The Blaze
written by Jonathon M. Seidl
Friday September 30, 2011
The news has been plentiful with chatter about the death of Anwar al-Alwalaki — the American-born terror leader — today. And plenty of people responded. But not many are grabbing as many headlines as GOP presidential hopefuls Ron Paul and Gary Johnson.
First, Ron Paul.
On an appearance on MSNBC Friday, Paul blasted the president for “assassinating” al-Alwalaki.
“I don‘t think that’s a good way to deal with our problems,” he told MSNBC. “Al-Awlaki was born here; he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. No one knows if he killed anybody. We know he might have been associated with the underwear bomber. But if the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it’s sad.”
Fellow candidate Gary Johnson was also critical of the administration. He told Fox News he had “mixed feelings” about the strike since he believed Awlaki to be “entitled to due process.”
“Well I — as president of the United States I would have been a lot more transparent about that, and I understand all of the accusations against al-Awlaki and they are very significant, and I don’t want to minimize at all the threat that he was posing to the United States. But he is a U.S. citizen, he was a U.S. citizen, and never before have we targeted a U.S. citizen for death,” the former New Mexico governor said.
He added later that Alwaki is “the first person to be denied” due process, and called it “unprecedented.”
“This is the first U.S. citizen that has ever been targeted for death by the United States government,” he said. “So this is unprecedented, and I certainly at best have mixed feelings about this — this is why this country was established, was you can’t have a government going through the countryside rounding up citizens because they are a threat to the country and then putting them to death.”
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