I see we’ve just managed to annihilate Anwar al-Awlaki, who was hiding in a compound in Yemen. Good work.
I often criticize president Obama, but I’ll gladly give him praise and credit for this, and for having steadfastly maintained the pressure on al-Qaeda throughout his term in office. The same also, of course, to the CIA and the other forces involved.
Many will cavil at the killing of an American citizen in this way (although even the ACLU gave up on this one). I think it provides an opportunity to reflect on the difference between being a citizen of a state, and membership in a nation.
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Ron Paul is among those who are criticizing Obama for the killing. I guess it’s OK to die if you’re an American citizen who can’t get health insurance, but not if you’re a terrorist.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2011/09/30/2011-09-30_ron_paul_gop_presidential_hopeful_blasts_president_obama_for_assassinating_anwar.html?r=news
This doesn’t reflect the priority of “nationhood” over citizenship. That’s certainly not what our rulers have in mind. They’ve shown a clear preference for “subjects” over co-nationals. What they want is citizenship reduced to a kind of global subject status that can be attacked and suppressed anywhere if it sufficiently rebels against its power.
The idea that they’re prioritizing nationhood is the lie the members of the nation tell themselves so they don’t have to face the perverse reality that their rulers are killing their nation.
Eric,
I agree with you that our ruling class — on both sides of the aisle — clearly views the USA purely as a “proposition nation”, and imagines (utterly wrongly, I think, and to our existential peril) that a nation can thrive when bound together by nothing more than declared fealty to a set of philosophical abstractions.
But this particular act was clearly at odds with that view, in that it set killing a public enemy above a strict adherence to the abstract principles of the law. It’s exactly this anomalous re-prioritization, this ad-hoc inconsistency, that the ACLU, and now Ron Paul, have objected to.
Oh my!
Only people who don’t grasp the paired notions of sincerity/insincerity would even suggest that declared fealty (to anything…) has the power to bind.
And who claims that even sincere fealty to a philosophical abstraction has such power? Philosophical hairs need splitting in the service of intelligibility… The concept of freedom is certainly abstract. Freedom itself (assuming there is such) is anything but abstract.
Exactly right you are, Bob.
I guess I just don’t see it as an “anomalous re-prioritization” but in keeping with its “vision” of a kind of “post-national” citizenship beyond traditional nationalism and even “proposition nationalism”.
So then, Eric: it seems you’re saying that al-Awlaki was an enemy of that transnational polity, not just of the US, and that’s why he had to go.
You might be right. The administration’s behavior certainly seems more consistent that way.