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There is a difference between a civil war and an assassination. While I shed no tears for another terrorist being turned into a smoking hole in the ground, I'm simply pointing out that this is a bad precedent and a slippery slope.
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Yes, there is a difference. And there is a difference between civil war, assassination,
and battlefield actions. If someone, in effect, defects to the side of an enemy force, his death in a battlefield action is no longer an assassination; it is a casualty of war. This "cleric" chose his side in a war, acted in support of an enemy "army" (whether or not it is a part of or supported by an established state), engaged in the planning and execution of military actions, and died as result of an action as part of a war. His death is not a pure assassination. He was merely another combatant killed in action. there are some who may argue, given the techological aility to pinpoint a single target on the battlefield, we are engaging in a form of selective 'assassination". The counter is, throughout the history of warfare, removing the leadeship, military or civilian, of an enemy has been a goal of military planning. Taking out enemy leadership is seen as a means of demoraliizing enemy troops, debilitating the planning capabilities of an enemy, and, perhaps, shortening the overall length of combat and the attendant losses and injuries to one's own troops (not to metion the reduction of materiel expended in support of an exteden war). As recently as WWII, with the U.S. action labelled "Operation Vengeance" in 1943, Admiral Yamamoto, the primary architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor, was specifically was specically targeted and killed. These attacks aginst Al Qaeda are no diffent than any other prior actions taken by many, many nations througout the length of history.
As far as his being an American citizen and denial of due process is concerned, again, if someone defects to an enemy force, he has chosen his side and it can not be expected he should be shielded by expectations of "rights" he has renounced, from a country he has renounced (and denounced) and has actively sought to destroy...