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Home Page > Blogs > News blogs > People and Politics > Rachel Maddow, Ron Paul wrong -- US right to kill its own citizens when they are Islamic terrorists

People and Politics by Patrick Roberts

Rachel Maddow, Ron Paul wrong -- US right to kill its own citizens when they are Islamic terrorists

Posted on Saturday, October 01, 2011 at 10:43 AM

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HenrikLarsson | Nov 24, 2011, 07:46 AM EST

well you're Americans, just kill who you want and when you wish seems to be the ticket!

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JohnODriscoll | Oct 10, 2011, 11:21 AM EDT

''Hanged'' Lord Haw-Haw. Meat is hung. Men are hanged. And William Joyce (assuming that's the Lord Haw Haw you mean, for there were several) was an American citizen by birth and a naturalised German citizen. He was hanged on a technicality because, guess what, he lied to get a British passport. Just like perhaps someone who would swear falsely to renounce their prior allegiances to get a US passport hmmm? Someone you were defending in another article on here. Truly the Golden Rule (in the Christian sense at least) is to do unto others as YOU WOULD HAVE them do unto you. I suggest you pause before posting to check your facts a little better in the future. And you think that murder by State is an appropriate response to those who print ''disgusting'' magazines that you don't like hey? Pity poor Hugh Hefner if the likes of you ever get back into power. My granddad died in 1942 torpedoed in the North Atlantic air gap caused by Irish neutrality. He went to war to oppose the sort of people who believed other people should be killed for what they were born as and for what they thought and said. Clearly, he and his comrades didn't get them all and clearly some of them have bred.

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bonjouryall | Oct 09, 2011, 07:52 PM EDT

I'm amazed that Obama claims the right to assassinate Americans that are placed on secret hit lists (the ACLU unsuccessfully sought to make the lsits public). No jury convicted the subject Americans for a crime; they were not even indicted for anyting, despite ample opportunity by the Government. We've been fighting this war against terrorism for ten years. Couldn't we have done something like - pass a law - that authorized the actions in question? We could have attempted a capture similar to Bin Ladin, and, if he was killed resisting, then no problem. But there is no legal authority for assassinating citizens in American jurisprudence. I understand that international law also does not support this action. We kill a citizen after the SOB has had a chance to defend himself in court. This is the civilized rule of law. Obama follows in the footsteps of dictators such as Hitler, Putin, Stalin, and a host of African and Latin American dictators that have claimed the privilege. Didn't the US also kidnap someone in Italy a few years ago? Does anyone remember this? It makes me sick to think of how this country is sinking in so many ways.

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eiriamach | Oct 04, 2011, 03:13 PM EDT

Wonder why 2Bor hasn't visited Cahir O'Dougherty's blog on bullying to defend his primary "avocation." Is it that making bullying a hate crime, as Cahir suggests, might crimp 2Bor's psychopathy, and then he'd have to find a new form of entertainment?

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seanomelbourne | Oct 03, 2011, 06:36 PM EDT

God bless the misguided hate purveyors like 2B, not a coherent word can he speak.In another time he and his teahadist mates would be wearing SS uniforms and killing any one with a contra opinion to his rantings.

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2BorNot2B | Oct 03, 2011, 02:57 PM EDT

To all the bleeding hearts here, longing for Utopia: Maybe you should go and join the crowd at "patchouli, BO and urine-stench square" - You know, go bare your meagerly endowed chest for the world to snicker at, while shouting worn-out clichés. -- That is, if you can manage a coherent word after a bong session, and inhaling with the children of the hippies, whose parents no doubt lathered their progeny with romantic tales of bank-bombings, anarchy and unpaid sex of times gone by. Go commune with the remnants of the Woodstock generation and the Vietnam war protestors hoping for a reprise of the 70's. Hey, Susan Sarandon is already there, and the fat greasy pig Michael Moore may soon step down from his limo to join you. Who knows, maybe you'll end up doing a cameo in one of his 'award-winning documentaries'. Won't that give a boost to your flagging present mood!

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eiriamach | Oct 03, 2011, 09:05 AM EDT

I'm sick and tired of living in a "warrior tribe" society! I'm sick of the wars we're fighting abroad and the horrendous toll they have taken in human lives and handicaps, and in the trillions of dollars paid to support the fighting. I'm sick even of driving through any American city and seeing streets and highways named for military heroes, Colonel so-and-so street and General such-and-such highway and pvt. someone-or-other street! Does anyone really think that the soldiers who fought for this country did it to have street signs constantly reminding us all that we cannot stay out of war for the length of a generation? In this economy, when we cannot afford to build memorials to those who died in the wars, we opt for freebies like renaming our geography for our military. Everywhere the military mentality, the strike-force approach, seems to find casual acceptance. And this article by Patrick Roberts is just another symptom of that illness. I suggest that we stop for a few moments and ask what kind of a people we are becoming. Ajreaper might consider the Japanese Empire and the Nazis' Third Reich, which he cites, as examples of warrior tribes that met the fate of every warrior tribe known to historians. That's ultimately what you're prescribing for the USA.

