Ron Paul Doubles Down: ‘Very Dangerous’ To Celebrate Assassination Of Anwar al-Awlaki
Ron Paul spoke via phone link on this afternoon’s Your World, and doubled down on his previous statement decrying the drone attack that killed al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. He called military strikes against American citizens “very dangerous,” and would only help recruit more al Qaeda members.
Host Neil Cavuto introduced the Congressman by saying “Another big terror guy goes down and Ron Paul says that goes too far.” In response to the attack, Paul thought while Awlaki’s death was probably a net positive, he condemned it on principle.
“You don’t just target people, assassinate them, someone who has not been charged and you have no proof of anything…this has never been done before, and this announced policy was about a year and a half ago by our administration that said American citizens can be targeted for assassination. This is very, very dangerous.”
Paul said he felt the same about bin Laden, even though he had approved the authority to kill the al Qaeda leader, but this situation was different.
“I strongly object to the president institutionalizing a policy that explicitly says he has the authority to target American citizens because he believes they are bad people. You don’t protect bad people because they deserve it. You protect bad people and go through the process because you think a lot about innocent American people never being treated in this manner. this is something that, this is major in many ways about following the rule of law.”
Cavuto sparred with Paul over his strict adherence to the rule of law, saying terrorists would “walk all over him.” Paul said Cavuto was getting “carried away.”
“Maybe we would not be involved in this stuff and we would not precipitate the efforts to commit suicide terrorism against us,” Paul fired back. “That is the number one problem we are facing. How many innocent people do you think we have killed in the meantime of trying to assassinate the American citizen? Say we have killed 100 innocent people trying to hit him with all of our drones. How many new, dedicated al Qaeda are now out there?”
Watch the segment via Fox News:
