Letter: Extralegal Drone Policy

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"Election Spurred a Move to Codify U.S. Drone Policy" (front page, Nov. 25) and "Rules for Targeted Killing" (editorial, Nov. 30) showed how shaky the legal underpinnings of President Obama's targeted killing policy are. If the Obama administration believes that its killing program is lawful and wise only because President Obama is in power, that's a sure sign that the program is neither lawful nor wise.

Secret targeted killing rules are undemocratic, and a new set of them is unnecessary. The "legal architecture" the administration is searching for is already in place. It is the United States Constitution and international law, which permit the government to use lethal force in response to truly imminent threats but do not support the current killing policy. That policy goes far beyond what the law allows.

If due process means anything, it surely means that the courts have a crucial role to play in reviewing the policy, not least when it comes to the government's use of lethal force against its own citizens, which has been the case in some drone strikes.

That is precisely the principle that the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union are seeking to vindicate in a lawsuit now pending in federal court.

PARDISS KEBRIAEI
HINA SHAMSI
New York, Nov. 30, 2012

The writers are lawyers with, respectively, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union.

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