U.S. Officials Defend Drone Attacks Against U.N. Criticism

U.S. officials are citing Pakistani officials’ acquiescence, if not support, for drone-borne missile strikes on suspected terrorist targets as part of the Obama administration’s defense against a United Nations human-rights monitor’s warning about possible legal problems with such “targeted killings.”

In a report that will be presented on Thursday to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Philip Alston, an international-law professor hired by the U.N. to examine extrajudicial and targeted killings, says that recent and growing use by U.S. administrations of drone-borne missiles threatens to undermine international human-rights laws on war and to encourage killings by remote control.

While using drones to attack what amounts to military targets might not be strictly illegal under existing laws of war, Alston says, because such practices “make it easier to kill without risk to a state’s forces, policymakers and commanders will be tempted to interpret the legal limitations on who can be killed, and under what circumstances, too expansively.”

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