Drone Warfare | 
The rhetoric and moral thinking about war has become sloppier as our weaponry has become more precise. Our reliance on precision weaponry risks becoming a stand-in for hard moral or legal decisions. Combatant status cannot be determined by an algorithm, and we should not be lulled into believing the technical precision can extricate us from complicated questions.
While current drone policies are not harbingers of an Orwellian state or the systematic extermination of populations abroad, caution is certainly warranted. Each step toward Nazi dominance was a step toward a state that normalized extraordinarily unjust policies - the permanent “state of exception”, whereby the previously unthinkable becomes accepted as normal.
“Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler‘s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda‘s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”
(2/2) Suspicion will not always lead to judgements of guilt, but the ease of a particular activity should place our ethical sensibilities on high alert.
(1/2) Think of all the things that are easy to do and are morally questionable - it is easy to exploit the powerless, ..., easy to ignore the hungry. From a military standpoint, it is easy also for certain countries to kill people with Hellfire missiles. Some of the easiest things in life are some of the most immoral, and that is why all of the easiest things are, or should be, morally suspect.
Many studies have shown that people find it difficult to kill their fellow human beings at close range and that special conditioning is needed to overcome this inhibition. Conflicts in which resource is had to advanced technologies which permit killing at a distance or on the computer screen prevent the activation of neuro-psychological mechanisms which render the act of killing difficult.
