Reader el asked me to write about the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki by the US government. I didn’t want to address this topic because I find that the entire discussion surrounding it is too cynical for me to stomach, but I can’t dismiss a regular reader’s request.
Here are the terms that are used to debate this issue on blogs of different political leanings:
An American citizen was killed by the United States because of his speech. And, no, it wasn’t Glenn Beck (although by the standards used here, it could have been).
1. Anwar al-Awlaki was an American because he was born in the United States. He was raised in the United States until he was 7. He was college-educated in the United States, including two graduate degrees. He was an imam at a mosque in the United States. And MSNBC is one of the few places willing to call him an “American” and not just “U.S. born.” He had dual citizenship in the U.S. and Yemen. He has as much right to be called American as Rick Perry.
Do you see anything disturbing in the quoted passage? “American, citizen, American, American, citizenship, American.” And this is just from one short paragraph. Whenever one starts reading any piece on al-Awlaki, one immediately notices that there is more flag-waving than on the 4th of July.
Who cares where anybody was born? Who gives a rat’s ass what citizenship anybody has? The US hands out its citizenships through the means of a lottery. Mail-order brides and religious fanatics of any persuasion from all over the world are handed out these citizenships like frakking candy.
What are we even talking about here? If anybody wants to start a discussion on whether the US should stop sending drones to kill people all over the world, I want to join that conversation. But the moment we start subdividing people into first-class and second-class based on a flapping piece of paper you can win in a lottery, I have no more interest in such a discussion. If it’s wrong to kill supposed terrorists overseas, then it’s wrong to kill all of them. If it’s right to kill them, ditto.
We’ve seen this obsession with when and how one was born with the entire brouhaha over Obama’s birth certificate. Then, we saw the same kind of insanity develop over the birth of Sarah Palin’s most recent child. There is more discussion of where and how people are born in political media than in a psychoanalyst’s office.
After the accident of getting born here or there, to these parents or to those, on this stretch of land or that one, much more important things begin to take place. It is what happens during an individual’s entire life, instead of what happens during the few hours of their birth, that should matter.
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment