December 5, 2010; updated Dec. 25, 2010

At the Center of the 9/11 Story

Anwar al Aulaqi, the first and only known American citizen targeted for assassination by the Obama administration, is believed to be "at the center of the 9/11 story."

On March 25, 2010 Harold Hongju Koh, the Legal Adviser to the U.S. Department of State, addressed the Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law in Washington, D.C. In his talk entitled, "The Obama Administration and International Law," he attempted to justify the assassination of persons, including American citizens, without any legal process whatsoever.

the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda . . . in response to the horrific 9/11 attacks . . .

a state that is engaged in an armed conflict . . . is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force.

precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders . . . during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute “assassination.”

Never mind that in 2004 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that a U.S. citizen, alleged to be an “enemy combatant,” has due process rights. Despite Mr. Koh's claim that such killing is not "assassination," words retain their meaning: assassinate -- to kill by treacherous violence. For example, “a deadly airstrike” on December 24, 2009, which the Yemen Observer said destroyed Mr. Aulaqi’s house, reportedly killed more than 30 people (source: Robert Mackey, New York Times).

To the extent that credence is given to Mr. Koh’s conclusions, based as they are on the presumptions that designations equal actualities and that suspicion equals guilt, our language becomes defective, our law perverse and our society degenerate.

Two weeks after Mr. Koh’s talk the identity of the first United States citizen to be so targeted for killing was reported, first by Reuters, then by the New York Times on April 6, 2010 and in the Washington Post the next day.