You suspect Anwar al-Awkai was executed for speech/propaganda offenses. I don't suspect that at all.

You have correctly identified where our conclusions differ. That said, I of course do not think that the forms of speech and the claimed intent are exactly the same. I was mostly noting the grievous affect of both. By that I am referring to the way that some person, or some group, chose to deal with the problem of the different examples of speech. In each case they chose to kill the speaker[s]. Al Alwakai may have been a major functionary but his function was as a recruiter through his power of speech. He, like most all war mongers, did not pick up a gun himself. His hands weren't clean but neither were they bloody, at least until his end.
 The cartoonists were, even if not deliberately, and even if doing so legally, pushing a mind-set already in place among some readers that stoked their anti-Muslim feelings. The cartoons insulted  Muslims, some of whom were radical in their beliefs and in their response. The cartoons made them feel justified or even obligated to respond.

 [I hate feeling it to be necessary to put in any disclaimer of, in any way, respecting or apologizing for the deadly way they responded, but there it is]  
 The cleric al Alwakai on the other hand was overtly calling for overt actions against his overtly identified enemy.  Al alwakai might have said, " Hey kid, you should join our jihad and fight for the Profit, for your country, and for fig pie and the Muslim way, you should go kill those who I tell you are our enemies and here is how you should do it".  In that way his speech was different but the resulting affect and then the resulting response to the speech was the same. Someone was offended or felt threatened and so decided that the affect or the intent of the speech was worth killing over with little regard for any innocents which may have surrounded him. And so the deed was done, he was assassinated.
 Al Alwakai was definitely involved in the conflict but his involvement used the very same weapon as did the cartoonists and that weapon was his speech. Whether or not he acted out of motives for power and ego reasons over any genuine concerns I cannot know. I certainly believe such venal motives exist among some of our own "leaders" and among some/most other leaders everywhere but I also believe that there are true believers of every possible stripe.
 Whether or not al Alwakai [or the cartoonists] crossed a moral or ethical line with the particulars of their speech depends on subjective cultural values. I have mine and they certainly aren't al Alwakai's. An example is that I think that calling for deadly responses is almost always wrong, but in that I am obviously at odds with much of my own culture.   Apparently some interpretations of the Koran believe such a response is called for in cases of religious insult. And Samurais, for another different example of different values held in high esteem by some, whether acting as hired guns as they sometimes did, or as devoted loyal followers as they sometimes were, believe that a sneak attack and a stab in the back is completely fair. At least I have been told that. People are fucked up in all kinds of ways.
 Whether or not al Awakai crossed a legal line that justified assassinating him is determined by arbitrary laws [all human enacted laws are arbitrary] which in his case and some other cases in the U.S. War on Terror, were sometimes deemed legal, and sometimes by ex post facto laws or after the fact legal justifications which went against previous custom, tradition, and legal interpretations. There was a blatant attempt to justify the assassination. Yes, I realize that is a big part of the debate which you do not wish to rehash and I also realize that there is little chance of changing your view if we were to do so.   
 The more I write the more I feel I have left out and am probably confusing my issue. The better alternative of stopping after my first paragraph would probably have been better.

You suspect Anwar al-Awkai was executed for speech/propaganda offenses. I don't suspect that at all.

Today "Democracy Now" with Amy Goodwin interviews Jerremy Scahill and they talk, amomg other things, about Anwar al-Awlaki. The show can be watched and listened to here. For more efficient use of bandwidth it can be listened to without video.

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/12/jeremy_scahill_on_paris_attacks_the

Also, there is a complete transcript available, just scroll down. I include a few excerpts below. I do not expect anybody to accept any journalists story uncritically any more than I would advise accepting politicians words uncritically but Scahill has a pretty good reputation for good reporting, I believe.

Awlaki was clearly angered by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He defended the right of the United States to go into Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda and denounced al-Qaeda as fake Muslims. This was all in the aftermath of 9/11. He was on NPR. He was profiled in The Washington Post. He was considered a legitimate part of the commentariat in the United States post-9/11, as a person who was brought on TV shows to make sense of the position of Muslims in the world post-9/11. And part of the reason he was invited on these media outlets is because he was condemning al-Qaeda. He was condemning the invasion of—or, excuse me, he was condemning the use of Afghanistan as a base to plot the 9/11 attacks.

