The advocacy groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are accusing the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama of possible war crimes for drone strike campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen. These charges won't have much weight within the United States — after all, even Hollywood now portrays the way we tortured detainees, and no one has been held to account.

But the reports presage what will probably become history's verdict on drone strikes taking place off the battlefield in weak states: bad for human rights, bad for the rule of law — and bad for U.S. interests in the fight against terrorism.

There will be plenty of blame to go around, yet I can't escape the gnawing feeling that people like me — legal critics of the George W. Bush administration's detention policy — bear some moral responsibility for creating incentives for the Obama administration to kill rather than capture. True, we didn't realize that condemning interrogation practices and quasi-lawless detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would lead a Democratic president to break new ground in unfettered presidential authority. But that's just the point: We should have seen it coming. And we didn't.