The Third Geneva Convention of 1949 states that legal rights are extended to combatants only if they are under the command of a recognizable person responsible for his subordinates, are wearing or displaying a distinctive sign recognizable at a distance, are carrying arms openly, and conduct themselves according to international laws of war. Unless ALL of these conditions are met, the combatants may be considered francs-tireurs (in the original sense of "illegal combatant") whose punishment may include summary execution.
A very famous case of this was recorded on film and in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph in Vietnam on February 1, 1968, when Nguyen Van Lem, a Viet Cong guerilla, was summarily executed by Nguy?n Ng?c Loan, the chief of the national police.
Neither Lem nor al-Awlaki met the Convention’s requirements, and under international law their executions were legal.
There is nothing that says we must “fight fair” with extranational forces whose actions – indeed, whose very existence – is largely unanticipated by the laws of war. On the moral question, I submit that until the Nobel committee begins to award prizes for veterinary medicine, mad dogs may be put down with impunity.
***
Elvis has left the building, and I am done with this post. No one is changing anyone's mind. We all have our positions, and I am moving on.