My first reaction was "What the fuck?" (Sorry for the profanity)
Imagine an alternative scenario wherein the grandfather had created his own drone that killed some random government agency dude (by mistake). He'd been labelled a terrorist. But, now the government officials that killed his grandson aren't terrorists because they work for the government.
What a skewed definition we (and the media) have set for terrorism! Sigh!!
This guy's son was a bad enough dude that he got put on a terrorist kill list. I think we should at least consider that we might have an unreliable narrator.
Edit: what I said was that folks should, like with any article, do some investigating before they jump to conclusions. I merely stated that the close ties to known terrorists provides more motivation for this.
But yall are obviously just looking for any opportunity to get all righteous, so keep down voting and not even reading what I said.
This woman's son was a bad enough dude that he got put on a terrorist kill list.
Who checks who goes on this list? Which public court checked the facts and pronounced him and his family guilty? What of the right of the accused to a fair trial, no matter which country they come from? If you're going to flagrantly violate international law and assassinate suspects and their families without trial, what confidence can we have that other laws won't be broken? What confidence can we have that this list was created and maintained in good faith and with due process when it is maintained in secret and the execution is so careless?
The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen....The attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was not “specifically targeted,” raising more questions than he answered.
This drone strike was apparently on a restaurant - I find it mind-boggling that you'd try to defend such actions by saying he was on a secret list. What about the other people in the restaurant at the time, and the innocent members of his family? Does the Obama administration consider the family of people on a kill-list fair game now? And the people who eat close to them in a restaurant too?
Regardless of whether this narrator is reliable or the victim a 'bad dude', I don't find it acceptable that the government can kill whoever they want without trial, and without public evidence. If they do this in restaurants in Yemen, why not restaurants inside the states too?
You're assuming he was a "bad enough dude" with no evidence to support that assertion. The burden of proof is always on the accuser. If he was accused of being worthy of death, let's see some documentation to support that.
At present there are no answers, no explanations, no reasons given besides his death and the fact he and his father were on a hit list.
Edit: Note I am not defending the killing of the grandson by any means. However, I did notice that the father was tried in a court in Yemen, and the judge ordered him to be apprehended "dead or alive." http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2010/11/08/Cleric-say... I was just surprised that people are so suspicious of any claim that the father was anything other than an ordinary citizen minding his own business, yet accept the narrative presented in the original article at face value.
eksith asked for evidence that the father was a "bad dude." I provided some. It is perfectly fine to argue that this isn't justification for death, but that wasn't briancaw's point. This merely seems to indicate that the narrator might not be providing the most balanced perspective.
Let me ask again... what evidence do you have that he specifically deserved to be killed without explanation?
Let me put it in another way, since the question doesn't seem to be making sense to you: If your father happened to be Timothy McVeigh, should the government target you for death?
Edit: I just read your edit and I apologize for the tone of my post. It wasn't called for. I could blame the lack of coffee or that I was tired, but the fact is, these types of stories really bother me and I didn't think it through before posting.
I'm sorry.
Edit2: My request for evidence was for the son; not the father. The primary subject of the article was described as a typical 16-year old with the misfortune of simply being the son of an alleged terrorist. Where was the evidence that he deserved death?
Thanks. There seems to be no public evidence that the grandson deserved death. The white house's official stance is that someone else was being targeted and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gibb's quote "he should have a more responsible father," is pretty horrible. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/robert-gibbs-anwar-...
The author of the article makes it sound like the whole family were innocent american tourists, that the father was targeted without cause, and the grandson was specifically targeted. While the killing of the father may not have been legal, and the killing of the grandson appears to have been a horrible tragedy, the author's account of the situation is wildly misleading.
If Timothy McVeigh's son left to go hang out with his dad who was actively a terrorist and then ended up dead I would dig a little deeper before acting like our entire intelligence community is evil.
Yeah, a real dangerous dude. All his alleged crimes basically involve talking to people; no wonder we sent some drones over there to wipe him and all his relatives out.
Note that there's not even any concrete factual accusations of him being involved with planning actual attacks, just 'he spoke to', 'was associated with', 'allegedly involved in'. You really think something that flimsy is worth murdering dozens of people with a drone?
I would certainly hope that if a few disgruntled people alleged that you were involved in crimes, you'd actually get a fair trial instead of a remote control execution. But maybe that's just not the world we live in.
Yes, well, he did seem to be an al-Qaeda recruiter and propagandist. Does it justify his extrajudicial execution? Depends on who you ask, obviously, but he wasn't an innocent bystander. He certainly knew the risks.
Where, exactly, lies the line that you cross with speech that justifies being murdered in cold blood? Let's figure this out, then.
Westboro Baptist? Are they extreme enough?
How about skinheads or white supremacists? They certainly advocate for violence against innocents, they probably even call it holy war.
If the United States seriously starts advancing the idea that speech alone can justify an execution, then it's all over. There's no point in pretending there's anything resembling freedom in this country anymore if that's the case.
