Writing about the assassination of al-Awlaki, Kevin Drum makes the point that no American government would kill an American citizen if he resided within the borders of the country without due process. As part of his post he slaps down the always appallingly authoritarian Max Boot, one of the last of the public neo-cons. Boot wrote:

Like the rebels during the Civil War, Awlaki and Khan gave up the benefits of American citizenship by taking up arms against their country. They, and other Al Qaeda members, claim to be “soldiers” in the army of Allah; it is only fitting that their avowed enemy, the Great Satan, would take their protestations seriously and treat them just like enemy soldiers. If it’s lawful to drop a missile on a Saudi or Egyptian member of Al Qaeda, it’s hard to see why an American citizen should be exempt.

To which Drum replies:

One of the reasons that liberal democracies constrain the use of force against their own citizens more than they do against noncitizens is because national governments have a very wide array of coercive powers already available to track and control their own citizens. Since this coercive power is inherent in the state, it’s wise to restrain it lest it get out of control. Likewise, national governments don’t generally need to execute their own citizens without trial because they have lots of other alternatives available to them. At a practical level, they often don’t have this power over noncitizens, so killing them is sometimes the only option available.

But this distinction also applies to location: national governments have far more police power available within their own territory than they do overseas.

I have qualms about the US Government killing American citizens, even after years of appeals up and down the legal system. We saw what may have been a miscarriage of justice most recently in the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia. The state can be wrong. Since 1973 138 prisoners scheduled for execution have been exonerated (Death Penalty Info.org).

I have no doubt that al-Awlaki was a threat to the United States and its citizens, just as bin Laden was. But who gets to determine who is a threat and who is not? Suppose we had a President who determined that members of an opposition political party were a threat to the US? And further suppose that the intelligence agencies were completely politicized and agreed with him? Don’t scoff; in a review of former CIA analyst Paul Pillar’s new book Thomas Powers notes that the evidence for Iraqi W.M.D.’s was sparse and uneven:

Pillar stresses that the administration made abundantly clear it wanted a finding for Iraqi W.M.D.’s. At the C.I.A. few resisted. Almost everybody at the agency, from lowliest analyst up to the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, knowing their careers were on the line, called the coin toss on evidence as desired.

On such flimsy choices a war was sold to the American people, resulting in 4,000+ American deaths, thousands of American wounded, at least 100,000 Iraqi dead and probably far more, and the destruction of an entire country’s society.

Could a future intelligence agency respond to a future American President the same way? Could it agree that the removal of his political opposition might be in the best interests of the country? I’d like to think otherwise, but I wouldn’t place a lot of faith in it.