Council on Foreign Relations
By: Jonathan Masters
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Officials in the Obama administration have confirmed that a missile strike from a U.S. aircraft killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior al-Qaeda leader and radical Islamic propagandist in Yemen. The death of the American-born cleric is the latest in a string of U.S. targeted killingsfocusing on al-Qaeda leadership, including the raid on Osama bin Laden in May and the drone strike on al-Qaeda’s number two, Atiyah Abd Rahman, in August 2011. As a leading al-Qaeda recruiter linked to terror plots on U.S. soil (WSJ), including the 2009 Fort Hood shooting and the failed Christmas day bombing in New York of the same year, al-Awlaki was a priority target.
While the attack highlights the growing lethality of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, it also shines new light on several controversial issues, including the legality of targeting U.S. citizens; concerns over the scope of U.S. counterterrorism operations; and debate over the possibility of blowback from U.S. targeted killing policy. Mark Fallon, the former commander of the USS Cole Task Force in Yemen, told CFR that al-Awlaki’s death “is extremely significant. He was probably the most dangerous threat to the homeland of the United States because of the following he drew, both in the United States and also in the UK.” But CFR Mideast expert Ed Husain says while the cleric’s killing is a significant event for Muslim activists in the West, we shouldn’t “get carried away, because he will be viewed as a martyr.”
Advocacy groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights argue that U.S. targeted killing policy, which includes the use of lethal force outside of declared theaters of combat, is “unlawful and unacceptable.” The United States, they argue, can only carry out a legitimate killing operation in such areas after appropriate due process or only as a last resort to address an imminent threat of deadly harm. Under domestic law, Bush and Obama administration…
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To read the full article please click on the link below:http://www.cfr.org/yemen/yemeni-clerics-killing-praise-unease/p26089