Then Iraq gets invaded. Then Abu Ghraib happens. Then we start to learn about CIA torture sites around the world. We start to see Muslim prisoners in orange jumpsuits with hoods being brought. Then there’s desecration of the Qur’an that happens. And you could see Awlaki becoming radicalized by these policies. And he goes back to Yemen, and basically didn’t know what he was doing with his life. He got involved with some real estate and other things. Then he starts—he basically starts using YouTube and the Internet as his online mosque. He already was known around the world for sermons he had recorded on CDs.
And, you know, I listened to many, many, many, many days’ worth of Anwar al-Awlaki’s preaching. And up until the invasion of Iraq, there was very little that you could look at and say, "Oh, here’s a guy who is going to be very anti-American." In fact, Awlaki supported the war in Yugoslavia. He was on the same side as the United States in Bosnia. And, in fact, you know, Awlaki was calling for Muslims in the United States to fight the jihad against the Catholic forces of Croatia and the Orthodox Christian forces of Serbia, and he was on the same side as the United States.

 The U.S. then has Awlaki put in prison inside of Yemen for 18 months, where he was held in solitary confinement for 17 of those months. He was interrogated by the FBI while in that prison. And then, when he was released, he was a totally changed man.

He was held in a political prison inside of Yemen, in Sana’a, Yemen. And, in fact, I reported in my book that when the Yemeni government wanted to release Awlaki, that John Negroponte, who at the time was a senior counterterrorism official under the Bush administration—and, of course, one of the butchers of Central America during the 1980s—John Negroponte had a secret meeting with Bandar Bush, the Saudi diplomat very close to the Bush family, where he—and the Yemeni ambassador, where John Negroponte said, "Our position is that we want Awlaki kept in prison until all of these young Western Muslims forget about him." This is a U.S. citizen who was being held in a prison in a human rights-violating country on very flimsy charges that he had intervened in a tribal dispute, and a senior official intervenes to say, "We want our citizen kept in your prison without any trial for five years, until people forget about him."

When Awlaki eventually was released, he was a totally changed man and began increasingly to cross the line from praising people fighting against the United States, in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, to actively calling on people to come and, as he put it, fight on the fronts of jihad in Yemen or elsewhere or in your own country. And this is where he really became considered to be a significant threat by the United States, that his words—not his actions, but his words—were going to inspire lone-wolf acts of terrorism inside of the United States. [My emphasis]

And, you know, I listened to many, many, many, many days’ worth of Anwar al-Awlaki’s preaching. And up until the invasion of Iraq, there was very little that you could look at and say, "Oh, here’s a guy who is going to be very anti-American." In fact, Awlaki supported the war in Yugoslavia. He was on the same side as the United States in Bosnia. And, in fact, you know, Awlaki was calling for Muslims in the United States to fight the jihad against the Catholic forces of Croatia and the Orthodox Christian forces of Serbia, and he was on the same side as the United States. The U.S. was raising funds to arm Bosnian Muslims to fight in that war. They were on the—the U.S. was on the same side as Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden in the war in Yugoslavia in terms of the position that they staked out on Bosnia.

If all of this evidence that The New York Times and The Washington Post and CNN now today claim that the U.S. has had for a long time, why was there never an indictment on Anwar al-Awlaki? What did the president of the United States serve as judge, jury and executioner of an American citizen? Why did the United States advocate for a human rights-abusing government to have one of their citizens placed in prison for indefinite detention, when he hadn’t yet been charged with a crime by the United States?

AMY GOODMAN: Well, what’s the answer?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I think that the U.S., on the one hand, was afraid of Awlaki’s words. They didn’t want to give him a platform in a trial.

Scahill also addresses the issue of whether or not el Alwaki was involved operationally. He doesn't believe that he was.

I was being "brief" too in my own way. I wasn't thinking of any college incident in particular, there's been so many over a decade or so. They are often about I-P, but far from exclusively. I was picking up on Michael's Chris Rock citation, not at all thinking about Brandeis. More about the political correctness police on campuses thing than anything in particular. Didn't really matter about what politics are being policed.

I didn't even think of the honorary degree situation, there I would agree it's something that goes beyond free speech issues.

As to funding sources with agendas trying to influence a situation, I just don't see how it applies that much to a college campus situation. The kids and their faculty mentors are going to align with whoever they agree with when they are passionate enough about something to protest about it. Somebody trying to influence them is like water over the damn.