A Nation of Laws? Or Assassins?

The failure of the U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan to contain the
anti-government insurgency has led the Obama administration to expand
the undeclared war in Pakistan. According to the Long War Journal, the number of U.S. attacks in Pakistan, using unmanned Predator drones, has gone from five in 2007 to 117 in 2010.

Government officials here in Washington say privately that they
expect the covert war to expand even further this year. Yet Congress and
the public have undertaken no significant examination of this new war's
consequences.

Members
of Congress have almost daily reminders of the cost of the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq in the form of the dead and wounded U.S. soldiers
that return to this country. Lawmakers travel regularly to attend
funerals of the fallen.

The U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan produce many casualties, but none
of those killed are citizens of our country. The pilots operating the
remote-controlled drones used to launch missile attacks in Pakistan
usually sit behind computer screens far from the battlefield. For
policymakers in Washington, this is a war without cost or hometown
casualties.

The English language press in Pakistan often relays reports of
civilians killed in these attacks. But those reports rarely make
headlines in the United States. The only ongoing reminder of this war is
the occasional headline that suggests the United States has
successfully killed another al-Qaeda militant. For most Americans,
that's justification enough for this new war by assassination.

Having closely followed the Congressional investigations of CIA
assassination attempts in the 1970s, I find the current shift in public
attitudes alarming. Back in the 1970s, when investigations led by
Senator Frank Church revealed that the CIA had engaged in targeted
killings of foreign leaders, President Gerald Ford felt obligated to
sign an executive order banning intelligence agencies from engaging in
assassinations.

I'm not naive enough to believe that the United States halted its
involvement, but at one time the public attitude was that such
assassinations were wrong. We are a nation of laws. As recently as 2001,
when Israel engaged in targeted assassinations against Hamas leaders in
Gaza, the U.S. ambassador to Israel was forced to go on record against
the killings (although our government didn't cut off assistance to the
Israeli units involved in these murders).

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush
authorized U.S. intelligence agencies to kill al-Qaeda leaders operating
anywhere in the world. In my view, these campaigns were ineffective and
violated international law.

President Obama's startling expansion of this drone assassination
campaign has gone by largely unnoticed. Missile attacks from drones
often target a single person for assassination, but end up killing
dozens. Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Pakistan by drones since
2006, yet Congress has held only one public hearing on these weapons.
Instead, Congress inserts even more money than the President requests
for them into the Pentagon's budget--and there's even a special caucus
to promote the drones.

As the Obama administration exponentially expands the use of
remote-controlled drones for assassinations, Congress should take a
second look at this new kind of fighting that's done in our name. You
don't have to work for a Quaker lobby to question whether remote control
killings in Pakistan are helping to make our country more secure.
Within Pakistan and Yemen (where the United States has also used such
drones), the strikes have become a rallying cry for anti-government
political groups and a recruiting tools for the same violent, extremist
organizations that the U.S. claims to want to damage.

There's a bumper sticker that sums up this problem. It reads: "We're
making enemies faster than we can kill them." Congress, and the nation
as a whole, need to decide if our goal is simply to kill more people or
to make this country safer. If our goal is the latter, then
assassinations by drones or any other means doesn't belong in our policy
tool kit.