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Comment by bwaldrep | Hacker News Reader

No explanations given by the author. Here is some general background on the father: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

Edit: Note I am not defending the killing of the grandson by any means. However, I did notice that the father was tried in a court in Yemen, and the judge ordered him to be apprehended "dead or alive." http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2010/11/08/Cleric-say... I was just surprised that people are so suspicious of any claim that the father was anything other than an ordinary citizen minding his own business, yet accept the narrative presented in the original article at face value.

eksith asked for evidence that the father was a "bad dude." I provided some. It is perfectly fine to argue that this isn't justification for death, but that wasn't briancaw's point. This merely seems to indicate that the narrator might not be providing the most balanced perspective.

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Let me ask again... what evidence do you have that he specifically deserved to be killed without explanation?

Let me put it in another way, since the question doesn't seem to be making sense to you: If your father happened to be Timothy McVeigh, should the government target you for death?

Edit: I just read your edit and I apologize for the tone of my post. It wasn't called for. I could blame the lack of coffee or that I was tired, but the fact is, these types of stories really bother me and I didn't think it through before posting.

I'm sorry.

Edit2: My request for evidence was for the son; not the father. The primary subject of the article was described as a typical 16-year old with the misfortune of simply being the son of an alleged terrorist. Where was the evidence that he deserved death?

Thanks. There seems to be no public evidence that the grandson deserved death. The white house's official stance is that someone else was being targeted and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gibb's quote "he should have a more responsible father," is pretty horrible. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/robert-gibbs-anwar-...

The author of the article makes it sound like the whole family were innocent american tourists, that the father was targeted without cause, and the grandson was specifically targeted. While the killing of the father may not have been legal, and the killing of the grandson appears to have been a horrible tragedy, the author's account of the situation is wildly misleading.

If Timothy McVeigh's son left to go hang out with his dad who was actively a terrorist and then ended up dead I would dig a little deeper before acting like our entire intelligence community is evil.

If a sixteen year old kid wanted to see his father, whom he hadn't seen in years, you'd have to dig a little deeper?

Seriously?

Like.. Ignoring everything else wrong with this story, that's still pretty fucked up for you to even imply.

Yeah, a real dangerous dude. All his alleged crimes basically involve talking to people; no wonder we sent some drones over there to wipe him and all his relatives out.

Note that there's not even any concrete factual accusations of him being involved with planning actual attacks, just 'he spoke to', 'was associated with', 'allegedly involved in'. You really think something that flimsy is worth murdering dozens of people with a drone?

I would certainly hope that if a few disgruntled people alleged that you were involved in crimes, you'd actually get a fair trial instead of a remote control execution. But maybe that's just not the world we live in.

Yes, well, he did seem to be an al-Qaeda recruiter and propagandist. Does it justify his extrajudicial execution? Depends on who you ask, obviously, but he wasn't an innocent bystander. He certainly knew the risks.

> he wasn't an innocent bystander

any proof of that?

He preached holy war. Getting blown up by an unmanned killing machine is precisely the sort of thing he encouraged young people to do.

Where, exactly, lies the line that you cross with speech that justifies being murdered in cold blood? Let's figure this out, then.

Westboro Baptist? Are they extreme enough? How about skinheads or white supremacists? They certainly advocate for violence against innocents, they probably even call it holy war.

If the United States seriously starts advancing the idea that speech alone can justify an execution, then it's all over. There's no point in pretending there's anything resembling freedom in this country anymore if that's the case.

You simply cannot justify executing someone based solely off speech. It doesn't matter what the speech is. You have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt actual, active involvement in a crime to justify murdering anyone, let alone a US citizen. The fact that the US government gets away with murdering people all the time doesn't change anything.

You can certainly respond to 'undesirable' speech in appropriate ways based on the law. There are lots of examples of countries where undesirable speech - whether it criticizes tyrants or promotes violence against minorities - can be punished with fines or jail time. That's certainly a lot better than an execution.

I'm not justifying it, he should have been charged before a court of law. What I'm saying is that he certainly knew what he was getting into.

then bring him to a court of law and proove it. Could have been and was done with nazis who had bloid of millions on their hands but can't be done here? why? because in the process there wouldnt be excuse for suspending constitution?

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