Thursday, April 05, 2012

Drones

MQ-1L Predator UAV armed with AGM-114 Hellfire...MQ-1L Predator UAV armed with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles (Photo credit: Wikipedia)




This week, protests took place in my home city of Bristol outside a conference on the use of drones in counter terrorism.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that since President Obama took office, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed in drone attacks inside Pakistan. This despite no formal declaration of war in or against Pakistan. This total includes more than 60 children.

 
The United States government defends its right to target terrorists in other countries as it is at war with al-Qaeda. Many experts in international law strongly disagree with this analysis.

The question is, how would we react if Russia or China used drones to kill its enemies located in western countries, killing civilians in the process?

 



If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.
Enhanced by Zemanta

2 comments:

Tom Foster said...

Does that really mean that the us can attack citizens in any country in the world? That makes the "wariness terror' a legitimate war pass to attack anywhere in the world!

Al Shaw said...

That is the logic of the current situation.