U.S. drone strike kills 16 year old kid. He was an American citizen
News reports have been saying he was 21, but that’s a lie, his family says he was 16. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was born in Denver in 1995. He was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, a recruiter for al-Qaeda, who was targeted and killed in another drone strike last month. His father was also a U.S. citizen. Abdulrahman’s grandfather released a statement yesterday:
“To kill a teenager is just unbelievable, really, and they claim that he is an al-Qaeda militant. It’s nonsense. They want to justify his killing, that’s all.”
Abdulrahman’s 17 year old cousin was also killed. The family claims the attack targeted an outdoor barbecue, and several teenagers were killed.
Most reactions I’ve seen consider this a new precedent, in the way the U.S. handles its citizens. But this isn’t new. Government assassinations of U.S. citizens goes back to at least 1969, when the FBI murdered Fred Hampton in his bed as he slept.
I literally just gagged, and I never have psychosomatic reactions like that. Jesus, not only does this kid look harmless, but he looks unsettlingly similar to kids I knew from high school. I know we (libertarians and anyone remotely aware of the state of things, really) say this a lot, but this is disgusting. And frankly, the reasoning of the government is probably circular and a little like this: if al-Qaeda militants are all suicide bombers (omg 9/11 must stop teh crazy brown ppl!), then you can’t ever put them on trial/kill them in retaliation, because they’d already be dead, so you have to kill them before they ever do anything, just in case, because we had a few people that killed Americans that one time kill Americans all the time, everyday, forever. I’m sure there are just oodles of freedom-hating terrorists that are barely driving age, can’t purchase cigarettes, and whose primary concern is asking that one girl in their math class to formal.
This is not ‘politics’. This transcends nationality, political party, and generation; you cannot hide this with flags, political platforms, bumper stickers, or jargon. You cannot rationalize this, nor can you justify it. If you ignore it, like so many tragically will, the power you have to change it will continue to erode and the persistence of human rights violations is inevitable.
The tragedy of the commons, along with subsidized obesity and heart disease, has become the tragedy of the States.
thecheekylibertarian 