US daily slams Washington's bid to institutionalize targeted killings

Pointing to the hundreds of civilian casualties in the US drone war against militant suspects in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, influential American daily the Washington Post stated in a Friday editorial, “To institutionalize a secret process of conducting covert drone strikes against militants across the world is contrary to US interests and ultimately unsustainable.”
 
“There have been more than 400 ‘targeted killing’ drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia - countries where the United States is not fighting a conventional war. About 3,000 people have been killed, including scores - maybe hundreds - of civilians,” read the editorial.
 
    It also underlined that although the US is winding down its military mission in Afghanistan, the US President Barack Obama administration “expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years.”
 
 
The daily cited its own reporting last week, detailing a still ongoing secret US effort, led by White House Counterterrorism Advisor John Brennan, to institute a process of establishing a “kill list” of US opponents in Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa and target them by the use of assassination drones and other lethal means.
 
“All of this causes increasing unease among Americans of both political parties - not to mention many US allies,” it added. “They are disturbed by the antiseptic nature of US personnel launching strikes that they watch on screens hundreds or thousands of miles from the action.”
 
“They question whether drone attacks are legal,” the detailed editorial further read. “They ask why the process of choosing names for the kill list as well as the strikes themselves are secret and whether such clandestine warfare does more harm than good to long-term US interests.”
 
The daily, which is widely recognized in the US as a liberal and politically influential newspaper with close ties with the Democratic Party and officials, condoned the American targeting of what it described as “Islamic Jihadists,” but insisted that in carrying out such a “war,” the country’s interests would be better served by “greater disclosure, more political accountability, more checks and balances and more collaboration with allies.”
 
It further demanded that the assassination drone strikes be conducted by the US military forces instead of the CIA, which is currently in charge of carrying out such terror attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan.
 
“They should be publicly disclosed and subject to congressional review. The process and criteria for adding names to kill lists in non-battlefield zones should be disclosed and authorized by Congress… before operations begin in a country, the administration should … seek open agreements with host countries and other allies,” the editorial concluded.