Every person has a different take on what value there is in being the citizen of a certain country.
In this country, that citizenship also stands for a very specific set of rights that a person is entitled to and legal grounds upon which those rights can be taken away.
An ongoing debate over citizenship has intensified throughout the country following the death of Anwar al-Awlaqi, a member of Al-Qaeda and U.S. citizen killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen.
The debate revolves around what protections citizenship extend to those who are members of terrorist groups and enemies of the U.S. government and whether lethal actions like this drone strike constitute infringement of their right to due process under the law.
Frankly, I do not see how there is any debate here unless we magically stopped being the United States of America overnight.
The assassination of a U.S. citizen by his very government is a grave violation of constitutional protections and flies directly in the face of what it means to be an American.
The issue here is not whether Awlaqi was an enemy of the people or government of the United States, his involvement with Al-Qaeda clearly implied him as such.
What lies at the heart of this “debate” is the fact that his citizenship was not revoked through due process under the law, nor did the order to assassinate him made in April 2010 by President Obama receive any review by Congress.
Think about that for a second, based entirely on information from intelligence agencies the President of the United States authorized the assassination of an American citizen.
Just replace a few of the words in that sentence and you could just as easily be talking about any number of dictators throughout history that were able to kill citizens without legal recourse.
That is the key issue.
Had Awlaqi been apprehended and charged for the crimes he was accused of, his constitutional rights would have been upheld and in turn the very ideals upon which our entire war on terror stand would have been upheld as well.
If our citizenship and constitutional rights—the very definition of what it means to be American—can be so easily cast aside in the name of any war then we cease to have any justification in the cause we are fighting.
Whether it be through legal recourse in revoking citizenship, something proposed in Congress but ultimately shot down, or the concerted effort to apprehend American citizens linked to terrorist organizations rather than marking them for assassination, we cannot allow this incident to become the precedent upon which future decisions rest.
If we are willing to kill our own citizens without affording them due process, even those who have turned their back against their country and allied with an enemy, we have already surrendered the very essence of our United States of America.
No victory is worth that cost.