Rand Paul’s filibuster highlighted that the Obama administration says it has the right to drop drones on American soil to kill Americans engaged in “active combat” – a phrase the administration refuses to define.  That’s bad enough.

What makes it worse is learning that the government doesn’t always get its targets right. Last year, acting without cause, it killed a sixteen-year-old American boy while he was eating dinner at an outdoor restaurant in Yemen.

Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki’s father was Anwar al-Aulaqi. Both were American citizens. Al-Aulaqi was a known terrorist. On September 30, 2011, the US successfully launched a drone strike against him while he was in Yemen, a country with which we are not at war.

The same drone also killed Samir Khan, another American citizen. According to a story in the New York Times “officials had judged he was not a significant enough threat to warrant being specifically targeted.”

Even worse, one month later, President Obama’s drones again flew over Yemen, this time killing 16-year-old Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki. The teenager’s only crime was that he had traveled to Yemen to search for his father.

The New York Times (of all places) sums it up:

Within just two weeks, the American government had killed three of its own citizens in Yemen. Only one had been killed on purpose.

This is the government that reserves the right to decide what “combat” is and then, as Rand Paul said, “drop a Hellfire missile on your café experience.” Imagine what life in America would be like if our president hadn’t won a Nobel Peace Prize.

Related Articles:

• Leaked Government Emails Confirm Obama Administration Officials Releasing Violent Alien Inmates, Spending Recklessly
• DHS Buys 2 Billion Bullets – Enough for 25 years of War – And Targets of Civilians for Target Practice
• Department of Homeland Security Adds over 2,700 armored urban tanks to its Billions of Bullets
• Sarah Palin: ‘Feds Are Stockpiling Ammunition For Civil Unrest’
• Sen. Feinstein Says All Our Veterans Are Mentally Ill And Can’t Own Guns