Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The assassinations of Abdulrahman Al-awlaki and Anwar Al-awlaki, two U.S. citizens killed by U.S. drone strikes in Yemen, carry extremely dangerous implications for individual liberty, due process, and severe abuse of government power. We cannot let these incidents slip through the cracks.

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On October 14, 2011, Abdulrahman Al-awlaki was killed by U.S. airstrikes in Yemen. Al-awlaki was a 16 year old American citizen who was eating dinner with a group of his teenage friends when U.S. airstrikes took their lives. Al-awlaki, born in Denver, Colorado, was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki. Anwar al-Awlaki, of course, was the U.S. citizen suspected (but never prosecuted) of working with Al Qaeda; Awlaki was assassinated by the U.S. on September 30, 2011.

In the days before a CIA drone strike killed al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki last month, his 16-year-old son ran away from the family home in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa to try to find him, relatives say. When he, too, was killed in a U.S. airstrike Friday, the Awlaki family decided to speak out for the first time since the attacks.

“To kill a teenager is just unbelievable, really, and they claim that he is an al-Qaeda militant. It’s nonsense,” said Nasser al-Awlaki, a former Yemeni agriculture minister who was Anwar al-Awlaki’s father and the boy’s grandfather, speaking in a phone interview from Sanaa on Monday. “They want to justify his killing, that’s all.”

Abdulrahman Al-awlaki ran away from home to try to find his dad. That’s it. This is a human tragedy, regardless of whether you think the U.S.’s military efforts in the Middle East are justified or not. A society that disregards human life cannot possibly expect to uphold individual liberty.

Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is drenched in blood. Has Obama so much as issued an apology for killing an innocent American teenager and his friends? Nope. Nada.

This is an American teenage kid that we’re talking about, just three years younger than me. He had a Facebook profile. He listened to Akon, Eminem, 50 Cent, and Snoop Dogg. His favorite books were Harry Potter and Twilight. He loved Spongebob Squarepants, Prison Break, Lost, The Simpsons, and the BBC “Planet Earth” series. His favorite movies were Harry Potter, Braveheart, Troy, and Gladiator. In other words, he was a human being.

Have our minds been so numbed by war that we casually brush off the deaths of innocent lives, even an American teenager, taken by the U.S.? Will people continue to defend these political psychopaths who ignore the destruction of innocent life the U.S. has caused around the world? I pray not.

Abdulrahman Al-awlaki (Assassinated October 14, 2011)

Abdulrahman Al-awlaki's U.S. Birth Certificate

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

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“10 years, 2 wars, 919,967 deaths, and $1,188,263,000,000 later, we managed to kill one person.”‎

Even after the supposed victory of bin Laden’s death, who wants to bet that the U.S. military remains in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and the other 130+ countries we occupy for an indefinite amount of time? Osama bin Laden’s death does not magically grant Americans and individuals around the world new freedoms; it does not repeal the U.S. government’s massive infringements on individual liberty; it does not justify the military’s murder of thousands of individuals in the Middle East. The wars will go on, liberty will continue to be trampled and neglected, and the government will merely find a new face to rally the fight against “terrorism,” despite what the talking heads at CNN might predict.

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