U.N. panel turns its sights on U.S. war effort

Well, that didn't take long. The misnamed U.N. Human Rights Council, fresh from smearing Israel for the offense of defending its citizens from terrorist rockets, has set its sights on the U.S. war effort. A council "investigator" says the United States must prove the use of drones to kill our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan does not violate international law.

That must have been a shock at the White House. President Obama had cited America's joining the rights council, after President Bush's refused to sign on to it, as a sign of a U.S. re-engagement with the United Nations. He's learning his personal appeal isn't changing the anti-West ideology fueling so many U.N. actions.

One of the notable bright spots in the Afghan war has been the success of Predator drones in killing our enemies in remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Because terrorists hide amid civilian populations, even careful, precise attacks frequently cannot avoid civilian casualties.

Israel warned us an assault on our right of self-defense was coming in the aftermath of the Goldstone Report slamming Israel's defensive operations in the Gaza Strip last winter as war crimes. "This gives terrorist regimes a new weapon against democracies," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Washington Post. "It allows them to attack entire cities with weapons of mass terror and get away with it simply because they fire the rockets from populated areas."

The Goldstone report, named for the South African jurist who headed it, was bad enough but at least it made a stab at blaming Hamas for actual crimes in aiming rockets to kill Israeli mothers and children in Sderot and elsewhere. In endorsing the report, the council focused entirely on the accusations against Israel.

It ignored the evidence of more than 2 million leaflets, 100,000 telephone calls and other measures Israel took warning people in Gaza that it was coming after terrorists. "The Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare," reported Col. Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghan- istan and a veteran of some of the messiest conflicts of the last couple of decades, including Bosnia and Northern Ireland.

Arab nations are urging the U.N. General Assembly to take up the Goldstone report next month. The goal eventually is to send it to the International Court of Justice in hopes of securing indictments against Israeli officials and soldiers. Now that the rights council has indicated that America is next, the Obama administration should use its muscle to prevent consideration of this flawed, biased report by the assembly or by the Security Council.

Like the Israelis, America will be prejudged. U.N. Human Rights Council investigator Philip Alston said the U.S. will be regarded "in breach of international law" unless it answers his questions. He said the U.S. refusal to respond is an "untenable" position. No, what is untenable is for free, democratic societies that champion human rights, like America and Israel, to be called to the docket by a body dominated by some of the world's worst human rights abusers -- China, Cuba, Egypt, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

According to U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based human rights group, the U.S. drone strategy isn't the only American target of the rights council. Its "special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing" is taking a look at housing in New York. As Hofstra law professor Julian Ku observes in a masterful bit of understatement, the U.S. "is unlikely to be in the top 10 places with lack of adequate housing." Any excuse to attack America will do at the United Nations.

First, terrorists developed suicide bombing to bludgeon Israel. Then they turned it on America in the horrifying Sept. 11 attacks. First, the U.N. Human Rights Council targets Israel's right to defend itself; then it turns its sights on America. Detect a pattern?

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