Epigraph – Quranic concept of Just War:
“And fight in the cause of Allah against those who fight against you, but do not transgress. Surely, Allah loves not the transgressors.
Once they start the fighting, kill them wherever you meet them and drive them out from where they have driven you out; for persecution and anarchy is worse than killing. And fight them not in, and near, the Sacred Mosque until they fight you therein. But if they fight you, then fight them: such is the requital for the disbelievers.
But if they desist, then surely Allah is Most Forgiving, Merciful.  And fight them until there is no persecution, and religion is freely professed for Allah. But if they desist, then remember that no hostility is allowed except against the aggressors.” (Al Quran 2:191-194)

Source: BBC

Barack Obama defends ‘Just War’ using drones

President Barack Obama has defended the use of drones in a “Just War” of self-defense against deadly militants and a campaign that had made America safer.

In a wide-ranging speech on a program shrouded in secrecy, he said there must be “near certainty” that no civilians would die in such strikes.

In a renewed push to shut Guantanamo Bay, he said he had lifted a moratorium on prisoner transfers to Yemen.

Mr Obama also defended the use of drones to kill four US citizens.

“We are at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first,” he said in Thursday’s address at the National Defense University in Washington DC.

“So this is a just war – a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense.”

The armed drone has become the signature weapon in America’s “war on terror”. But their use raises a variety of complex legal and ethical issues, quite apart from practical arguments as to whether the drone strikes themselves are effective.

Unintended civilian casualties are one problem. So too is the legal basis for such attacks in countries where the US is not directly at war. Another problem is that many of these strikes are overseen by the Central Intelligence Agency rather than the US military.

There is, though, now a sense of a shift in US thinking. The number of drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia have declined significantly over recent years. President Obama clearly wants to address some of the criticisms. But while Washington’s drone wars may be contained, they will not be abandoned altogether.

He added: “And yet as our fight enters a new phase, America’s legitimate claim of self-defence cannot be the end of the discussion. To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance.”

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President Barack Hussein Obama