Drones and targeted killing: legal, moral, and geopolitical issues

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Average Rating
Publisher
Olive Branch Press, an imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc
Publication Date
2015.
Language
English

Description

In response to turmoil in the Middle East, U.S. lead assassinations, targeted killings, and drone strikes are on the rise. This has largely been ignored by the progressive community, but in this book Marjorie Cohn presents compelling arguments that this is not just illegal and immoral but ill-advised for future relationships between the United States and other countries. Experts from a variety of professionals in their fields including political activists, journalists, and the lawyer who led the first case against U.S. lead, targeted killings are responsible for each chapter. The book is divided into four sections: “The United States and Drone Warfare,” “Target Killing and ‘Collateral Damage,’” “Illegal and Immoral,” and “The Future of Killing.” It also contains two appendixes that include the Department of Justice White Paper on the lawfulness of the practice and the White House Fact Sheet on U.S. policy standards. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

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Contributors
Cohn, Marjorie,1948- editor., edt
ISBN
9781566569897

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Publisher's Weekly Review

The 13 essays in this anthology are a mixed bag and do not live up to the impassioned foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who decries the Obama administration's use of drones to kill "thousands of people with no due process at all." Unless the volume is intended to preach to the choir, it undermines its efforts with hyperbole. For example, Richard Falk titled his chapter the provocative "Why Drones Are More Dangerous than Nuclear Weapons," arguing that a system of international agreements has made nuclear weapons a purely theoretical threat since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while drones are used freely by the U.S. without any constraints. Readers not already open to descriptions of American wrongdoing during the Vietnam War-including the creation of concentration camps-are also likely to tune out the very real concerns articulated here: innocent civilians killed in drone strikes, the expansion of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the prospect that technological advances will only increase the use of drones. Though this work is well-intentioned, Lloyd Gardner's Killing Machine: The American Presidency in the Age of Drone Warfare is a better introduction to the subject. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Publishers Weekly Reviews

The 13 essays in this anthology are a mixed bag and do not live up to the impassioned foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who decries the Obama administration's use of drones to kill "thousands of people with no due process at all." Unless the volume is intended to preach to the choir, it undermines its efforts with hyperbole. For example, Richard Falk titled his chapter the provocative "Why Drones Are More Dangerous than Nuclear Weapons," arguing that a system of international agreements has made nuclear weapons a purely theoretical threat since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while drones are used freely by the U.S. without any constraints. Readers not already open to descriptions of American wrongdoing during the Vietnam War—including the creation of concentration camps—are also likely to tune out the very real concerns articulated here: innocent civilians killed in drone strikes, the expansion of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the prospect that technological advances will only increase the use of drones. Though this work is well-intentioned, Lloyd Gardner's Killing Machine: The American Presidency in the Age of Drone Warfare is a better introduction to the subject. (Jan.)

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