The Drone Question Obama Hasn’t Answered

If you put together the pieces of publicly available information, it seems that the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, has acted with an overly broad definition of what it means to be engaged in combat.

1. “As I have written, sweeping financiers into the group of people who can be killed in armed conflict stretches the laws of war beyond recognition.”

1. Striking financiers of terrorism seems to be unethical. By this logic, they are not directly responsible for the terror, they simply have their hands dirty. This seems illogical to me, had he actually provided defense to his claim, that this stretches the laws of wars, than it would seem more logical. Instead we are supposed to take it on faith that this is against the Geneva Accord. The claim has little evidence and is based mostly upon opinion

2. that military-age males killed in a strike zone are counted as combatants absent explicit posthumous evidence proving otherwise.

2. The United States obviously is broadening its definition of the word combatant so that the public doesn’t become enraged at the death of civilians. Even after absence of evidence to prove these allegations, the US refuses to ad it their mistake. Innocent people, whose only error was standing to close to the blast, do not deserve swift absolute justice at the hand of a drone.

3. Is there any reason to believe that military drones will soon be hovering over Manhattan, aiming to kill Americans believed to be involved in terrorist financing? No

3. The author is realistic. Accidentally killing civilians in a far away country, while in the process taking action against terrorist may be a moral tightrope. This hardly means that the United States Government is likely to begin striking it’s own people. Equating accidental death in the name of proaction to indiscriminate murder is quite wrong.
The Obama administration’s continued refusal to do so should alarm any American concerned about the constitutional right of our citizens — no matter what evil they may or may not be engaged in — to due process under the law.