To the Editor:

Re “Hazards of Drone Strikes Face Rare Public Scrutiny” (front page, Feb. 6) and “To Kill an American” (editorial, Feb. 6):

In targeting American citizens with drone strikes without due process of law, President Obama and his nominee to be C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, have put expediency ahead of the Constitution, which they are sworn to uphold.

Killing by remote control is seductive, because it does not put American forces at risk (except, as has happened, by faulty targeting).

But the consequences are innocent lives ended when a target is misidentified, communities embittered and turning against the United States, and a precedent set that could permit a future president to kill politically inconvenient American citizens overseas virtually at whim.

In Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, American drone strikes enrage local populations and create new terrorists. Soon other nations will follow the United States’ example, and we will have destroyed any legal or political basis to protest. The unintended target of every drone strike is our common future.