EXPERT ANALYSIS OF AN ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL PRACTICE The Bush administration detained and tortured suspected terrorists; the Obama administration assassinates them. Assassination, or targeted killing, off the battlefield not only causes more resentment against the United States, it is also illegal. In this interdisciplinary collection, human rights and political activists, policy analysts, lawyers and legal scholars, a philosopher, a journalist and a sociologist examine different aspects of the U.S. policy of targeted killing with drones and other methods. It explores the legality, morality and geopolitical considerations of targeted killing and resulting civilian casualties, and evaluates the impact on relations between the United States and affected countries. The book includes the documentation of civilian casualties by the leading non-governmental organization in this area; stories of civilians victimized by drones; an analysis of the first U.S. targeted killing lawsuit by the lawyer who brought the case; a discussion of the targeted killing cases in Israel by the director of PCATI which filed one of the lawsuits; the domestic use of drones; and the immorality of drones using Just War principles. Contributors include: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Phyllis Bennis, Medea Benjamin, Marjorie Cohn, Richard Falk, Tom Hayden, Pardiss Kebriaei, Jane Mayer, Ishai Menuchin, Jeanne Mirer, John Quigley, Dr. Tom Reifer, Alice Ross, Jay Stanley, and Harry Van der Linden.

The intense debate over US targeted drone strikes outside war zones has been limited by the failure to review and assess a considerable body of quantitative research and qualitative material on the impacts of such strikes on terrorist groups and civilians. This book fills an important gap in the literature by conducting a careful and rigorous review of such evidence. It argues that decisions about the use of targeted strikes as a counterterrorism instrument, as well as legal and ethical evaluations of such use, must be informed by our best understanding of the insights that empirical evidence can provide on the effectiveness of strikes and the costs they impose on populations where they occur.

The book examines principal arguments for and against the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance and 'targeted killing.' Addressing both sides of the argument with clear and cogent details, the book provides a thorough introduction to ongoing debate about the future of warfare and its ethical implications.

The deployment of remotely piloted air platforms (RPAs) - or drones - has become a defining feature of contemporary counter-insurgency operations. Scholarly analysis and public debate has primarily focused on two issues: the legality of targeted killing and whether the practice is effective at disrupting insurgency networks, and the intensive media and activist scrutiny of the policy processes through which targeted killing decisions have been made. While contributing to these ongoing discussions, this book aims to determine how targeted killing has become possible in contemporary counter-insurgency operations undertaken by liberal regimes. Each chapter is oriented around a problematisation that has shaped the cultural politics of the targeted killing assemblage. Grayson argues that in order to understand how specific forms of violence become prevalent, it is important to determine how problematisations that enable them are shaped by a politico-cultural system in which culture operates in conjunction with technological, economic, governmental, and geostrategic elements. The book also demonstrates that the actors involved - what they may be attempting to achieve through the deployment of this form of violence, how they attempt to achieve it, and where they attempt to achieve it - are also shaped by culture. The book demonstrates how the current social relations prevalent in liberal societies contain the potential for targeted killing as a normal rather than extraordinary practice. It will be of great use for academic specialists and graduate students in international studies, geography, sociology, cultural studies and legal studies.

Targeting Americans: The Constitutionality of the U.S. Drone War focuses on the legal debate surrounding drone strikes, the use of which has expanded significantly under the Obama Presidency as part of the continuing war against terror. Despite the political salience of the legal questions raised by targeted killing, the author asserts that there has been remarkably little careful analysis of the fundamental legal question: the constitutionality of the policy. From a position of deep practical expertise in constitutional issues, Prof. Powell provides a dispassionate and balanced analysis of the issues posed by U.S. targeted killing policy, using the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in September 2011 as a focus for discussion. While Powell concludes that the al-Awlaki strike was constitutional under 2001 legislation, he rejects the Obama administration's broader claims of authority for its drone policies. Furthermore, he argues, citizens acting as combatants in al-Qaeda and associated groups are not entitled to due process protections: by due process standards, the administration's procedures are legally inadequate. A fundamental theme of the book is that the conclusion that an action or policy is constitutional should not be confused with claims about its wisdom, morality, or legality under international norms. Part of the purpose of constitutional analysis is to draw attention to these other normative concerns and not, as is too often the case, to occlude them.

Less than a month after the September 11th attacks, a tiny, CIA-controlled Predator drone flew over Kandahar, searching out the home of the Taliban supreme commander Mullah Mohammed Omar. A lack of understanding of the drone's capabilities combined with a messy chain of command allowed Omar to escape, but the strike on a nearby convoy vehicle became the Predator's first lethal action. Since then, the use of armed drones has become the dominant American way of war. In Sudden Justice, award-winning investigative journalist Chris Woods explores the secretive history of the United States' use of armed drones and their key role not only on today's battlefields, but also in a covert targeted killing project that has led to the deaths of thousands. The CIA nurtured and developed drones before the War on Terror ever began, seeking a platform from which it could monitor its targets and act lethally and instantly on the intelligence it gathered. Since then, remotely piloted aircraft have played a critical role in America's global counter-terrorism operations and have been deployed to devastating effect in conventional wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Drone crews, analysts, intelligence officials and military commanders all speak frankly to the author about how armed drones revolutionized warfare--and the unexpected costs to some of those involved. But there is another, secret war--one in which drones scour the skies of Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia in search of militant and terrorist targets. The American government insists that this hidden war is legal. The CIA even claims that its armed drones are "the most precise weapon ever invented," so perfect that civilians are no longer killed. Sudden Justice describes the reality of this secret drone war, one in which hundreds of civilians have died, and the wider strategic interests of the United States may have been jeopardized. The ability to target its enemies from the safety of headquarters thousands of miles from the battlefield has profound implications for how America conducts its foreign policy, and for how it is seen in the world. As the first book to comprehensively assemble and analyze the facts about the U.S. drone program, Sudden Justice is the essential guide for understanding its implications.