Max Boot: Yemen after Awlaki

Max Boot is a contributing editor to Opinion and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Osama bin Laden's death was cheered, I suspect, by 99.99% of Americans. But there was that 0.01% — and a slightly higher number abroad — who doubted the legality of simply pumping two bullets into the Al Qaeda leader rather than trying to arrest and Mirandize him.

Likewise, amid the general rejoicing over the death of Anwar Awlaki, one of the leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a few civil libertarians are raising questions about whether the U.S. government had the right to kill an American citizen without a trial. And it wasn't just the New Mexico-born Awlaki, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Yemen, who died in a CIA drone strike in Yemen on Friday. Also killed was Samir Khan, a propagandist for the group who was born in Saudi Arabia but grew up in New York and North Carolina and retained American citizenship. How could President Obama order their assassinations?

That's like asking if it was lawful to kill Confederate soldiers at Gettysburg. Like the rebels during the Civil War, Awlaki and Khan gave up the benefits of American citizenship by taking up arms against their country. They, and other Al Qaeda members, claim to be "soldiers" in the army of Allah; it is only fitting that their avowed enemy, the Great Satan, would take their protestations seriously and treat them just like enemy soldiers. If it's lawful to drop a missile on a Saudi or Egyptian member of Al Qaeda, it's hard to see why an American citizen should be exempt....