Prior to the September 11 attacks and the subsequent "war on terrorism," the United States, particularly the Department of State, routinely criticized Israeli use of targeted killings and stated its opposition to the policy. These criticisms have been much muted since the United States began employing targeted killing for its own ends. In November 2002, CIA operatives in Djibouti used a remote-controlled Predator drone to fire a missile at the car in which Qa'id Sinan al-Harithi, a suspected member of Al Qaeda and planner of the 2000 USS Cole bombing, was traveling in the Yemeni desert. Al-Harithi and the five other passengers were killed. After this much publicized attack, US criticism of Israeli policy became muted, and US officials relied on claims that their condemnation of the policy in Israel's case did not mean that it was prohibited in all instances, presumably not those involving the United States.

As targeted killings became more acceptable as judged by official US government rhetoric, interest in supporting them also grew in the US Congress. On January 3, 2001, Representative Bob Barr (Republican-Georgia) introduced a bill entitled the "Terrorist Elimination Act of 2001." Barr's bill sought to nullify the provisions of the standing executive orders prohibiting assassination because "[they] limit the swift, sure, and precise action needed by the United States to protect [its] national security" and furthermore, "present strategy allows the military forces to bomb large targets hoping to eliminate a terrorist leader, but prevents [the United States] from designing a limited action which would specifically accomplish that purpose." Before the September 11 attacks, Barr had no co-sponsors for the bill; in the weeks immediately following the tragedy, 14 representatives signed on as co-sponsors. Representative Terry Everett (Republican-Alabama) introduced a virtually identical bill entitled the "Terrorist Elimination Act of 2003" in January 2003, and thus far he has two co-sponsors.

Support for targeted killings by the US public also surged in the months following the attacks. According to a December 2001 poll by Newsweek, 65 percent of those surveyed favored allowing US military and intelligence agencies the discretion to assassinate leaders of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in the Middle East. Over 57 percent believe that the targeted killings may occur in Africa and Asia, and 54 percent extend the same belief to Europe.

Ranking Targets

Government leaders and some in the international law community offer both pragmatic and legal arguments for employing targeted killings. The pragmatic reasons alone are perhaps compelling enough to justify revisiting the legal interpretation, but the law can be reinterpreted independent of attempts to justify desired policy. Legal scholars rely on the supremacy of the UN Charter's call for removal of threats to the peace. Article I of the Charter lists the purpose of the United Nation as being "to maintain international peace and security, and to that end, to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace." Scholars argue that the most effective way to eliminate threats to the peace is to remove those leaders who cause them, by apprehending them if possible, but if not, then by targeted killings.

Scholars have also reconstituted the classification of leaders subject to targeted killings. They assert that the targets can be defined as "enemy combatants," even if only a de facto war and not a traditional declared war exists. As "enemy combatants," the targets are subject to attack wherever they may be found, such as Al-Harithi in Yemen, and their killing is akin to any other battlefield death, not "assassination." Professor Robert Turner, Associate Director of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia, notes that the UN Security Council in Resolutions 1368 and 1373 reinforced the right of victims of terror attacks to use lethal force in self-defense. Both US and Israeli citizens claim the status of victims and thereby the right to use deadly force in dealing with the perpetrators. Turner therefore argues that the use of lethal force in dealing with terrorists does not violate international law or US Executive Orders.

Targeted killings offer many pragmatic advantages over traditional methods of large-scale attack. The most obvious and often cited benefit is preventing the death of the hundreds or thousands of soldiers on both sides who would be killed in the course of an invasion or ground assault aimed at capturing a leader, destroying his government, or taking power of his country. Especially with the current technology, such as the unmanned Predator drone that was used in the attack on Al-Harithi, the threat to troops is minimized.

When given the choice of attacking a leader or a low-level follower, soldiers have long been trained to attack adversaries of higher rank. Destroying an adversary's chain of command causes confusion in the ranks and weakens the enemy's decision-making ability; targeting a leader in a high-tech attack is designed to accomplish the same end. Turner points out the possible deterrence value of announcing a policy of targeting leaders. He argues, "Wars tend to result when non-democratic tyrants perceive that they can internalize profits and externalize costs," and informing leaders that they, not their foot soldiers, will be the first targets forces them to internalize costs of their choices, hopefully causing a recalculation of interests in favor of non-aggression.

Calculated Risk

Despite the advantages targeted killings offer and the ability to justify them as legal, there are severe downsides to their employment. By engaging in attacks on leaders, even ones such as Saddam Hussein and high-ranking members of Al Qaeda, states lose the moral high ground they had been able to claim, at least publicly. In the case of the United States, some areas of the world are unsympathetic to US claims to be fighting terror, and to these people, targeted killings by the United States appear indistinguishable from assassinations. As is evidenced by US government rhetoric, it becomes difficult to condemn use of targeted killing by other actors once the United States has employed it. While this may not make terrorists who would have targeted US leaders any more or less likely to do so, it does make world opinion of the United States even less favorable and provides terrorists with the opportunity to justify their attacks by claiming that the United States uses the same tactic.