Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was hiding from his government in a remote tribal area of Yemen. On Friday, he got into a car with several associates, including Samir Khan — another American — and started off down the road.
In the lawlessness of rural Yemen, both men probably felt somewhat safe; they were beyond the reach of Yemeni forces, and even farther from American troops. But high above, their countrymen were watching, and when the time was right a drone-fired missile blew that car to pieces.
Awlaki, a prominent cleric in al-Qaida’s Yemini subsidiary, had been in American crosshairs for several years. After exhaustive intelligence gathering, careful analysis and great patience, American forces eliminated their target with pinpoint accuracy by remote control from untold miles away.
That’s President Obama’s war on terror — a fast, flashy, devastating campaign of surprise assassinations, carried out with little regard for legal boundaries, and even less for national ones.
Where former President George W. Bush sent huge armies into Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama’s military phones it in, using fleets of increasingly sophisticated drones to kill our enemies wherever they may hide.
For many, that’s a frightening reality. Some worry about the distancing effect of robot warfare, where human deaths on screen evoke the video games our soldiers grew up playing. Others worry for the rule of law, or the community of nations; in our war on terror, drones go where they please.
And with Awlaki’s death, a new cause for concern presents itself. The global war on terror never fell within any traditional conception of a war. But it was waged on foreign soil, against foreign enemies. Awlaki and Khan, while most certainly our enemies, were also technically compatriots.
In ten years of war, they’re not the first Americans to cross the line. But when John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban,” was captured fighting in Afghanistan, we dragged him all the way back home for trial.
For Awlaki and Khan, trials weren’t an option. Deep in unoccupied territory, and well beyond the reach of an American arrest warrant, they plotted, planned and marshaled troops against us. So, unable — practically — to capture them, we killed them.
With the right analogies, this whole thing sounds OK. We’d have killed both of these men on a battlefield, with no citizenship check, if they were firing off mortars at Americans.
And on the global battlefield that is our war on terror, they were launching much more dangerous weapons with the Internet. Side note: Khan’s Inspire magazine is kind of funny, in a sad, dark way, including sections on things like building bombs “in the kitchen of your mom.”
But Yemen’s not the only place where people write mean threats against our government. It also happens every day here in America. There’s an analogy to fit that too.
Like any good legal lie, the war on terror rings of truth. But month-by-month and year-by-year, we’ve stretched this grand illusion to its limits.
Real battlefields have boundaries — where are they on this one?
Reach the columnist at john.a.gaylord@asu.edu Click here to subscribe to the daily State Press newsletter.
