Bruce Feirstein Quotes

I cannot grasp the difference between killing people with drones or rifles and knives. The objective in war is to kill the enemy before he kills you. I can't fathom the almost religious zeal with which the use of drones is being opposed.

Few people know that President Obama has used drone attacks many times more than Bush ever did. Obama's off the charts in terms of drone attack.

In my view, targeted lethal force is at its least controversial when it is on its strongest, most traditional legal foundation. The essential mission of the U.S. military is to capture or kill an enemy. Armies have been doing this for thousands of years. As part of a congressionally authorized armed conflict, the foundation is even stronger.

I've got no problem with drone strikes.

No right can come by conquest, unless there were a right of making that conquest.

If we can kill Saddam, we should.

I think the rule should be that if we're going to take actions overseas that result in the deaths of people, the United States should take responsibility for that.

Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen - even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of al-Qaida in a foreign land - is among the gravest that government leaders can face.

The only moral question with suicide bombing is who the target is. And in that sense, the suicide bomber is no different from the stealth bomber or the cruise missile. If it is targeted at civilian people, then it is morally wrong, whether done by Bush, Blair, or a suicide bomber.

Drones can be a highly effective way of dealing with high-priority targets, but they should not become the drug of choice for an administration that is afraid to use successful, legal and safe tactics of the past.

Above all, we shall wage no more unilateral, ill-planned, ill-considered, and ill-prepared invasions of foreign countries that pose no actual threat to our security.

I think we need to ask serious questions about how we engage militarily, when we engage militarily, and on what basis we engage militarily. What kind of intelligence do we have to justify a military engagement?

The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis for our War on Terrorism.

To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.

Outside the context of armed conflict, the use of drones for targeted killings is almost never likely to be legal.

The discomfort of my colleagues, where it existed, didn’t stem from targeted killing itself.... The discomfort existed because it felt like we were doing something, on a large scale, that we’d sworn not to. Most of us felt as though we were violating Executive Order 12333.

… civilian casualties [with drone attacks] have proved formidable. Haphazard intelligence has often been to blame, as earn local tipsters have provided the United States with false information in order to take out innocent rivals.

It’s hard to know whether drone strikes have provoked more anger than other forms of Western power.

On April 14, 1986, when the Reagan administration launched an airstrike on Libya in clear violation of international law, Kissinger did the rounds on news shows to justify the bombing. The day after the bombing, Kissinger appeared on ABC's 'Good Morning America' to voice his 'total support.' Attacking Libya, he said, was 'correct' and 'necessary.'

I am not a pacifist and I would back a lawful, coherent and compelling case for the use of military force by the U.K. against Isis.

International law seeks to avoid the use of force but does not preclude it.

The preemptive use of force has always been part of international law.

War itself is justifiable only on principles of self-preservation:

… it was not necessary to make any definition of "aggressor" or "self-defense." I do not think it can be done, anyway, accurately. They have been trying to do it in Europe for six or eight years, and they never have been able to accurately define " aggressor " or " self-defense.

Our calculus with the Drone Program is very simple. Kill them before they kill you!