The hunting and putting to death of special someone via drone has been a poorly closeted closed book for many years now . Not any longer : John Brennan , Obama ’s top counterterrorism consultant , just go on the criminal record , admitting targeted robot killing is official US insurance .
The argument , part of a wide speech on the moral principle and “ transparency ” of America ’s bourdon program , included this one crucial cable : “ the United States political science conducts direct work stoppage against specific al - Qaeda terrorist . ” That ’s it . This means going after specific people from a secret killing list , rather than just providing the kind of aery backup of , say a wedge or other military airship .
Again — nothing surprising here . Everyone knew this .
But to not only corroborate targeted lagger attacks — rather declaring it with confidence — is a significant signal . Before today , direct killing was know but always danced around , advise there was something doubtful to the computer programme , or something worth inhibit . Something uncomely . And while this might still be the case in actuality , the feds sure do n’t cogitate so — they’re entirely onboard , and willing to say , flat out , that this is the future tense of killing . Putting a human being ’s name on a list — US citizen or otherwise — and then killing them from a missile he never saw amount is the new normal .
Although Brennan did n’t dictate much more than the fact that the government is “ convinced ” in a target ’s culpability in something ( phew ! ) , much of the details have been write out elsewhere — mostrecently in Rolling Stone ’s tremendous overviewof UAV warfare :
The [ target ] overseas telegram usually turn back a lean of 30 people targeted for death . Occasionally , the memos are rejected for not containing enough data . More often , [ former chief counsel at the CIA John ] Rizzo would approve the kill , writing the Good Book “ concurred ” following the idiom , “ Therefore we request approval for targeting for deadly operation . ” In his six years as main counsellor , Rizzo articulate , he signed off on about one killing listing per calendar month .
Do n’t expect Brennan ( or anyone of his cell ) to splatter nitty gritty like this — the rationale behind who gets targeted and why is still inter beneath a agglomerate of CIA letterhead and an unnumberable kaleidoscope of DC lawyers . That ’s staying hugger-mugger . But today is still a profound statement : we now officially hold out in a company that adopt cross people off a list via robot . Drones may be the least - awful , most - effective , at sentence dazzlingly sophisticated way to run a war . But whatever your thoughts on the ethics of what may or may not be drone assassination , we ’re , on the disk , living in a young menstruum of how we kill . And we need to spend time retrieve about it .
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