More than 100 of the detainees held at Guantánamo are engaged in a hunger strike as a desperate form of protest. Warding off the political repercussions that their deaths would bring, the Obama administration is now forcibly feeding more than a third of them. The US government’s response, however, is legally untenable. The government, effectively by its own admission and official policies, is acting in clear violation of the international laws of war.

The administration’s own account of the law does not show that they are aware of the legal problem. And a recent joint letter by human rights groups calling for an end to forced feeding invokes the laws of war. But it also overlooks this clear and direct legal violation.

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