Obama’s Blacklist

This is no time for nonsense. It doesn’t matter if the person living in the White House is Democrat or Republican, white or black, young or old. When national security is at stake, the ranks close and people take to the streets in fear.

Now Obama’s done it — Obama, that icon of worldwide progress. In an unprecedented decision, he has authorized that a criminal by the name of Anwar al-Awlaki be included on the list of “human objectives.” What makes his inclusion in this catalogue of “the targeted” — alongside Bin Laden, Al Zawahiri and others of the same ilk — is that, in this case, the man is a citizen of the United States.

The man was born 39 years ago in New Mexico, where his father, a Yemeni who had been a government official in his country, was working to earn his master’s degree in Agriculture. He attended high school in Sanaa, returned to the United States with a scholarship and graduated with a degree in Engineering from the University of Colorado.

Afterward, he began to preach. He served as in Imam in three mosques in the United States, and, in 2004, he returned to Yemen, where he is now in hiding. There are no references in his file that reveal how or when he became part of al-Qaida, but antiterrorism experts refer to him as “the Bin Laden of the Internet,” and they have proof that three of the hijackers of September 11 listened to his sermons, that he advised the elder Nidal Malik — perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre — and that he counseled Umar Farouk, the Nigerian who tried, during Christmas, to blow up a plane full of passengers en route to Detroit.

Given the danger he represents, and indifferent to the fact that this man marked for death is hidden some 7,000 miles — and several national borders — away from Washington, Obama has ordered that he be captured or killed.

I must confess that this whole thing, as brutal as it sounds, doesn’t bother me, nor do I have any moral or legal qualms about it all.