Abdulrahman al-Awlaki & Tariq Aziz, The War on Children

Dear Mr. President,

Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was born on September 13, 1995 in Denver, CO. He had just turned 16 when he died in Yemen at the hands of a CIA assassin sitting in front of a computer screen in Langley, VA. Nine people died in the drone strike that killed Abdulrahman, including his 17-year-old cousin. They were eating outdoors and he was saying goodbye to the cousin he had stayed with while searching for his father whom he had not seen in 2 years. Abdulrahman’s crime was that he was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, alleged to be a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda, a “fiery cleric” who preached jihad and planned terrorist acts against the United States although no evidence was ever presented and there is some question if he was even a member of al-Qaeda let alone a high ranking member. Nevertheless, you put his name on a Kill List in April 2010 and he was assassinated by the CIA in a drone strike in Yemen, two weeks before his son. There were no allegations against Abdulrahman and it is not clear if you also put his name on the Kill List along with his father, but when challenged by a reporter on the legality of killing American citizens without due process and the morality of killing children, your Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs stated that Anwar al-Awlaki should have been more responsible for his son’s welfare. Two weeks after Abdulrahman was murdered, another 16-year old, Tariq Aziz, along with his 12-year old cousin, Waheed Khan, were murdered when, once again, a CIA assassin sitting at a computer screen in Langley, VA launched a Hellfire missile at the car Tariq was driving on the way to pick up his aunt after her wedding in Miran Shah in Waziristan, Pakistan. Tariq’s crime was that 3 days earlier, he volunteered to help document civilian casualties resulting from American drone strikes in and around his village. He was neither a militant nor a member of al-Qaeda, but a boy who wanted to help end the murderous drone strikes which killed innocent civilians, destroyed homes and terrorized the region. There is something inherently evil about using drones to kill and terrorize people thousands of miles away, a primal sense of unfairness that one side risks nothing while the other side is defenseless. But the murder of children is in a class by itself, so morally repugnant that it violates the core instinct of our humanness. Our War on Terror has become a War of Terror and we have become the very thing we fear—violent terrorists and lawless barbarians.

Abdulrahman al-Awlaki

Tariz Aziz