Robert Wright Is Very Unhappy with Drone Warfare

I am unable to say much at this moment, either to Kevin’s question below or to this Robert Wright “Opinionator” blog post in the New York Times, but I did want to flag it for your attention.  Wright is unhappy with both drone warfare and targeting of US citizens, and many other things besides:

Students of the law might raise a couple of questions: 1) Doesn’t it violate international law to fire missiles into Pakistan (especially on a roughly weekly basis) when the Pakistani government has given no formal authorization? 2) Wouldn’t firing a missile at al-Awlaki in Yemen compound the international-law question with a constitutional question — namely whether giving the death penalty to an American without judicially establishing his guilt deprives him of due process?

I’m not qualified to answer these questions, and, besides, it doesn’t really matter what the correct answers are. The Obama administration has its lawyers scurrying to convince us that the answers are no and no, somewhat as the Bush administration dispatched John Yoo to justify its torture policy.

Hmm. That said, I must flee the scene, though I’ll try to say something to various of these issues later on; my disagreement with this view is not exactly news to Our Regular Readers.  Meanwhile, though, I’ve been reading through the Virginia symposium pieces, on all their various topics, and it looks like a heck of a good issue and grist for discussion.