by Travis Normand
Article:
The Case for Drones, by Kenneth Anderson – June 2013 – CommentaryMagazine.com
How, exactly, did drone warfare and targeted killing become key elements in America’s counterterrorism strategy? And why should we care about them as essential national-security tools for the future?
by Travis Normand
I found this article on NYTimes.com about how the Obama administration is looking to codify the U.S. drone policy. The article is quite fascinating and addresses a few of the larger complaints and challenges concerning drone usage.
Click HERE to read the entire article.
While reading the article, I had several thoughts which I wanted to address here.
My first thought came after reading the following quote:
“One of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place, and we need Congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president’s reined in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making,” Mr. Obama told Jon Stewart in an appearance on “The Daily Show” on Oct. 18.
In the quote above, President Obama states that he needs “Congressional help” in order to put a legal architecture in place for the drone policy. My first thought was that as Commander in Chief, the President has historically been very careful to keep congress out of the decisions of who was designated an enemy combatant. It will be interesting to see how much congressional help he will accept and what this will do to any current precedent.
The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) 