Trial

On September 30, 2011, a hunting party of US drones found its quarry while flying over the desert in Yemen. They fired Hellfire missiles at the vehicle carrying Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexico–born, firebrand cleric, whom the Barack Obama administration accused of being an operational leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The killing of al-Awlaki was the result of a multiyear operation involving the CIA, Joint Special Operations Command, and allied foreign intelligence services. That same morning, President Obama heralded the strike as a counterterrorism success. But ten years after al-Awlaki’s death and twenty years after 9/11, the United States must reconsider the precedents and prospects of its drone wars. This was the killing of an American citizen without a trial.