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eiriamach | Oct 03, 2011, 08:33 AM EDT

It's ironic that Ajreaper and others think that we who insist on the rule of law are the cowards who should hide under our beds until they tell us it's safe to come out. In the kind of police state they're advocating, no one is safe from those with the gunpower once they let the "power" part of that strike-force mentality inspire them to ... shall we call it "excessive zeal"? And they haven't far to go to get there. Under the rule of law, we accept formidable risks. Just to insist on the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' subjects us to living with criminals and terrorists in our midst whenever law enforcement cannot find the evidence to convict them. But such risks are the price we are willing to pay to preserve our freedoms. Freedom is not to be had for the price of a gun. It takes some guts to insist on following due process, whereas you guys who want a gun pointed at anyone who looks cross-eyed at you only delude yourselves that there's safety in striking first and putting the dead on trial afterwards.

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seanomelbourne | Oct 02, 2011, 06:42 PM EDT

AGREAPER you have just graduated to grim reaper you and your cohort 2B should be careful what you wish for it might bite you in the bum.The law which allows the president to kill by drones does not exclude the U.S. Imagine a bachmann or a Palin or the rest of the looney right obtaining that right.

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maryosullivan | Oct 02, 2011, 06:33 PM EDT

Shame on America, Just when you think the government has hit rock bottom it goes one step lower I am almost at a point where Bush looks good

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capmotion | Oct 02, 2011, 04:27 PM EDT

If you believe in a rule of law, and if you believe in the Constitution, and if you believe in due process as a vital part of the constitutional rule of law, you cannot, by any artifice of clever rationalization, support executive assassination of people because they are ostensibly bad, even excessively bad, people. Where would that regime of executive terror end? Who decides when one's malefactions have crossed the line from entitlement to due process to status of outlawry, where anyone can exterminate? We have become what we pretend to abhor, and "decent" people find no problem with it. Shameful and Hitlerian!

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Ajreaper | Oct 02, 2011, 08:58 AM EDT

LOL, review the evidence? The whack job made recordings that are essentially confessions- the government never had to label him because he did it himself. He was a leading member of an organization that has declared war on us- are we going to have a trial for each one of these nutt jobs before we send them to paradise? The 6th ammendment does not apply to enemy combatants in a war and the definition of war and enemy combatants has changed a great deal since our constitution was written and adopted. But hey if you want to be paranoid about how all your rights have been taken from you and the government is going to get you just go hide under your bed- we'll let you know when it's safe to come out.

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fuzzywzhe | Oct 01, 2011, 11:12 PM EDT

You stupid fool. You just gave up your 6th amendment rights. All the government had to do was to issue a warrant for his arrest, try him in absentia, and convict him, and then kill him. But no, instead the government just DECLARED he was a terrorist, had NOBODY review the evidence, and killed him - without any trial at all. You idiots just gave up your right to a trial. This was a GROSS violation of the constitution, and there was already a path to conviction. He's been out there for 15 years, and the government never bothered to do a trial - like they have done with all the other terrorists, including NON Americans. You people are idiots.

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hollabackgurl | Oct 01, 2011, 09:44 PM EDT

Yeehah, bombs away. Because THAT always works. We can't afford due process anymore because of THOSE people see. What do you mean we become THOSE people by denying them our hard one freedoms. I can understand your passion, but it shouldn't override your good sense (and I'm afraid it has here).

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2BorNot2B | Oct 01, 2011, 08:17 PM EDT

Bravo Patrick Roberts, on this one I'm with you! I'd like to know how many of those crying foul here would grant full 'constitutional rights' to any terrorist animal if they themselves, or one of their dearest ones had been a victim of their savagery. -- Wasn't Awlaki the mentor and spiritual guide of that fanatic who killed 13 and injured 32 at Fort Hood? How long before shooting did Nidal Malik Hassan consider the rights of his victims? And wasn't Awlaki also connected to the 9/11 muslim pigs who hijacked and exploded 4 planes killing some 3000 innocents? Swine like Awlaki deserve to be fed strychnine and die a slow painful death. A death by hellfire - which btw he must be enjoying by now - is too good, too easy and too fast for these pigs.-- Eric Holder who refuses to brand them as 'terrorists,' along with Rachel MadCow and Ron Paul deserve to have an unfriendly encounter with one of those foul smelling turbaned troglodytes, after which I'm sure, their idea of 'multiculturalism and tolerance' might undergo a slight correction.

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