Drones: Playstation Mentality?

As the CIA increasingly is making drone strikes the centerpiece in the war on terror, it is shaking the boundaries of international law and risking "developing a 'Playstation' mentality to killing," warned a senior United Nations official last month.

Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, pointed out in a report released to the UN on May 28 that the growing use of drone attacks by the CIA posed accountability problems.

Unlike a state's armed forces, its intelligence agents do not generally operate within a framework which places appropriate emphasis upon ensuring compliance with IHL [international humanitarian law], rendering violations more likely and causing a higher risk of prosecution both for war crimes and for violations of the laws of the state in which any killing occurs.

Earlier this year, Harold Koh, legal adviser for the State Department, defended the Obama administration's use of drone attacks, claiming "a state that is engaged in armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force."

Not everyone in the federal government agrees. The Inter Press Service reports:

Some CIA officers involved in the agency's drone strikes program in Pakistan and elsewhere are privately expressing their opposition to the program within the agency, because it is helping al-Qaida and its allies recruit, according to a retired military officer in contact with them.

For better or worse, drones are here to stay. Last month, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the top financial chief for al-Qaida and one of the group's founders, was killed in a drone attack -- news that was greeted as a success by NATO.