With all the hype about President Barak Obama around campus, I’m beginning to wonder if students know about his “kill list.”
According to The New York Times, this list is the product of an Obama-led “top secret ‘nominations’ process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical.”
The list is composed of people including American citizens. The New York Times even reported the list includes two teenagers.
I find the kill list blatantly unconstitutional, and it should be offensive to every American who promotes peace.
Since when has the power to order the deaths of American citizens without due process been granted to the President?
Does it make anyone feel safer about the terrorist threat?
This is an irresponsible way to deal with potential terrorists — emphasis on these potential terrorists.
The worst part of this whole strategy is that sometimes the targets killed aren’t alone, and the wives, children or bystanders with or around them are killed as well and written off as “collateral damage.”
Probably the most notorious of Obama’s strikes on a kill list target was of the American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric whose crime was instigating violence with his sermons, according to The New York Times.
Although al-Awlaki’s son was not with him at the time of his assassination, the 16-year-old was killed in a separate drone strike two weeks later. His name did not appear on the list.
Why should this boy die because of his parentage?
In another example of a mission gone awry, two neighboring families of a target in Yemen were killed and cluster bombs released at the site took more innocent lives, including the lives of children.
And we wonder why the Middle Eastern peoples aren’t our biggest fans.
This entire kill list is wholly un-American, giving the president ultimate control over the deaths of individuals that aren’t given the right of a trial.
It seems that Obama, who ran in 2008 on a platform of peace and eliminating our presence in the Middle East, has fallen back on his word to America.
His record of ordering the assassinations of U.S. citizens, namely al-Awlaki and his son, are distressing to behold.
Britton, a freshman journalism major from Kannapolis, is an opinion writer.