It leaves the impression of a quick and weakly informed decision (especially so in the context of executing people).

I personally would never respond to an important inquiry on mobile because the relatively limited screen and input interface (e.g. auto-correct) would make me anxious that I am missing some crucial piece of information.

You are so last century mate!

But the U.S. is at war with ISIL, as part of a joint task force involving the Pakistan armed forces.

It's not total war, so the real issue is whether or not the CIA drone assassinations killed innocent civilians. The article mentions how drone attacks have killed civilians, but it doesn't specify if those are the CIA requested attacks or if they were approved by Clinton.

One could reasonably argue that the location of the strikes were regions which were not under the writ of the Pakistani govt.

Didn't the Pak army launch a major operation is recent years to retake control of FATA and NWFP from the Taliban / local armed tribals?

Are they at war with the Taliban?

The US haven't formally been at war with anyone since WWII[1], so we must rely on an informal definition of war (otherwise even Vietnam would be excluded).

A middle-ground definition of war that requires parties to be nation states but doesn't require a declaration of war, seems a bit arbitrary.

Instead of declaring war, the US now has Congress-sanctioned "use of military force". This includes the current "conflict" with the Taliban regime.

In this context the line between war casualties and assassination is very blurry. I think the blur itself might be one of the worst things about this new way of waging war.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/all-the-...

Serious question: is there a definition of the difference between execution and combat?

Things that look like colonialism are no longer considered acceptable in this era.

While I'm not a big fan of drones and other shadow warfare type approaches, it's not like the U.S. just decided this on its own. The terrorists are choosing the kind of warfare because they know they can't win a standup shooting war with the U.S.

The drug war is kind of a completely different thing as well because so much of it is a fight against our own citizens, and "victory" is pretty much unobtainable, which is maybe how the SWAT-team industrial complex wants it.

Also, congress hasn't declared war since WWII, which is required by law.

> Saying that the US is at war with various groups of people in the country side of Pakistan is a rather generous definition of the concept of war, isn't it?

Nobody's saying that though.

"the US is blowing up people who may or may not be those intended, but it's kinda hard to tell since they're doing it all by remote control".

Sounds like a good description of war to me. It is pretty common in conflict for civilians to suffer higher casualty rates than actual combatants. Mostly leaders don't mean that to happen, but that is hardly any excuse.

There has always been a disconnect between the moral intent of leaders and the actions of men on the ground. I am sure many Kings of England were good christians but there men still raped and pillaged. At least drones don't rape people.

The very words you quote authorise "incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects" as long as it's not "excessive", and the treating of a "place of worship, a house or other dwelling or school" as a military target as long as you're fairly sure it's being used for military purposes.

Obviously you can argue about what is "excessive" and what is a "case of doubt" but whoever wrote these lines was clearly anticipating blowing churches and civilians up and it being within the rules.

I don't say this to make drone killing seem more humane, but to make war in general seem like the everyday insanity that it is.

A lot of comments with similar sentiments, so I'll reply just to yours, because it's on top.

Basically, you're making my point for me: there's nothing inherently wrong with remote strikes or drones in particular. It's just a tool; and as a tool, it can be used rightly and wrongly. So, the fact that Clinton used that tool doesn't make her bad. But if you would have information about her using that tool to authorize a strike which she would've known would cause significant collateral damage, and which wouldn't save as many innocent lives as it would take — this would. But the article presents no such information, so all emptional reaction you can have to such a headline is not really justified.

I don't see what degree of difference there is in your first 4 examples: They're all armed people in a situation of war.

Of course the last 3 are murders (although we know that the Allied erased most of German and Japanese cities, including the civilian neighbourhoods, for morale and retaliation) and the 4th before the end (killing military workers) is debatable.

Last point, concerning French nationals who went to Syria twice to train in military camps and came back to lead the terrorist attacks with actual killings: Can we please extend the Geneva convention to consider them ennemy military corps (and thus, prisonners of war)? I have zero tolerance for police investigating innocents or listening to everyone, but once we know what they've done, I wonder why they just face some penal law (a few years in jail, max, like a driver in a car accident).

I'm sorry — what point, exactly, are you trying to prove right now, and how do you think this point contradicts my original comment?

Whose soldiers? Whose civilians?

OK, so come up with a more precise definition than "execution without a trial".

International law has always been very careful not to proscribe the bombing of enemy leaders just because they're not in a conflict zone, never mind going so far as to require soldiers to wait until they're under fire before shooting enemy soldiers. There are serious questions about the adequacy of the intelligence reports and whether - as with many conventional military operations - the tendency to cause civilian casualties means the strikes do more far harm than good, but on the other hand more research has been put into identifying that the intended targets were responsible for "obviously bad" things than virtually anyone else killed in warfare.