Blood On Their Hands

Recently a 16-year-old American teenager was killed by an act of terrorism.

The boy was like many other kids. He had a Facebook page. He loved "The Simpsons." And he was innocent of any wrongdoing.

He was killed in an attack on a restaurant in Yemen.

His killers? The U.S. government.

His crime? His father was a suspected terrorist.

The obama administration's response?

Indefensibly, former White House press secretary and Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs said...“You should have a far more responsible father” if you don't want to be killed. (Abdulrahman's father, Anwar al-Awlaki, was suspected by the U.S. of terrorism and was killed by a drone two weeks before his son.) But surely no one would suggest that children are fair game simply because their parents are suspected of wrongdoing.

The Bush administration began using drones in 2002. But obama and his cronies have dramatically expanded the program from targeting specific individuals identified and specified in advance "to targeting groups of unidentified individuals who fit a secret profile."

I've got no problem with blasting terrorists from the face of the earth. But I do have a problem with an administation that asserts "the government has the authority to kill Americans without having to account to any court for its actions."

...the U.S. Constitution requires due process when life is at stake. The government cannot be permitted to deprive an American child of his life without any judicial review, even after the fact...

In the face of the government's official silence about the death of his grandson, Nasser al-Awlaki went to court to seek answers. At issue in the lawsuit, which was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, is the government's obligation to account for its actions in killing Abdulrahman, his father and another U.S. citizen, Samir Khan.

If this case is dismissed, as the government asks, a grieving grandfather will be left without any explanation or accountability for the death of his 16-year-old grandson. And Americans will be left with a government that insists it has the unilateral and unreviewable power to kill people, including nonthreatening Americans. That would be a terrifying precedent to set.

Call my feelings about this a leftover vestiage of my liberal youth. Or call it conservative outrage over the government's abuse of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Call it whatever you want, but I call it reprehensible, disgraceful, and just plain wrong.

One would expect the liberals in the media to be protesting this from the treetops -- like they would if Bush had done it -- but the silence has been deafening.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if the obama administration gets away with murdering U.S. citizens in foreign lands, with no accountability, how long before we start seeing drones circling overhead here at home?