“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)”

“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)”

“Many at the State Department think its their job, not the Army's, to develop cultural and regional expertise and relationships. In such quarters, the RAF concept looks less like an innovative approach to global risk management than yet another military effort to replace diplomats with soldiers.”

“the U.S. government has a long history of overclassifying information that shouldn't be classified at all—and keeping information classified until long after any justification for classifying it has disappeared.”

“Most fundamentally, the U.S. military is—and will continue to be—a product of our culture and our collective decisions. Whatever it is, it's what we have made it.”

“It takes a whole government to really screw up a war. A dollop of American hubris goes a long way too.”

“It has often been our best instincts, not our worst, that have led us to do harm in the world”

“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)”

“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.”

“...And unpredictability can spread: one powerful outlier can pave the way for others, and as more states joint the outlier, the foundations of the rule of law begin to crumble.US counterterrorism practices--and the legal theories that under-pin them--are undermining the international rule of law in precisely this way...”