compunction about the president using extreme counterterrorism measures. the president using lethal force against bad guys. in the case against the american whose killing seems to have inspired a lot of the secret legal reasoning, the case against anwar al awlaki doesn t seem to tug at the heart strings. adds a senior recruiter for al qaeda he was associated with the mass shooting attack at ft. hood in 2009 in texas and with the attempted christmas day airliner attack, the underwear bomber, right? later that same year. if we accept that the u.s. is at war with al qaeda, then it is not a stretch to believe that the u.s. would target a prominent al qaeda figure like anwar al awlaki in that war. with some exceptions, the broad political and moral issue here is not an issue with u.s. forces killing bad guys. the issue here is who is a bad guy and how do you figure it out? if this is the means by which we re going to decide not that you re going to be arrested and tried, but the means by wh