US warned on deadly drone attacks
I think the U.S. is on very thin ice with the drone attacks. The United States claims the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have no role in an armed conflict but Mr. Alston describes that as “simply untenable”. After the fiasco of Abu Ghraib, the United States may find that the rest of the world isn’t feeling particularly patient with our foreign policies. A TIMEEurope poll in 2003 showed that those who took the poll believed the U.S. posed the greatest danger to world peace. The three choices in the poll were the U.S., North Korea and Iraq. The U.S. “won” at 86.9% of the vote. ¹
The drone attacks aren’t likely to help change the world view of the U.S. as a threat to world peace.
US warned on deadly drone attacks
UN human rights investigator Philip Alston said the US should explain the legal basis for attacking individuals with the remote-controlled aircraft.
He said the CIA had to show accountability to international laws which ban arbitrary executions.
Drones have killed about 600 people in north-west Pakistan since August 2008.
Mr Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, told the BBC: “My concern is that these drones, these Predators, are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
“The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons.”
November 5th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Is this a Bush problem or an Obama problem? Is there a rogue group of individuals who are still acting on orders from the Bush administration in the Defense Department and CIA which the Obama administration can’t find yet to order a stop to these attacks?
Sage Reply:
November 5th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Does it matter? Since it’s happening now I would assume it’s Obama administration.