President Barack Obama on Thursday defended his administration’s decision to target and kill Anwar Awlaki, who was an American citizen and al Qaeda cleric in Yemen in 2011, by arguing that citizenship shouldn’t necessarily shield Americans who decide to wage war against their homeland abroad.
“For the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen – with a drone, or a shotgun – without due process,” Obama said at National Defense University in Washington. “Nor should any President deploy armed drones over U.S. soil.”
“But when a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America,” he added, “and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens; and when neither the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot – his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a swat team.”
Obama explained that because of the logistical challenges, U.S. troops would have faced substantial risk of harm in trying to reach Awlaki.
“I would have detained and prosecuted Awlaki if we captured him before he carried out a plot. But we couldn’t,” he said.
