Citizen execution

The government's decision to kill three U.S. citizens with drone missiles, allegedly disregarding their rights to due process, has been challenged in federal lawsuits against top military and national security officials. The Obama Administration now will need to explain how it engages in such attacks.

Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric born in New Mexico; his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, born in Colorado, and Samir Khan, a naturalized citizen who lived in New York and North Carolina, died last fall in drone strikes in Yemen. Wrongful-death suits have been brought by the Awlakis' father and grandfather and Mr. Khan's mother.

President Obama, who reportedly approves all drone targeting, cannot be sued for the deaths since he has absolute immunity from litigation stemming from official actions. The suits are backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Many Americans have reservations about the U.S. government ordering the killing of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, as it has done and continues to do, by unmanned drone aircraft. It is an impersonal means of waging war, highly susceptible to causing collateral damage, often through the inadvertent killing of innocent people in the vicinity of a targeted person.

The long-distance killing is more problematic when the victims are U.S. citizens. Americans' constitutional right to due process of law prohibits execution without a trial, defense, conviction, and sentencing. Administration officials defend the targeting of U.S. citizens who join terrorist groups and engage in related activities.

It is useful that the lawsuits have been brought, and that the administration will be forced to provide a legal justification for its claimed right to execute American citizens without due process of law. Such an explanation should be informative to all Americans.