Abstract

Welcome to the Drone Age. Where self-defense has become naked aggression. Where courage has become cowardice. Where black ops have become standard operating procedure. In this remarkable and often shocking book, Laurie Calhoun dissects the moral, psychological, and cultural impact of remote-control killing in the twenty-first century.

Can a drone operator conducting a targeted killing be likened to a mafia hitman? What difference, if any, is there between the Trayvon Martin case and the drone killing of a teen in Yemen?

We Kill Because We Can takes a scalpel to the dark heart of Western foreign policy in order to answer these and many other troubling questions.

Laurie Calhoun is a philosopher and cultural critic with a special interest in film as a source of moral insight. She is the author of War and Delusion: A Critical Examination (2013) and Philosophy Unmasked: A Skeptic’s Critique (1997), in addition to dozens of essays on war, morality and politics.

‘Fresh, well-researched and well-written … provides an occasion to think about the deep implications of killing people though drones.’
openDemocracy

‘Vital and compelling reading.’
Counterfire

'The drone assassination campaign is the most extraordinary global terror campaign yet conceived and executed. This chilling and comprehensive survey more than amply demonstrates that drone strikes are war crimes, and that this new technology is not only an effective device of mass murder at a distance, but that it also eliminates barriers for commanders to "prosecute wars at their caprice". That the technology will sooner or later be directed against the perpetrators is hardly in doubt, as the cycle of violence takes its predictable course.'
Noam Chomsky

'In We Kill Because We Can, Laurie Calhoun poses worrisome questions that our government should be forced to answer, such as how an unarmed person can pose an imminent threat, and whether drones have inspired more terrorist attacks than they have prevented. Calhoun also makes some very searing but well-reasoned analogies between our government and the mafia; Bush, Obama and bin Laden; and targeted killings as simply assassinations. The book forces the reader to question our government's policies in terms of efficacy, adherence to law and, most painfully, moral grounds. It is a clarion call to reverse course if we ever want to see an end to our military adventures abroad and what the author refers to as our "single-minded obsession with lethality as a solution to conflict". Read it and act!'
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace and author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control

'By far the best book on drone warfare and the ethics of targeted assassinations to date. Powerful and eloquent, Laurie Calhoun elucidates a set of convincing arguments as to why drone killing is ethically indefensible and strategically counterproductive, but also why it is so seductive to our governments. It should be required reading for politicians, military planners and journalists.'
Richard Jackson, author of Confessions of a Terrorist

'Targeted assassination through the use of Predator drones has become the most dramatic military novelty of the twenty-first century. Laurie Calhoun's brilliant enquiry into the mindset of its perpetrators and supporters is a chilling reminder of how far we have strayed from the concept of "a just war".'
Richard Gott, author of Britain's Empire: Resistance, Rebellion and Revolt

'A comprehensive and shocking survey of the dirty consequences of US drone strikes. Calhoun provides important information on civilian casualties, which puts the lie to the CIA's denial of such losses. This important work will be helpful in any re-examination of drone policy.'
Melvin A. Goodman, former CIA analyst and author of National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism