Review
''This book provides much-needed analysis of why America's targeted killing program is illegal, immoral and unwise.'' --from the foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"Very important book... In a few months we will commemorate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, which, despite the limits of the day, established the founding principle of modern law: presumption of innocence. Today that principle has been rescinded. Guilty verdicts are no longer to be rendered by a jury of peers, but by a White House session deciding who we are going to kill today along with whatever unfortunates happen to be in the vicinity of the drone attack. As these valuable essays show, Obama s global terror campaign is a menace to the world, and Americans are not likely to escape unscathed."
--Noam Chomsky
"Armed unmanned drones have radically reduced the practical constraints on the use of force, and in so doing present challenging legal, political and moral issues. This hard-hitting collection offers multiple critiques of drone targeting, raising if not resolving -- many of the questions that must be asked as nations increasingly develop and deploy unarmed drones as a security tool."
--David Cole, Georgetown University Law Center
"Just weeks before 9/11, U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, told the Israelis: The United States government is very clearly on the record as against targeted assassinations. They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that. This extraordinary collection shows how two presidents abandoned that principled stand and, more importantly, the need to reclaim it." --Mary Ellen O'Connell, Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame
"Cogent and powerful...this book is a rapid-fire attack on the US policy of targeted assassination by drone or other means...Most importantly it is a reasoned and legalistic addition to the demand that this policy end now and forever."
--Ron Jacobs, Counterpunch
"Marjorie Cohn's new book Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal Moral and Geopolitical Issues makes the unanswerable case that targeted killing, off the battlefield, is illegal and unjustifiable...I wholeheartedly commend this book.
--Richard Harvey, Socialist Lawyer
"Marjorie Cohn's anthology Drones and Targeted Killing is timely and makes a major contribution to the growing literature on targeted killing and drone warfare. I highly recommend it."
--Mark Woods, Radical Philosophy Review
"Knowledge, it is said, is power. If so, this book places a great deal of power in the hands of the reader...The crucial messages...are that the use of drones threatens us all and that we can do something about them.
--David Gespass, Guild Review
"An illuminating insight into the opaque world of drone warfare...This is a thought provoking, informative book on an important issue. It is well worth reading, sharing and discussing." --Charles Sevilla, Los Angeles Daily Journal
From the Back Cover
The Bush administration detained and tortured suspected terrorists; the Obama administration assassinated them; and the Trump administration will likely do both. 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, Tom Reifer, Alice Ross, Jay Stanley, Cian Westmoreland, and Harry Van der Linden.
About the Author
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her books include Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law; Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd); and the edited volume, The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse. Cohn is a recipient of the Peace Scholar of the Year Award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association. She testified before Congress about the Bush torture policy.
