Dos and drones

For the first time,Obama admitted to ordering the death of an American citizen,Anwar al-Awlaki,and to the unintentional deaths of three other Americans,including Awlaki’s 16-year-old son,in drone strikes. Obama announced important shifts in the policy of using unmanned drones to kill citizens of other countries,in the territory of sovereign nations,without any public,judicial or meaningful Congressional oversight. From now on,the Central Intelligence Agency and the military will no longer target individuals or groups of people in countries like Pakistan based merely on the suspicion that their location or actions link them to al-Qaeda or other groups allied with the terrorist network. Those attacks,referred to as “signature strikes,” have slaughtered an untold number of civilians and have become as damaging a symbol of American overreach as the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay,Cuba. The targeting of citizens of other countries will now be subjected to the same conditions the administration uses to kill American citizens abroad. They must be shown to pose “a continuing,imminent threat to Americans,” as Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. wrote in a letter to Congress that was made public on Wednesday. In addition,the letter said,lethal force can be used only when capture is not feasible and there are “no other reasonable alternatives to effectively address the threat.”

The acknowledgment of the killing of Awlaki in 2011,and,more important,the supplying of compelling evidence that he was organising terrorist attacks and not just preaching jihad on theinternet,was a much-needed step. The administration’s refusal to talk about the Awlaki killing and other aspects of the drone policy until now had been highly damaging to Obama personally and to America’s relationship with other countries,like Pakistan. We wish Obama had pledged an accounting for the civilian deaths caused by drone strikes,and some form of reparations,but he did not. He should do so.

From a leader in ‘The New York Times’