“You shall not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God and I punish a parent’s fault in the children, the grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren among those who hate me; but I act with faithful love towards thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” -Exodus 20:4-6

“Parents may not be put to death for their children, nor children for parents, but each must be put to death for his own crime.” -Deuteronomy 24:16

“The offspring of the wicked will never be mentioned again. Prepare a place to slaughter his sons for the sins of their forefathers; they are not to rise to inherit the land and cover the earth with their cities.” -Isaiah 14:21

“And Sir Tristram lifted his sword on high and he smote Sir Nabon’s head from off his body so that it rolled down into the dust upon the ground.

Now when the son of Sir Nabon perceived how that his father was slain, he shrieked like a woman. And he fell down upon his knees and crawled upon his knees to Sir Tristram and catched him about the thighs, crying out to him, ‘Spare me, and slay me not!’

But Sir Tristram thrust him away and said, ‘Who art thou?’

‘Messire,’ said the youth, ‘I am the son of him whom thou hast just slain.’…

Then Sir Tristram looked closely into his face, and he perceived that it was wicked and treacherous and malevolent like to the face of Sir Nabon. Thereupon Sir Tristram said: ‘If a man shall slay a wolf and spare the whelp of the wolf, what shall the world be the better therefor?‘ Therewith he catched the son of Sir Nabon by the hair and dragged him down and smote off his head likewise as he had smitten off the head of his father, so that it fell upon the ground beside the head of Sir Nabon.”

-Howard Pyle, “The Story of the Champions of the Round Table”, a moralized children’s version of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur from 1907 (my emphasis)

“Airstrikes, believed to have been carried out by American drones, killed at least nine people in southern Yemen, including a senior official of the regional branch of Al Qaeda and an American, the 17-year-old son of a Qaeda official killed by the United States last month, according to the government and local reports on Saturday.

Fighting also escalated in the capital, Sana, where at least 12 antigovernment protesters were killed by security forces near the Foreign Ministry and at least four civilians were killed in a battle near the airport, opposition officials said.

…

The killing of [Awlaki’s] son in a drone attack on Friday night, if confirmed, would be the third time an American was killed by such a United States attack in Yemen, although it was not clear if the son was an intended target. A second American, Samir Khan, the editor of Al Qaeda’s online magazine, was killed in the attack on Mr. Awlaki, which was launched from a new secret C.I.A. base on the Arabian Peninsula.

The Yemeni authorities said that there were two airstrikes in Shabwa Province on Friday night, and that Ibrahim al-Banna, the Egyptian-born leader of the media wing of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was killed.

The strikes hit two cars and wounded six people, according to a statement on the official Saba news agency. The Defense Ministry said the strikes were carried out by Yemeni forces. “This comes in the framework of the Yemeni government’s counterterrorism efforts with the cooperation of the international community,” a statement on the ministry’s Web site said.

—New York Times

“In the days before a CIA drone strike killed al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki last month, his 16-year-old son ran away from the family home in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa to try to find him, relatives say. When he, too, was killed in a U.S. airstrike Friday, the Awlaki family decided to speak out for the first time since the attacks.

“To kill a teenager is just unbelievable, really, and they claim that he is an al-Qaeda militant. It’s nonsense,” said Nasser al-Awlaki, a former Yemeni agriculture minister who was Anwar al-Awlaki’s father and the boy’s grandfather, speaking in a phone interview from Sanaa on Monday. “They want to justify his killing, that’s all.”

The teenager, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was born in Denver in 1995, and his 17-year-old Yemeni cousin were killed in a U.S. military strike that left nine people dead in southeastern Yemen.”

–The Washington Post

“News reports, based on government sources, originally claimed that Awlaki’s son was 21 years old and an Al Qaeda fighter (needless to say, as Terrorist often means: “anyone killed by the U.S.”), but a birth certificate published by The Washington Post proved that he was born only 16 years ago in Denver.” –Glenn Greenwald

“I hate to hear of this. I have no sympathy for the father, but a 16 year old? He probably was a terrorist in the making, but I can’t celebrate over this. ” -antistatist, from Sean Hannity’s forum

“They teach them how to handle AK’s when they are 10 years old. Kill it before it grows. Good shootin!” -sealaw, Sean Hannity’s forum

“Americans who’ve seen Godfather Part II understand his children must die too:

DISSOLVE TO: A remote mountainside area of Sicily. We hear a marching band playing in the background. The introduction is overlaid:

THE GODFATHER WAS BORN VITO ANDOLINI IN THE TOWN OF CORLEONE IN SICILY. IN 1901 HIS FATHER WAS MURDERED FOR AN INSULT TO THE LOCAL MAFIA CHIEFTAIN. HIS OLDER BROTHER PAOLO SWORE REVENGE AND DISAPPEARED INTO THE HILLS, LEAVING VITO, THE ONLY MALE HEIR, TO STAND WITH HIS MOTHER AT THE FUNERAL. HE WAS NINE YEARS OLD.”

