> It's pretty offensive to muslims to lead your characterization of al-Awlaki with the fact that he was Muslim
It was maybe too blunt, but it may have been part of the point to say it this way, as if it were said by the Americans who "didn't care" once they heard it was "just some Muslim-sounding name" and the person was accused of terrorism. Maybe I'm too cynical, but it's not hard to imagine many Americans would forget any outrage they might have had, once they heard the name "al-Awlaki." (I am an American myself, if it matters.)
[Later edit]: To build on the original point, maybe we need to stop using distracting mitigating terms like "drone", "terrorism", "citizen", "country", maybe even "al-Qaeda" etc. There's enough to talk about when we pare it down to: the Executive Branch is unilaterally and secretly a) investigating, adjudicating, and executing, b) spying on everything by default, c) instituting less-drastic but still restrictive measures, such as no-fly lists and watchlists. Is simplifying it to that extreme too naive? Maybe, but I'd rather start there and work forward, than getting sidetracked early about which nationalities it's OK to kill, and precisely which organizations are so knee-jerk evil that the mere whiff of them justifies almost anything.
P.S. I didn't lead with this because my other thoughts are more productive, but maybe you slighted Yemen almost exactly the way you accuse the parent of slighting Islam. At least, I read a negative connotation when you write "he went to Yemen", as if that's already half the case for why he needs to be killed.
It was maybe too blunt, but it may have been part of the point to say it this way, as if it were said by the Americans who "didn't care" once they heard it was "just some Muslim-sounding name" and the person was accused of terrorism. Maybe I'm too cynical, but it's not hard to imagine many Americans would forget any outrage they might have had, once they heard the name "al-Awlaki." (I am an American myself, if it matters.)
[Later edit]: To build on the original point, maybe we need to stop using distracting mitigating terms like "drone", "terrorism", "citizen", "country", maybe even "al-Qaeda" etc. There's enough to talk about when we pare it down to: the Executive Branch is unilaterally and secretly a) investigating, adjudicating, and executing, b) spying on everything by default, c) instituting less-drastic but still restrictive measures, such as no-fly lists and watchlists. Is simplifying it to that extreme too naive? Maybe, but I'd rather start there and work forward, than getting sidetracked early about which nationalities it's OK to kill, and precisely which organizations are so knee-jerk evil that the mere whiff of them justifies almost anything.
P.S. I didn't lead with this because my other thoughts are more productive, but maybe you slighted Yemen almost exactly the way you accuse the parent of slighting Islam. At least, I read a negative connotation when you write "he went to Yemen", as if that's already half the case for why he needs to be killed.