Yawn: Drone Strike Kills Four in Somalia

In her news roundup for last Friday, Ritika briefly mentioned that a drone strike had killed four al-Shabab militants in Somalia.  The New York Times had also cursorily mentioned the strike in this short AP report on page A5 of last Friday's paper, entitled "Somalia: Drone Strike Kills 4 Militants": “A United States military drone strike aimed at a militant in southern Somalia killed four Shabab fighters, officials said Friday. An American official in Washington confirmed the attack was carried out by a United States drone.  A second official said an “international” member of the Shabab was the target of the strike." It’s remarkable that lethal drone strikes not in Afghanistan-Pakistan but in third countries like Yemen or Somalia that were once front page news now go virtually unnoticed.  To be lawful under the UN Charter, the US use of force in Somalia would either have to be approved by the government of Somalia (except that the US does not publicly recognize any government in Somalia), or would have to be an action in self-defense against an armed attack.  The Obama Administration has dropped the label “Global War on Terror,” but this use of lethal force in Somalia looks an awful lot like a part of a continuing “global war” on Al Qaida and related groups. The last Administration was pilloried by human rights groups for detaining suspected al Qaida terrorists captured outside of Afghanistan without giving them a criminal trial.  But killing them outright is obviously different…