We Kill Because We Can

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.

• Foreword to the Paperback Edition
  
• Preface
  
• Introduction
  
• Part I: Find
  
  • 1. Drone Nation
  • 2. From Black Ops to Standard Operating Procedure
  • 3. The Logic of Targeted Killing
  • 4. Lethal Creep
• Part II: Fix
  
  • 5. Strike First, Suppress Questions Later
  • 6. The New Banality of Killing
  • 7. The Operators
  • 8. From Conscience to Oblivion
• Part III: Finish
  
  • 9. Death and Politics
  • 10. Death and Taxes
  • 11. The Death of Military Virtue
  • 12. Tyrants Are as Tyrants Do
• Conclusion
  
• Postface
  
• Appendix: Drone Killing and Just War Theory