Are you familiar with drones?
>What Saudi Arabia did here is just abhorrent, and akin to something out of the Sopranos or Goodfellas.
Funny that you mention this. Surely this violent act is shocking and catches the eye. But, the thing is that it can be argued that things like their financing of terrorism, or to be more direct their ongoing bombing of Yemen and funding of civil war is much more harmful than this one assassination -- much like Tony Soprano's asbestos dumping and HUD scams probably ended up causing more harm than the handful of people he "whacked"...
Less overtly brutal, not necessarily less harmful.
when was the last time an opposition journalist was targeted for a drone strike by the us?
I personally do believe the official US story that he was actively recruiting and actively participating in Al Qaeda. but a lot of people have debated with me otherwise.
Clearly, he was "in" the Al Qaeda culture, but publicly at least... some believed him to only be a preacher.
War is messy, to say the least. I'm not sure if the truth will ever come out. Nevertheless, I'm personally in the belief that Anwar Al Awlaki was too personally connected to a number of attackers, so he almost certainly was an operative.
Nevertheless, I bring up this example to demonstrate that the line between "operative", "journalist", and "preacher" can very well be blurred during wartime. Regardless, the US certainly ordered an assassination through our Drone technology.
Much of the evidence to his Al Qaeda "operative" connections is classified unfortunately. So the US Documents at least, won't be released for many years to come. In any case, even with only the public information, its clear that there's a "Lot of Smoke" as they say, and where there is smoke, there's probably a fire. But nothing really proves him to be an operative publicly (just a lot of corroborating evidence and close personal-connections to attackers).
Drones target fighters, and they sometimes kill civilians. They don't target civilians. If you don't think there is a difference there fine, but many lose sight of it.
While I personally agree with you, I know people who will vehemently disagree with you on this factoid.
I wouldn't necessarily call him a "general", but perhaps an "operative". He had way too many connections with prominent attackers, so surely he was related to them. But once again, US-evidence of his operations remain classified and thus force me to only speculate on the matter.
At bare minimum, Anwar Al Awlaki was a publisher and prominent writer to the Al Qaeda magazines. So yes, he was an "enemy journalist" in some regards. The US alleges he did more than just write however, and that's why President Obama ordered the drone strike.
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My ultimate point is that the line between "journalism" and "operative" is incredibly blurry, even to US Officials.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/judge-all...
Well, your country (probably) doesn't chop up people in your embassies, but your country most certainly does assassinations and abductions in foreign countries world wide. It's proven fact.
Yes, there are genocidal Rwandan warlords stealing resources in the Congo.
Yes, Aung San Suu Kyi and her boys are doing a pretty brutal number on the Rohingya right now.
Yes, there are murderous cartels operating in Mexico.
Yes, the United States is holding children in camps in deserts.
Etc etc etc.
What I'm trying to say is, YES, there is a lot of misery in the world. But right now we're talking about the fact that you've taken a chainsaw to a reporter for saying that he thinks you might be too brutal. Can we stop with the what aboutism for a moment and just kind of let that sink in for a second?
That's incredibly untrue. The drone assassination program was making ~2 strikes a week under Obama in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, and other places. After Trump took over that pace has accelerated and safety controls have been removed.
What would you call these if not assassinations? I mean, nothing as barbaric as sawing a guy's body - but we're blowing up someone who we hope is our target and everyone near by. I'm not sure that's better.
One difference is that the US isn't killing Western Journalists. The US does kill people, and coincidentally their children, for saying things they don't like though. Anwar al-Awlaki was an Islamic preacher, and US citizen, who preached in favor of jihad against the US. He was killed by drone strikes. Later, his teenage son, also an American citizen, was killed when the US "accidentally" blew up a restaurant where he was eating with friends. Still later, in another bit of bad luck, his eight year old daughter was killed by US forces in a commando raid.
The US absolutely commits assassinations.
Your government kills people with drones, often with many innocent people as casualties along with it, without any form of process and even US citizens.