In the latest installment of this blog’s coverage of drone warfare, the editorial board of The Daily News in Jacksonville, North Carolina, is taking to task the American public’s silence on the Barack Obama administration’s use of drones in Pakistan and elsewhere.

When the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism released a report last Sunday claiming that U.S. drone strikes have killed dozens of civilian rescuers and mourners in Pakistan, the American media scarcely noticed.

Similarly, while other countries hotly debate America’s covert program of targeted assassination, its legality has never been considered by a U.S. court and is seldom discussed by Congress, which has ceded extraordinary authority over the drone program to the president and the CIA.

That silence could well come back to haunt this country. … It is past time for U.S. courts and the United Nations to explore the legal issues involved in targeted assassination and set rules that take into account advances in technology.”

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