1
What line separates the lawful wartime targeting of an enemy combatant from the extrajudicial murder of a man suspected, but not convicted, of wrongdoing? (p8)Rosa Brooks
2
I don't believe that humans can be reduced to homo economicus, but as a group, government officials are remarkably sensitive to financial, political, and reputational costs. Thus, when new technologies appear to reduce the costs of using lethal force, their threshold for deciding to use lethal force correspondingly drops. If killing a suspected terrorist in Yemen or Somalia or Libya will endanger expensive manned aircraft, the lives of U.S. troops, and/or the lives of many innocent civilians, officials will reserve such killings for situations of extreme urgency and gravity (stopping another 9/11, getting Osama bin Laden). But if all that appears to be at risk is a an easily replaceable drone, officials will be tempted to use lethal force more and more casually.Rosa Brooks
3
Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata. "People get hung up that there's a targeted list of people, " he said. "It's really like we're targeting a cell phone. We're not going after people — we're going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy.Jeremy Scahill