In the aftermath of bin Laden’s assassination, human rights lawyer demands a clear U.S. policy on targeted killing

 “We’ve got to hunt them down and kill them” became our nation’s mantra on Sept. 11, 2001. It took 10 years, two wars, untold numbers of civilian and military dead, and billions of dollars to get Osama bin laden, but our president – without mentioning the cost – now boasts of "taking him out" and the above mantra continues to echo throughout the United States, now too often referred to by that unfortunate neologism, “the homeland.”

And it has come to this: in the aftermath of bin Laden’s assassination, Chris Rogers, a human rights lawyer, finds it necessary to demand a clear U.S. policy on targeted killing. That’s right. We’re talking about targeted killing.

Rogers writes:

The U.S. has killed hundreds of individuals in targeted killings, many outside traditional battlefields. It conducts these killings largely in secret, without public oversight, and without any clear legal justification. The CIA operation that killed bin Laden last week is but one instance of a tactic that has now become regular practice. 

This was not always the case. The U.S. officially outlawed assassination in 1976 and used to criticize targeted killings by other countries. But in the aftermath of bin Laden's terror attack, both the Bush and Obama administrations have increasingly resorted to the tactic and defended it as lawful. In fact, under the Obama administration, targeted killings have escalated substantially, mostly through drone strikes in Pakistan, which killed an estimated 900 people last year alone. Only days after the operation against bin Laden, the U.S. conducted a drone strike in Yemen, targeting an alleged member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Anwar al-Awlaki. 

Despite this shift and a dramatic expansion of the use of targeted killings, the U.S. has been virtually silent on the legal basis for such attacks, particularly in places most would not describe as battlefields. U.S. officials defend such killings, including the operation against bin Laden, but only in general terms, offering little more than assurances that killings are permitted under international and domestic law.

Rogers goes on to address several critical legal questions:

Where can the U.S. conduct targeted killings?
Who is the U.S. at war with and who can it target?
When can the U.S. violate the sovereignty of another country?

Read more: