Louis Costanza understood it forty years ago.
It took me a little longer.
More on that in a minute.
(CNN) -- The U.S. drone killing of American-born and -raised Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a major figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has re-energized a national debate over the legal and moral quandaries of a government deliberately killing a citizen.
The issue has been roiling throughout the U.S. campaign against terrorism, but Friday's drone missile killing of al-Awlaki and a second American, Samir Khan, provided a stark, concrete case of a U.S. policy that authorizes death for terrorists, even when they're Americans, analysts said.
A government source who was briefed Friday morning by the CIA confirmed the U.S. missile strike, which killed two other people in a car in Yemen.
While President Obama on Friday applauded the U.S. action as "a major blow" against al Qaeda, civil libertarians assailed the U.S. decision to kill a citizen.
"The targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law," ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement. "As we've seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts."
Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul denounced Obama for "assassinating" al-Awlaki, saying that the American cleric should have been tried in a U.S. court.
"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 told reporters after a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, Friday.
"Al-Awlaki was born here, he's an American citizen, he was never tried or charged for any crimes," Paul said. "To start assassinating American citizens without charges - we should think very seriously about this."
But U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-New York, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the lethal strike was lawful.
"It was entirely legal. If a citizen takes up arms against his own country, he becomes an enemy of the country. The president was acting entirely within his rights and I fully support the president," King said.
Al-Awlaki was believed by U.S. authorities to have inspired acts of terrorism against the United States, including a fatal shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, and the December 25 bombing attempt to bring down an airliner flying to Detroit.
His facility with English and technology made him one of the top terrorist recruiters in the world, and he was considered the public face of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.
First things first.
Any reasonable, God fearing human being is entitled to the mixed feelings that are inevitable when a life is intentionally taken.
From "thou shalt not..." to "...judgement is mine, saith...", residence on the mortal coil comes fully loaded with suggestions, guidelines, rules and regs regarding what we can, and cannot, should, and should not, do when it comes to dealing with our fellows.
And anyone who callously and dispassionately ends the life of another deserves whatever retribution awaits.
Here and now.
Or later and wherever.
Simply put, killing anyone for any reason in this life should, at the very least, give one pause.
That said, terrorism, by its nature, is custom made to exploit the very quality in our natures that inspires that pause.
Compassion.
And the accompanying, spiritually instinctive desire to find a way, any way, to forgive our transgressors their transgressions.
Meanwhile, terrorism, as opposed to more historically conventional forms of warfare, operates without any sense of parameter, any sense of "fair or unfair", any acknowledgement that there are any lines that should not, must not and/or will not be crossed.
Religious fanatics in this day and age would view a "Geneva Convention" as a Hyatt Regency full of partying Swiss.
And would have a good laugh amongst themselves about it in the last moments before they landed a passenger jet on the eightieth floor.
All due respect to the voices who are crying out in protest of the methodology employed in the killing of Al-Awlaki, I'm prepared to make what I think would be a compelling case for the argument that this death was no more an "assassination" than was the killing of thousands in Hiroshima in 1945.
And, as a value added to my case, I would offer that until we, all of us, figure out that it is precisely the quality of compassion in our own hearts that those who would terrorize us are counting on in their own hearts to achieve their goals, we will continue to be victimized and terrorized.
In 1945, the United States dropped a big bomb and killed thousands of people to put a stop to an evil entity.
This past week, the United States dropped a small bomb with the same purpose.
And killed three people in pursuit of that purpose.
Forty years ago, my brother-in-law, Louis Costanza listened very patiently as we sat together at a dining room table and I, in my then seventeen year old, Kennedy-esque, we are the world way, lamented the need for more understanding, peace, love and Kumbayah in those turbulent times.
When I finished, he smiled and, again patiently, in his own early twenties way, said to me,
"You're a very compassionate guy....someday that will be your undoing.."
I remember the exact wording clearly after all this time because I remember that it came as a slap to my psyche.
I didn't understand and I didn't like the sound of it one damn bit.
Truth be told, I still don't like the sound of it.
But I understand.
