Yet there has been no comparable outcry from the international community, despite the fact that the US’s policy is less defensible morally and legally for the following reasons:
1. Israel has used targeted killings to protect civilians against war crimes, from an enemy sworn to its destruction. The US is using a far broader form of targeted killing, thousands of miles away from its civilian population, against an enemy that poses no immediate threat to its civilian population.
2. Drug traffickers are not direct combatants, thereby making an attack on them far more questionable under international law.
3. International law requires that any attack must be intended and tend toward the military defeat of the enemy. Israel has targeted those known to be directing terrorist attacks, whereas here it is less than clear that killing a drug trafficker would tend towards a military defeat of the Taliban.
4. Compounding this, the ratio of terrorist to civilian deaths for the Israel Air Force is better than 1:30 (Amos Harel, “Pinpointed IAF Attacks in Gaza More Precise, Hurt Fewer Civilians,” Haaretz, December 30, 2007.) - that is, 30 terrorists killed for every civilian, whereas that for the US is 1:14 (The UN Special Rapporteur on unlawful executions, Philip Alston, reported that as of 3 June 2009).
Israel developed targeted killings of terrorist leaders, particularly in the Gaza Strip, because it could not arrest the terrorists who were ordering the firing of rockets at Israelis. The most notorious leaders, Shehade, Yassin, and Rantissi were only targeted after publicly acknowledging that they were giving the orders and pulling the triggers and were responsible for hundreds of Israeli deaths.
One more example of Obama administration and the left blatant hypocrisy. If the previous administration made lists af targetting killings, the “anti-war” crowd and the leftists would be yelling in the streets and all across the media; but if Obama is doing it, their silence is deafening.
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