Just yesterday, I mentioned that there might be cases where it's legitimate for immigrants not to have exactly the same rights as U.S. citizens - but equality under the law wasn't one of them.
Now let's put the shoe on the other foot. Do U.S. citizens have superrights that grant them some godlike status to enjoy even when they themselves have spurned the protections of the U.S. Constitution? That's really the argument that the ACLU and other critics are making regarding the nonaccidental droning death of Anwar al-Aulaqi (or al-Awlaki - it seems we can take our pick of spellings of Arabic names these days) and his pal Samir Khan, both of whom, apparently, were at one time American citizens.
I say "at one time," because surely even the ACLU does not suppose that either of these gents was really an "American" in any but the most meaningless, bureaucratic, de jure sense, i.e., by virtue of having been born in the U.S. (Incidentally, very few countries of the world choose to define citizenship by place of birth; most define it by the nationality of the parents).
U.S. citizenship law is complex, and I know it has changed in some ways since the days when I was schooled to interpret it as a consular officer, but I do recall there are provisions for a citizen born in the U.S. of foreign parents to choose his citizenship at age 18; there are provisions for any U.S. citizen to renounce his citizenship. Bureaucrat-lawyers may want to argue that because Anwar and Samir had not stopped by their local U.S. consulate in Sanaa to fill out the paperwork for that, they were still "Americans." But I think realistically we all understand how this pair of terrorists probably couldn't find time in their busy schedules to make the trek to the Yemeni capital from their mountain hideout. I think we also understand that fulfilling the niceties of U.S. regulation probably was not high on this dynamic duo's list of priorities. (Or shall we suppose that they treasured their U.S. citizenship and planned to come back and live in the U.S. after it became a Muslim state?)
In fact, both had clearly chosen to define themselves as belligerents in the war of terror against the U.S. That to me is all we need to know. In World War II I'm certain there were some American-born Germans fighting on the German side; I'm going to go out a limb here and guess that our troops storming Omaha beach did not wait to return fire until they had seen the passports of the soldiers firing at them. The ACLU's concern for legal niceties may be valuable at times but it seems out of place here: quixotic but not noble, pedantic and not useful.
Good thoughts here. I wonder if there is a legal provision allowing a nation to revoke an individual's citizenship? If so, our folks should have taken the time to delete these thugs.
Posted by: Gabbygeezer | October 02, 2011 at 11:34 AM