–Another quote from Hannity’s forum

“The sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons to the seventh generation… Heard that somewhere… ” –sealaw again

“Yep I think there was some war tactician who came up with the ‘If you expect the war to last a long time, kill all the children lest they grow into your enemy and the women lest they bear no future enemy warriors against you'” –A_K_, same forum

“How immediate of a threat was this kid again? ” –Ninjacorpse, same forum

“Stop the due process BS – I was on the other side of this argument when it was Alwaki, because he was the target of the strike, without process due an American citizen. Here, the kid was not the intended target – the AQ bigshots he was hanging out with were…he was simply collateral damage. He should have picked his friends more carefully.

I haven’t seen any crying like this about our own soldiers killed by friendly fire – what’s different about this – other than the fact that he was a terrorist’s kid? Apparently that gives him elevated status with the left… “

–sealaw again

“I’m loving this precedent. Should make the war hawks sleep well at night knowing that once an arbitrary and secret panel of politicians and personal appointees of the executive can declare you a terrorist in secret and kill you without due process.

The libs can sleep well knowing that Obama is continuing the war they want Obama to finish, if only to make GWB look bad. There’s political points to be had! Let’s face it, you really weren’t anti war, you were just anti-Bush.”

–Nevarwinter, same forum

“I wonder if the people of the future will vilify America like we remember the Romans as crucifying and feeding Christians to lions. ” –Shastarocket, from a basketball forum

“You guys believe this was an executive decision? I have a hard time believing this kind of a thing wouldn’t happen under another president. It just seems like the American way…” –Shastarocket

“What do you guys think about the airstrikes on Germany during WWII? Do you think these only killed Nazis older than 18 years? For the record, I think the Americans are the good guys in both cases. It’s easy to sit at home and condemn, from a position of perceived moral superiority. But war is ugly, and never fully just.” –AroundtheWorld

“Wow. I can’t believe you’d make such a comparison…” –rhadamanthus again

“- war
– you are the good guys
– people get killed who individually possibly/probably do not deserve to be a target in any way
– doing nothing is arguably not an option
– surgical strikes cannot be targeted precisely enough (yet) to only take out the actual target

I do think there are some commonalities, yes. ”

–AroundtheWorld again

“At 8:30 on the evening of April 2, 1917, President Wilson appeared before a joint session of Congress and asked for a declaration of war against Germany in order to “make the world safe for democracy.” On April 4, Congress granted Wilson’s request.

In 2011, American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the President Obama of its decisions. There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.”

–Hightop

“I have no problem with taking out someone that is 16 years old if they are a legitimate threat to the USA. Second, it has always been such that those in power have a double standard, this is no different. Look at our position on nuclear weapons, etc. The fact is that we do have a double standard… all super powers do.” -Nook

“Collateral damage happens all the time. Millions of innocent people have died from different wars. The concern here is if the kids were targeted or did they just happen to be there while they were targeting a someone important.” –rockbox

“The problem is. . . Al Quaida talks like that. To them . . the 9/11 Victims are just collayeral damage in a war against the west. I don’t agree . . . but When does enough ‘Collateral Damages’ . . .becomes an atrocity? or simply wrong? Do we have a magic number for that?” –Rocket River

“Excellent point… and I agree with you. I do not know where you draw that line. Obama has turned out to be quite the little hawk has he not… you will notice all the Republicans are not saying anything, as he has out done them… Mitty wont even mention foreign policy in the 2012 election.” -Nook again

“Disregarding the absurdity of a 16yr old threatening a world superpower, what if they’re not a legitimate threat? And how do we, the people, have any idea if the threat is legitimate or not? We’re not privy to the evidence, we’re not even able to trust in a judicial process. It’s strictly after-the-fact hearsay.

Second, it has always been such that those in power have a double standard, this is no different. Look at our position on nuclear weapons, etc.

>>The fact is that we do have a double standard… all super powers do.

Extending this line of thinking can take you down a pretty unpleasant path.”

–rhadamanthus again