I want to like Ron Paul, he makes a lot sense when he talks about monetary policy and the need for greater transparency and oversight of the Federal Reserve, but he loses me when he starts talking about foreign policy and says things like this:
Ron Paul said Monday that President Barack Obama’s targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki might be an impeachable offense.
Asked at a Manchester, N.H. town hall meeting about last week’s killing of the American-born Al Qaeda leader, the Texas congressman said impeachment would be “possible,” but that he wants to know more about how the administration “flouted the law.”
Paul called the killing a movement toward “tyranny.”
“I put responsibility on the president because this is obviously a step in the wrong direction,” Paul said. “We have just totally disrespected the Constitution.”
The comments once again put Paul at odds with his Republican rivals over foreign policy and the war on terror in the latest indication of how his foreign policy views stray far from Republican orthodoxy even in a GOP that’s taken on an increasingly isolationist bent. Candidates like Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney — who included the president in a list of people he commended in a statement released Friday — have generally been supportive of the killing. No one else in the field has spoken out against it.
But Paul’s stuck with the civil libertarians who’ve criticized the targeted killing of an American citizen without public due process.
With all due respect to Congressman Paul… I for one am not going to shed any tears over the killing of a two-bit terrorist thug like Anwar Al-Awlaki.
Mr. Al-Awlaki made a choice, he chose to travel to a foreign country, and he chose to take up arms against the United States of America. As far as I’m concerned he was a traitor who renounced his citizenship and waived his right to due process the moment he made that choice… and he paid the price for it. Congressman Paul is, of course, entitled to his opinion, I doubt he’ll find much support for it outside the fever swamps inhabited by his most ardent supporters though.
H/T: Weasel Zippers.