Yesterday (Tuesday, March 23, 2010) I was pleased to appear as a witness before the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, to discuss drone warfare and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The list of witnesses is here, along with a link to a webcast (which I can’t seem to open), and links to the witness […]
Archive | Targeted Killing
Response from ACLU’s Jonathan Manes on Drones and US Forces
By Kenneth Anderson on March 22, 2010 6:58 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Jonathan Manes, the ACLU lawyer whose work and presentations I have cited a couple of times in posts here at Volokh, and someone for whom, despite some fundamental agreements, I have great respect and like very much, has responded with the following letter. He has given me permission to post it here. The most important […]
House Subcommittee Hearing on Drone Warfare
By Kenneth Anderson on March 22, 2010 1:04 am in Afghanistan, Counter-Terrorism Policy, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
In the midst of the healthcare debate in Congress, other business does go on (sort of), including a subcommittee hearing on drone warfare, at which I’ll be testifying, along with some other experts, including the author of the seminal Wired for War, which put the issue of robotics and war squarely on the table. I’ll […]
Drone Warfare and the Harvard National Security Conference
By Kenneth Anderson on March 9, 2010 1:51 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, Robotics, Targeted Killing, Terrorism, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
I’m writing from Cambridge, where I just finished a great short conference on targeted killing and drone warfare put on by the Harvard Law School National Security Law Society and Journal. The presentations should go up as video one of these days I hope!) and I highly recommend them if you are studying this topic. […]
Predators over Pakistan, My New Weekly Standard Essay
By Kenneth Anderson on February 28, 2010 3:47 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, Terrorism, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Well, “polemic” is probably closer to it. Regular readers have been hearing about this piece for a while, and I have posted various arguments from it (concerning targeted killing and Predator drones and the CIA and armed conflict and self-defense, and my general concern that the Obama administration has embraced a policy that its lawyers […]
Drones as Strategic Airpower and the Counter-Raiding Light Cavalry?
By Kenneth Anderson on February 25, 2010 10:43 am in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, Targeted Killing, War on Terror
David Rittgers, a Cato legal analyst and former Special Forces officer, has an excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal on the use of Predator drones. He cautions, on the one hand, against reflexively regarding drone attacks as nonjudicial execution or, really, functionally different from other weapons that soldiers might use – as well as […]
LA Times Op-Ed Contributors on Targeted Killing and the Presumed Mossad Hit
Over at the Los Angeles Times opinion page today, Sunday, February 21, 2010, Marjorie Miller has lined up various folks to opine on targeted killing and the presumed Mossad hit in Dubai against the founder of Hamas’ military wing. The offerings are very short – a hundred or so words each – but I had […]
Harold Koh Discussion with John Bellinger on International Law and the Obama Administration
By Kenneth Anderson on February 19, 2010 10:12 am in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, Terrorism, War on Terror
Harold Koh, Legal Adviser to the State Department, held an informal public discussion a couple of days ago with his predecessor from the Bush administration, John Bellinger. This was an American Society of International Law event, held at John’s law firm, Arnold & Porter, and moderated by my old friend and ASIL’s Treasurer, Nancy Perkins. […]
Interrogating the CIA
By Kenneth Anderson on January 31, 2010 11:02 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Human Rights Law, Targeted Killing, War on Terror
I just finished up the initial draft of an essay for the Weekly Standard on drone warfare, self defense, and the CIA, riffing off of my chapter in Ben Wittes’s book. One of my observations is that the Obama administration (and really the whole US government) seems to be remarkably sanguine about the other shoe […]
Targeted Killing Aimed at a US Citizen Abroad
By Kenneth Anderson on January 27, 2010 5:37 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, Targeted Killing, War on Terror
This won’t be as exciting or informative as the title suggests, apologies [although it turns out I have said rather more than I was going to; you can read an even longer version of my views at SSRN here]. The front page of the Washington Post carries a story from Dana Priest on US military […]
More Predator Drone Debate, in the Wall Street Journal, and What the Obama Administration Should Do as a Public Legal Position
By Kenneth Anderson on January 9, 2010 5:37 pm in Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
The Wall Street Journal has a weekend editorial on the same topic as my National Journal post below, Drone Wars, January 9, 2010. Interestingly, I find myself believing that the WSJ editorial gets it, if not precisely wrong, at least puts the emphasis exactly backwards. The WSJ editorial is primarily concerned to defend the “war” frame […]
National Journal on Targeted Killing and Predator Drone Strikes
By Kenneth Anderson on January 8, 2010 11:42 pm in Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
(Update: Thanks, Glenn, for the Instalanche! Please see the further post above, on what I think the US legal position ought to be – what the Obama administration should be stating as its view of the relevant international law, and how I think the WSJ’s op-ed today in defense of drone strikes is not actually […]
Yemen, Somalia and ….
By Kenneth Anderson on December 30, 2009 8:20 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Law, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Following up on Eric’s post re President Obama’s legal authority to target in Yemen … I’m a bit of a broken record on the need for the United States government to articulate a more coherent legal basis for its targeted killing. But it is just more so since the Christmas terrorist attack … the range […]
Naked Self Promotion about Targeted Killing
Further to Orin’s terrific questions and discussion re targeted killing, I’m deep into xmas stuff, so I will simply point readers who might be interested in the direction of a book chapter of mine on targeted killing and US counterterrorism policy and law, available in nearly final form on SSRN, here. It talks about the […]
Should CIA Drone Operators Worry?
By Kenneth Anderson on December 15, 2009 8:59 pm in International Human Rights Law, International Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
If this short report in Newsweek is true, then I think I would worry about legal liability more than before, if I were a CIA officer involved in Predator drone strikes. I would have a much greater level of concern that the administration would not back me up in case of an indictment in a […]