Legality of Drone Strikes

Drone Strikes The use of remote-controlled airplanes known as drones has become increasingly common. Although surely not the only country to use them, the United States has gotten the most attention. The attention is due mostly because of the Hellfire missiles those drones have been dropping in areas of Pakistan and other countries in the greater Middle East area.

While the legal grounds for these strikes in general is not on firm footing in the eyes of many people, there are those that assert emphatically that drone strikes on people who are United States citizens is too much and should not happen. Such was the case with Anwar al-Awlaki and his fate. While the United States' stated reasons for assassinating al-Awlaki are fairly straightforward, some suggest his status as a United States citizen afforded him due process and thus the drone strike should never have happened.

Analysis If Osama bin Laden had been killed with a drone strike (he was not), there are probably not a lot of people that would openly complain about it. However, al-Awlaki was a different sort of case. The complication, as inferred in the introduction, is that al-Awlaki was a United States citizen.

It is true that he was engaging in war-like behaviors against the United States and its allies and it is also true that a lot of (or even most) of these activities did not occur on United States soil. Even so, some assert that al-Awlaki should have been captured, if possible, and brought to trial. Some people made the same argument for bin Laden and others before they were taken out. However, there are many other people that demarcate criminal trials and acts of war.

Those that place al-Awlaki in the second of those two echelons would assert that since he was taking up war against the United States via Al Qaeda and/or supporting those that due, this gave the United States a clear right to eliminate him and his support of terrorist activities through any means they saw fit. Another complication involved in this is that al-Awlaki was not acting at the behest of a nation state.

Much like other terrorist acts, pinning the acts on a single nation is less than easy to do (Shane, 2015). Indeed, most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis but there has been no concerted effort to punish Saudi Arabia for that (Shenon, 2016). At the same time, there have been terrorist attacks in the past that have been pinned on nation states. The Pan Am hijacking that was associated with Libya is but one example (Greenspan, 2013).

The salient question that has to be answered is whether a person surrenders their due process and legal rights as a citizen when they engage in "acts of war" against the United States. Regardless, one would have to define what act of war is and what acts are not in the class.

No matter what, however, drone strikes are often going to raise the ire of the nations they occur in (even if it is theatrics to calm down the populace) and one has to be careful of killing people that are not provably guilty and/or innocents who happen to be nearby (Cosgrove-Mather, 2004). Some see collateral damage as a unfortunate but necessary part of a war against terror while others say it is never acceptable and happens entirely too often (Ackerman, 2014).

Conclusion Even if drone strikes are legally and ethically dubious, treating an international war criminal with the same deference and methods as a pickpocket is a little illogical to say the least. However, World War II and other wars have proven that there are unique and different ways to handle people who engage in terrorist acts. The problem is who sets the rules, who decides the punishment and so forth. To say the least,.