizen without trial actually DOES violate the law, of course that is not an issue for leftist fascist dictators, now is it?

      • Obama is already doing anything he wants like skirting the law, the constitution, and the full Congress – not just the squid who follow him, not just the congress of Hairy Reed. He’s got a pen and a phone…what do you expect from this awful excuse for a president?
        But as far as I’m concerned killing rag heads is about all he’s got right. Puzzling ain’t it?

  4. Why would he kill a Al-Qaeda person, since he is one of them himself.He may do it as a sacrifice, as a liar, of his FAKE loyalty to the USA.

    • I guess news doesn’t travel fast to SC but Obama has decimated the leadership of Al-Qaeda including killing their leader ben laden.

  5. The hypocrisy is amazing…

    O-Blamo wants to close Gitmo so the detainees there can receive the benefit of being tried under the US judicial system.

    At the same time, US citizens around the world are not entitled to the rights or protections of our Constitution simply because they are not physically within our borders.

    AND… the Fourth Amendment does not apply within 100 miles of any US Border Crossing.

    Yeah… I feel a target on my back right now.

  6. This has a lot to do with the fact that Obama has fired all the generals who would not agree to fire on American citizens and has his “personal” army in place with enough ammo for a 35 year war. Even the Postal Department is now purchasing ammo along with many of the governmental departments which have been given arrest powers and armed with weapons and ammo. Thomas Jefferson was exactly right when he said that the 2nd amendment was put in place to protect the people from the government. As soon as the government does not fear the people we are doomed like many other countries which have gone down that road and allowed the government to register and then confiscate their weapons.

  7. He will think about it until he is out of office. Most incompetent president or business manager I have ever seen. He is neither.

  8. They have done it before with 0 consequences so why not? After all the lefts anti war hero & Nobel PEACE prize winner has quadrupled troops dea ths in Afghanistan, bombed Libya WITHOUT congressional approval, armed Syrian TERRORISTS who then used those weapons to slaughter entire Christian villages, men, women & children, has yet to close Gitmo, the lefts favorite complaint against Bush, & has already murdered U.S. citizens WITHOUT A TRIAL. As he said in a recent interview, “I am GOOD at KILLING”. Where are the flag draped caskets, the pictures of Gitmo & where are the Code Pink Cracks blowing up Marine recruiting stations? Isn’t it funny how the leftist propaganda machine media & anti war leftists have gone silent on Obama’s war mongering?

  9. Well, killing Americans with Obamacare worked out just fine…
    He’ll just ramp it up a little. Who’s going to object? The GOP?

  10. I would say this in defense of any president, regardless of how I felt about him otherwise: since we are in an undeclared war with Muslim terrorists, anyone overseas who represents a credible threat to America is a target after they have been vetted by both civilian and military authorities. If they are on American soil, the rules change (slightly.) In that event we try to capture the traitor without loss of life, but dust his ass if he resists.

    I detest Obama but support his duty to kill terrorists overseas if they are identified as such vermin.

  11. Such terrorists should be caught and dealt with, there is no question about that. But, as a representative republic, we cannot allow a sitting President to exercise his whims to kill someone via a drone strike. If the person is an American citizen, he deserves the same lawful due process that Obama would expect for himself.
    I suggest that Obama has benefitted Al Qaeda, be it inadvertent or by design. He threatened destruction to the Assad-Syrian gov’t and Assad’s opposition(the rebels) is known to have late U.S. military equipment. Those armaments may have been the crux of the U.S. Embassy’s destruction in Benghazi, elements of Al Qaeda were there. Elements of Al Qaeda backed Morsi in Egypt and Morsi was Obama’s recommendation to lead Egypt. Al Qaeda wasn’t attacked in Egypt until the Egyptian people revolted against Morsi’s Al Qaeda-backed presidency. Egypt’s troubles were initiated by Obama’s preference to Al Qaeda-type Islamic cells.
    He hasn’t been showing much eagerness to use drones against Al Qaeda and affiliates. He can’t be trusted and you know that.

Leave a Reply