The American Who Says He’s Been the Target of Five Air Strikes
He was born Darrell Lamont Phelps. He grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, moved down to the city, tried his hand at comedy, and later converted to Islam, adopting the name of Bilal Abdul Kareem. Now 46 years old, he lives in the Middle East, where he has a wife, five children, and a controversial freelance-journalism career focused on Islamist fighters in the Syrian civil war.
In his estimation, the United States government has tried to kill him five times. Last week, he won the ability to proceed with a lawsuit that could save his life. It may also constrain the president’s ability to order other Americans killed.
Nowhere have the claims of post-9/11 presidents been more radical than in the realm of extrajudicial killing. In the telling of their lawyers, the president, in his capacity as commander in chief during war, can keep a classified kill list, add names as he sees fit, then secretly kill those individuals far from any battlefield. Meanwhile, the U.S. is fighting a war bound by neither time nor geography. The most basic
