British PM Faces Questions After Ordering Drone Assassination of British Citizens

Insists Killings Were 'Self-Defense'

The concept of an always-on international assassination campaign run by drones was initially a US-exclusive thing, but as other nations obtain the capabilities, they are launching them as well, with Britain the latest to follow in America’s footsteps by extra-judicially assassinating their own citizens.

Prime Minister David Cameron is defending the killings of two alleged ISIS members who were British citizens as “self-defense,” claiming that they were plotting to carry out attacks inside Britain at some point in the future.

British media are largely following the US media’s example too, in buying the excuses, with the Daily Telegraph taking a claim that one of the men was planning to attack an event that the Queen was going to attend as a “plot to kill the Queen.”

The assassination was carried out in a drone strike against the Syrian city of Raqqa, which makes it doubly difficult for Cameron to justify, since the parliament explicitly voted against granting him the authority to carry out attacks inside Syria, and similarly never empowered him to assassinate citizens.

Cameron is following Obama’s example, shrugging off the criticism and bragging about how great the planning was behind the attack and how there was “no other way.”

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.