{"id":29184,"date":"2013-11-13T15:59:37","date_gmt":"2013-11-13T15:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=29184"},"modified":"2013-11-13T16:03:23","modified_gmt":"2013-11-13T16:03:23","slug":"of-death-and-children-one-way-or-the-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=29184","title":{"rendered":"Of death and children, one way or the other"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — thoughts triggered by the Jeremy Scahill & Lawrence Wright documentaries ]
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I don’t really enjoy writing this, because I’m loath to suggest that sixteen year old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki<\/strong> was in fact<\/em> a combatant, though it seems to me that he might have been. I was viewing documentaries the other night, though, and when Jeremy Scahill<\/strong>‘s Dirty Wars<\/a> [upper panel, below], which deals with Abdulrahman, was followed directly by Lawrence Wright<\/strong>‘s My Trip to Al-Qaeda<\/a> [lower panel, below], the age at which Ayman al-Zawahiri<\/strong> began his career as a radical stuck out like a sore thumb:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here, then, is Wright’s commentary on the young al-Zawahiri:<\/p>\n

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man behind Bin Laden, a doctor, product of a distinguished family, from an exclusive suburb of Cairo called Maadi, his father was a professor of pharmacology; his mother — the daughter of a diplomat\u2026 Ayman had started a cell to overthrow the Egyptian government in 1966. He was 15 years old.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How much agency do we believe fifteen and sixteen year olds have, anyway? Do we allow them to drink a beer?<\/p>\n

If we are ever going to have a debate as to the moral high ground in matters of the extrajudicial killing of US citizens, it seems to me that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki rather than his father Anwar <\/strong>should be the test case we focus in on.<\/p>\n

The truth is that young people, sometimes very young people, do on occasion play with fire. I don’t think that means we should “burn” them on suspicion, but I do think it’s part of the larger picture. And in this case, that means “drone warfare” and “targeted killings” aren’t the only relevant categories: we may need to factor the issue of “child soldiers” into our considerations as well.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Here, to give the Awlaki family’s side of the story, is an ACLU video with Abdulrahman Awlaki’s grandfather:<\/p>\n

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