snip* The program is fundamentally flawed in at least four respects:

1. The power to kill with drones should be governed by clear, transparent rules, not by a secret playbook. In the early days of the Obama administration, the drone program was entirely secret. Over time, administration officials have spoken in general terms about the legal standards they employ. But even after the white paper’s disclosure, much remains unclear. We don’t know, for example, what procedures are used to determine whether a person is properly placed on the “kill list,” nor even what standard of proof is required. Does anyone, for example, play the role of devil’s advocate, defending the absent target and questioning the government’s case? Surely if the president claims the power to kill any of us without trial, we have a right to know the standards and procedures he will use.

2. Killing in self-defense should always be a last resort. The white paper concedes, at least as to citizens, that a drone strike off the battlefield is appropriate only if the target poses an imminent threat and capture is not feasible—the traditional requisites for self-defense. But it then says a threat can be imminent even if it is not immediate. It presumptively treats all operational leaders of Al Qaeda or its undefined “associated forces” as “continually” planning attacks and therefore always posing an imminent threat—even if they are sleeping. Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen killed by a drone in Yemen in September 2011, was reportedly on the kill list for more than a year before he was killed. How could he have posed an imminent threat for more than a year? The imminence requirement is designed to ensure that lethal force is a last resort; if no attack is on the horizon, there may be time to address the threat by less extreme means, such as capture and trial.

3. At least when it comes to American citizens, it cannot be constitutional for the president to deliberately kill and then refuse to acknowledge doing so. Unacknowledged detentions and killings were condemned as “disappearances” when Argentina’s military junta employed them in its “dirty war” in the 1970s. How can a government that is supposed to be of, by and for the people have the power to kill its own while keeping secret the fact that it has done so? Accountable and limited government begins with transparency.

4. The power to kill by remote control anywhere in the world should not unilaterally reside in the executive branch. The white paper dismissively claims that courts cannot second-guess the executive’s “predictive” judgments about national security. But courts already do this. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, composed of federal judges, reviews requests for search and wiretap warrants based on national security concerns. Those warrants by definition rest on predictive judgments about whether evidence relating to national security will be found. If we demand that a court authorize even a temporary wiretap, shouldn’t we also demand that a court review a decision to end a human life? Some have questioned the utility of a necessarily one-sided and secret warrant process, but warrants have served us well for centuries by interposing an independent decision-maker between the executive and the citizenry. Due process may require advance notice to the target in some instances and/or judicial review after the fact, as the Israeli Supreme Court requires. But we can’t leave this awesome power exclusively in executive hands.

Some object that since ordinary uses of armed force in wartime do not require this sort of public accountability, judicial review and due process, those requirements ought not to apply to drone strikes. During World War II, FDR did not have to issue criteria for a kill list, involve courts or publish his officers’ specific rules of engagement. But the technology of drones, coupled with the murky scope of this “war,” make those features essential now. Because they permit the killing of people without putting boots on the ground or risking American lives, and because they are, at least in theory, surgically precise, drones reduce the considerable practical disincentives to lethal force.

http://www.thenation.com/article/172898/whats-wrong-obamas-drone-policy#

Discussion of the drone program always seems to end up as an argument over the technology of drone war, but how they are used is what is problematic.

Thanks for your post.

that drone murder is better than "boots on the ground," as if that is the only other choice.

There is no demonstrated need for the United States to be militarily active in Yemen or Pakistan (or a hundred other places). Our supposed enemies in these places are tribal warlords with no ability to project their power beyond their local regions. In Yemen, for example, we have been killing local tribespeople since at least 2009, all the while claiming these rag-tag groups of tribal insurgents present an "imminent threat" to the United States and therefore must be subjected to drone violence. When people like me complain about "collateral damage" (i.e. women and children killed by mistake), we're told that civilian casualties are an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect of our obligatory campaign against the "terrorists" - as if we have no other choice but to prosecute a 5-year (and counting) military operation against these tribes.

The sad part is that these warlords originally took up arms in opposition to the corrupt Saleh regime in Yemen and cared little for attacking the U.S. Now that we've spent so much effort killing their women and children - and, I'm sure, a few "#2 Al-Qaeda" men along the way - their hatred of us has piqued.

have to, at minimum, require oversight on their use. I wish we had a foreign policy that would preclude
such tactics, but they're here and they're not going away.

Best not to give people a reason to hate you, this escapes US foreign policy..has for a long time.