Who Cares About Leaks? Problem Is Drone Policy Itself

There's lot of outrage these days about President Obama's "kill list" and his manner of personally giving the go-ahead for drones to kill suspected terrorists. But why on earth, wonders Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post, is all the outrage directed at the media leaks that made all this public rather than the policy itself? The real problem here, writes the editor of the Nation, is "the assertion of a presidential prerogative that the administration can target for death people it decides are terrorists—even American citizens—anywhere in the world, at any time, on secret evidence with no review."

The drone strikes, popular as they may be among the public, are wrong not only on a constitutional level but a strategic one: They generate outrage against America and "seduce the US into literally policing the world," writes vanden Heuvel. It's time for Congress to "reassert its constitutional authority" and put this misguided policy in check. Read the full column here. (More President Obama stories.)