LOS ANGELES — Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who is
seeking the GOP presidential nomination, on Friday criticized the Obama
administration’s action in killing Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born
cleric who advocated jihad against the United States.
Paul
was the strongest critic on the Republican side in condemning the
attack, which was praised by other candidates including Texas Gov. Rick
Perry. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a libertarian like Paul,
also questioned the tactic of killing a U.S. citizen without due
process.
Awlaki, a prominent voice in Yemen’s
al-Qaida affiliate, and Samir Khan, an editor of a jihadist magazine,
were killed in an air attack in Yemen by what U.S. and Yemeni officials
say was an operation that involved U.S. military and intelligence
assets. The attack is part of a campaign against Islamic terrorists that
included the killing of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in May in
Pakistan.
After a campaign stop at Saint Anselm
College in New Hampshire, Paul told reporters that Americans need to
think about such actions because Awlaki was born in the United States
and was entitled to the same rights as all U.S. citizens.
“No
I don’t think that’s a good way to deal with our problems,” Paul said
in a videotape of the questioning by reporters. Awlaki “was never tried
or charged for any crimes. No one knows if he killed anybody. We know he
might have been associated with the ‘underwear bomber.’ But if the
American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an
accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks
are bad guys. I think it’s sad.”
Paul went on to
compare the situation to Timothy McVeigh, convicted of blowing up a
truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April
19, 1995. The attack killed 168 people and injured more than 800 people.
“I
think what would people have said about Timothy McVeigh? We didn’t
assassinate him, who certainly had done it,” Paul said. McVeigh “was put
through the courts then executed. … To start assassinating American
citizens without charges, we should think very seriously about this.”
Paul
argued that the killing of Awlaki was different from the attack on bin
Laden because he was involved in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade
Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
“I
voted for authority to go after those individuals responsible for
9/11,” Paul said. “Nobody ever suggested that he (Awlaki) was
participant in 9/11.”
Paul has been running behind
the leaders in the GOP race for the presidential nod, but has been as
high as third or fourth in many national polls, running at around 10
percent. Johnson has been far back in the pack, running in the very low
single digits.
In an interview with Fox News,
Johnson made the same points as Paul, warning that killing an American
citizen without due process set a dangerous precedent despite the need
for the United States to remain vigilant against terrorism.
Paul
and Johnson represent the neo-isolationist wing of the GOP, but other
parts of the Republican Party have advocated a foreign policy based on a
more robust U.S. role abroad. Perry, the leader in most polls for the
GOP nomination though his star has faded in recent days, praised the
attack.
“I want to congratulate the United States
military and intelligence communities — and President Obama — for
sticking with the government’s long-standing and aggressive anti-terror
policies, for getting another key international terrorist,” Perry said
in a prepared statement.
Perry went on to call the death of Awlaki an “important victory in the war on terror.”
Ironically,
the libertarian opposition to the attack was similar to the argument by
the American Civil Liberties Union in its disapproval.
“The
targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law,”
ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a prepared statement.
“As we’ve seen today, this is a program under which American citizens
far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without
judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are
kept secret not just from the public but from the courts.
“The
government’s authority to use lethal force against its own citizens
should be limited to circumstances in which the threat to life is
concrete, specific and imminent. It is a mistake to invest the president
— any president — with the unreviewable power to kill any American whom
he deems to present a threat to the country,” he stated.
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©2011 the Los Angeles Times
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