Gary Johnson joined fellow Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul in criticizing the drone killing of U.S.-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, saying he had "mixed feelings" about the strike since he believed Awlaki to be "entitled to due process."
“Well I — as president of the United States I would have been a lot more transparent about that, and I understand all of the accusations against al-Awlaki and they are very significant, and I don’t want to minimize at all the threat that he was posing to the United States. But he is a U.S. citizen, he was a U.S. citizen, and never before have we targeted a U.S. citizen for death," the former New Mexico governor said on Fox News.
Awlaki, who was born in the United States, was an outspoken cleric cited in terrorist attacks, including that of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, and Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square last year.
Johnson called Alwaki "the first person to be denied" due process, and cautioned against similar attacks in the future.
"This is the first U.S. citizen that has ever been targeted for death by the United States government. So this is unprecedented, and I certainly at best have mixed feelings about this — this is why this country was established, was you can’t have a government going through the countryside rounding up citizens because they are a threat to the country and then putting them to death," Johnson said.
Johnson went on to say that giving the death sentence without due process "is not why this country is great." He did, however, say that he would continue drone attacks on non-American terrorist leaders as president.
Johnson's comments mirrored those of Ron Paul, who said that he didn't think the strike was "a good way to deal with our problems."
"If the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it's sad," Paul said earlier Friday.
