http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-kil...
The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen...The attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was not “specifically targeted,” raising more questions than he answered.
The people killed in this attack were either killed by mistake, or because they were nearby someone considered a target, eating at a restaurant. Because the reasons for killing were secret, if the president decided to include some of his enemies or political enemies of allies in Yemen, made a mistake, or was given false information, it would never be known, because the list is secret. We don't know why or even who was targeted.
In war we accept assassinations, murder without trial, and mass murder, because people are fighting for survival. But even in war only enemy fighters should be targeted, and civilians should not. We have a whole list of rules of war which are being ignored, and this is not even a formal war - war has not been declared, uniforms are not worn, so the rules of war do not apply, but if they did, they are being broken.
We find ourselves in a very murky area where the US is at war with an undefined and secret enemy, who may be anywhere in the world, and lives amongst the civilian population. The reaction of the Obama administration has been to order assassinations from a secret list, also killing any civilians nearby. There is no trial, no charge, and no suspicion, just a decision to kill and an attack, wherever the target may be. This means the president and his advisers have arrogated the power to decide on life or death for anyone on the planet, without limitation in time or space, and without justification or warning, and also killing civilians nearby.
The implications of this are that this war will never end, the targets are everywhere, and the list of enemies will continue to expand in secret. Nobody is safe, because anyone might be standing next to someone on Obama's list at some point, and the general terror and hate instilled by these methods will continually generate new enemies. The Obama administration has adopted terror as a method of war - they have become what they set out to fight.