‘Obama making world a dangerous place’

An analyst says the push by US President Barack Obama to legalize Washington’s assassination drone attacks ‘endangers the entire world.’

The comment comes as Pakistan says it will adopt a new strategy against the US assassination drone strikes in the tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan. In a written reply to the Lahore High Court on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry highlighted that Islamabad has protested against the US drone attacks several times and raised the issue with the US officials at the highest levels.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Edward Spannaus, legal affairs editor at the Executive Intelligence Review weekly magazine, to shed more light on the issue. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Sir, thanks a lot for joining us. I want to ask Mr. Spannaus about the Pakistani role in these drone strikes. Is it as clear cut as the Pakistani foreign ministry would present it? Is Pakistan really completely against these drone attacks or is it in a sense complicit?

Spannaus: Well, you raised the right question I don’t think if the Pakistani government were truly and totally against the drone strikes that they could continue? There is a high degree of cooperation between the United States and Pakistan and I think that the Pakistani government is playing sort of two sides of the street.

On one hand for the benefit of its population opposing the drone strikes on the other hand sort of turning a blind eye to them and tolerating them but I’m more concerned about the United States government and the very counterproductive effects as was mentioned that these strikes have. The story line coming out of the Obama administration is that these are surgically precise based on very good intelligence killing known terrorists or militants and protecting our national security. None of these things are true.

Press TV: Mr. Spannaus, how do you assess this news coming out that Obama is trying to or had been trying to at least before the elections write up a rule book of sorts to legalize in a sense these drone attacks or to at least give certain conditions and rules surrounding them. How do you assess that going forward? Will Obama continue with that? And how will that affect the US policy?

Spannaus: There is no need for new rules because there already are international law, law of armed conflict, humanitarian law that govern these and in effect under international law these drone strikes are illegal. Just take for example the fourth Geneva Convention under protection of civilians.

Any military action undertaken by a government, they’re obligated to protect civilians and to assess the damage to civilians afterward. In this case they do a drone strike and then when people come to rescue the people who were in that area they strike again this is called the kill zone or called the double tap strike. International law is very clear on this.

And what Obama was trying to do was to lock in this policy for future administrations particularly had he lost the elections but it makes it very dangerous because he has vastly escalated the drone strikes far beyond what George Bush and Dick Cheney did and Obama, a Democrat is now trying to lock this policy in so that it would bind future administrations. It’s very dangerous for the United States, very dangerous for the entire world and very bad for our country here.