After noting the failure of the Obama folks to defend the legal positions they have taken that follow Bush 43 precedent, Taylor warns of drones being put in Lawfare legal terrorist sights next:
While quietly adopting in its legal briefs much of the Bush defense of these detentions, however, the Obama administration has never offered a compelling public defense of their legality.
Similarly, while greatly expanding the use of Predator drones to kill suspected Taliban leaders -- and often the women, children, and men surrounding them -- the administration has never explained publicly why this is a lawful form of national self-defense.
As my National Journal colleague Shane Harris detailed in his January 9 cover story, human-rights activists, U.N. officials, and others are beginning what promises to become a concerted international campaign over the coming decade or more to brand such drone attacks as war crimes -- at least when they are conducted far from Afghan battlefields and especially when they are ordered by a Republican president. (See "Are Drone Strikes Murder?" NJ, 1/9/10, p. 21.)
It may take years to materialize, but the coming clamor to prosecute U.S. officials for Predator "war crimes" may well echo the current clamor for "torture" prosecutions.
The Obama administration should be pushing back by forcefully explaining why the Predator attacks are consistent with both international and domestic law.
Such a statement would have special force if it came from Harold Koh, Obama's top State Department lawyer. A leading international law scholar and former Yale Law School dean, he has been close to the same left-leaning human-rights groups that are laying the groundwork to challenge Predator attacks.
Maybe a congressional committee could help things along by asking Koh, who suggested repeatedly that key Bush policies violated international law, to explain why Obama's policies do not.
Bottom Line. Lawfare will destroy the ability of America to project power abroad, to the detriment not only of American security but also of the security of its allies. Team Obama & allies had better wake up, fast.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Terrorism, Homeland Security, Foreign Policy, UN
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