by Greg Grandin
* Technically, according to Chase Madar, a lawyer and expert in international law, the drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia (as well as all the many battles in the open-ended global counterinsurgency, or COIN) are broadly justified by the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), passed by the House and Senate on September 14, 2001. The drone strikes in Afghanistan have a slightly different legal rationale, found both in the AUMF and Article 51 of the UN Charter, which grants nations the right to “self-defense.” Notably, this was the UN article whose invocation by Secretary of State George Shultz to justify the 1986 bombing of Libya in retaliation for the Berlin nightclub bombing defined the whole world as US territory. More recently, Barack Obama has asked Congress for a new authorization to use military force to fight the Islamic State, a request that would leave in place without alteration the 2001 AUMF.