You simply cannot justify executing someone based solely off speech. It doesn't matter what the speech is. You have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt actual, active involvement in a crime to justify murdering anyone, let alone a US citizen. The fact that the US government gets away with murdering people all the time doesn't change anything.
You can certainly respond to 'undesirable' speech in appropriate ways based on the law. There are lots of examples of countries where undesirable speech - whether it criticizes tyrants or promotes violence against minorities - can be punished with fines or jail time. That's certainly a lot better than an execution.
then bring him to a court of law and proove it. Could have been and was done with nazis who had bloid of millions on their hands but can't be done here? why? because in the process there wouldnt be excuse for suspending constitution?
Can you please give me an official reference for that? I know it is kind of off-topic and it should be obvious as a common sense, but I am not joking here. When I asked a USA touristic visa I was told we are all considered by default guilty of illegal immigration until proven otherwise.
Does anything justify killing a 16-year-old non-american citizen without due process?
Just saying. This post is largely about how people in the war-driven countries are perceived by Americans as just abstract figures, instead of real people, thus, making it easy for them to be pro-war.
EDIT:
To the comment below: You know exactly what I meant when I said it - the us vs. them mentality.
Case in point: Latvian hacker about to be extradited to the US for allegedly committing computer crimes. Guess what? U.S. has not supplied a single item of evidence about anything - they just know that he did it.
This, as we can see, spills over to other departments of the u.s. government - fighting terrorism, national security, etc.
Seems like they just come up with random crap to do for the fun of it.
There's no analogy. You asked "Does anything justify killing a 16-year-old non-american citizen without due process?" I'm giving a case of when yes, something would justify that.
The point here is that there are cases when bad people have intent to do harm and need to be stopped in ways faster than a court of law can individually approve. Whether this is one of those cases is the real question.
Regardless if he's a bad guy or not, give me the budget those drones work with, and i can devise something that does not kill a dozen innocent, decent, civilians for every bad guy you terminate.
Right. Because as we know American admininstration is a infalible agency that only puts horrible, horrible terrorist on its hit list. Like Snowden. Or Santa Claus.
All I'm saying is that some guy who's son was a bad guy (look at his wiki page, I won't enumerate offenses) writes an Op-Ed in NyTimes and everyone starts taking his word as scripture. I'm not saying killing his grandson was right or wrong, I'm just saying a skimming of the facts he presents followed by a scathing anti-American rant is uncalled for.
The important facts do not need independence on the part of the author:
1. His grandson was American, so the US military establishment assassinated an American outside the courts
2. The attack was performed in a third country, which is an act of war. Not fuzzy war-on-terror or other nonsense. War, classic version. Just reverse sides and imagine US' reaction on drone attacks on its soil affecting civilians.
I'm not disputing that guy was shady, but I see they don't have much evidence against him but he got on a kill list/killed. Do all people on kill list have so little evidence against them?
Thats a horrible argument, and a circular one at that. If we had a brutal police beating leading to the death of a 16 year old child, do we argue that the grandparent must be unreliable because a other family member to the child was also killed by the police? after all, that family member must have done something to anger the police...
I'm not willing to go so far to say that parents should be held accountable for their children's actions. I am very confident that it's ok to question the validity of statements made by the parent of a well known, high ranking terrorist.
So if I decide to put someone on a kill list, there is no burden of proof on me to explain why, by killing that someone my action is righteous, legal and moral?
I'm pretty sure the US constitution disagrees with that premise, and should protect any US citizen from such a situation.
Personally - I'd like to see _much_ more transparency and accountability in the compilation and justification for most sorts of "government lists", and I fear the people in charge of "the kill list" which manages to kill people who are '… not “specifically targeted,”' have proven to be inadequately discriminating at the task…
Though I'd probably prefer not to have a "kill list". Killing should be limited to military personell in wars, during 'battle'. I realise the US has framed the war on terror in order to blur those lines... but seriously firing missiles into cafes!?
Do me the favor of putting my statement and yours side by side. Show the claim I made (that we should scrutinize the validity of the OpEd) vs what you refuted.
I think we're nitpicking here. I think that the probability of someone not being impartial given their son was on a kill list is greater than someone who's son wasn't...etc.
Anyway, I 100% agree that "there is a burden of proof on me to explain why, by killing that someone my action is righteous, legal and moral"
Wait a second. The whole article is not about the son, it is about his grandson. No where in the article it is said that his grandson was a terrorist or has been associated with terrorism (even then, it would not have been right), quite the opposite.
Summary: stop with the red herring of talking about the known associations of his son with terrorism - we are talking about his innocent grandson.
> This guy's son was a bad enough dude that he got put on a terrorist kill list.
There is no oversight in this process, and even if there were that provides no justice for the innocent people at the cafe where the grandson was killed. This whole story disgusts me.
Imagine an alternative scenario wherein the grandfather had created his own drone that killed some random government agency dude (by mistake). He'd been labelled a terrorist. But, now the government officials that killed his grandson aren't terrorists because they work for the government.
What a skewed definition we (and the media) have set for terrorism! Sigh!!