It is not enough for the Peace Laureate to murder American citizens without charges, without trial and without warning; he must also murder their children too — in the same cowardly, cold-blooded fashion.
Last week, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki — an American teenager — was ripped to shreds by an American drone missile in Yemen. The boy, like his father, Anwar al-Awlaki — had not been charged with any crime whatsoever, much less convicted and sentenced. So what was his offense? He missed his father — who had been in hiding from the Peace Laureate’s publicly stated intention to assassinate him — and he went off to find him.
His search took him into one of the areas of Yemen where there are groups opposed to the murderous regime now controlling the country and slaughtering its own citizens in cold blood — with American weapons, American money, and the full support of the Peace Laureate and his peace-loving administration of peaceful peaceniks. People in such regions — not only in Yemen but all over the world — are of course subject to instant, agonizing death from the Peace Laureate’s brave, bold robot drones, guided by noble warriors nestled in cushioned chairs behind fortress walls thousands of miles away.
And so a button was pushed, and 16-year-old Abdulrahman — and his 17-year-old cousin — were turned into steaming lumps of coagulate gore by the drones of the Peace Laureate. The Laureate’s minions and satraps then spread the story that the child was actually a grown man, “suspected” of being a “militant.” It was, of course, an arrant and deliberate lie, but it did its work. The first — and only — thing the public at large heard about this murder was that yet another dirty terrorist raghead had bitten the dust, and so big fat what?
The boy’s family had a somewhat different view:
“To kill a teenager is just unbelievable, really, and they claim that he is an al-Qaeda militant. It’s nonsense,” said Nasser al-Awlaki, a former Yemeni agriculture minister who was Anwar al-Awlaki’s father and the boy’s grandfather, speaking in a phone interview from Sanaa on Monday. “They want to justify his killing, that’s all.”
The teenager, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was born in Denver in 1995, and his 17-year-old Yemeni cousin were killed in a U.S. military strike that left nine people dead in southeastern Yemen. …
Nasser al-Awlaki said the family decided to issue a statement after reading some U.S. news reports that described Abdulrahman as a militant in his twenties. The family urged journalists and others to visit a Facebook memorial page for Abdulrahman.
“Look at his pictures, his friends, and his hobbies,” the statement said. “His Facebook page shows a typical kid. A teenager who paid a hefty price for something he never did and never was.” The pictures on the Facebook page show a smiling kid out and about in the countryside and occasionally hamming it up for the camera. Abdulrahman left the United States with his father in 2002.
Nasser al-Awlaki said Abdulrahman was in the first year of secondary school when he left Sanaa to find his father. He wrote a note to his mother, saying he missed his father and wanted to see him. The teenager traveled to the family’s tribal home in southern Yemen, but Anwar al-Awlaki was killed Sep. 30 in Yemen’s northern Jawf province, about 90 miles east of the capital. “He went from here without my knowledge,” Nasser al-Awlaki said. “We would not allow him to go if we know because he is a small boy.” He said his grandson, after hearing about his father’s death, had decided to return to Sanaa.
The American boy went off to find his father. Upon learning that his father had been killed by the Peace Laureate, he tried to go back home to his family. But he stopped to have a meal with some men — perhaps friends of his father? Perhaps “militants”? Perhaps neither? We cannot know, because the Peace Laureate and his minions do not discuss their arbitrary killings of people without charges or trial.
So Abdulrahman was blown to bits. The “soldier” who pushed the button or squeezed the joystick that fired the missile got up from his comfortable chair and got into his comfortable car and drove to his comfortable home, where — who know? — he might have had a delicious meal with his wife and kids, then later kicked back for a little R&R with the Wii. The peaceful Peace Laureate went out on the campaign trail, seeking to extend his mission of peace for another term. And the regime he supports in Yemen with peaceful weapons and peaceful money and peaceful pearls of wisdom about peace went on killing its own citizens.
Methinks the Peace Laureate, long derided by some for his youthful callowness, a dearth of proper gravitas, is growing into his imperial role more and more with each passing day. The outright, open murder of an imperial citizen — followed by the completely gratuitous slaughter of the victim’s son — has the authentic ring of ancient Rome about it. That’s how they did it in the high, palmy days of the Caesars; that’s how we do it today. Everything old is new again. Ave, Peacenik!