Chapter

Drones and dirty hands

Ben Jones and John M. Parrish

Preventive force : drones, targeted killing, and the transformation of contemporary warfare

New York : New York University Press, 2016

p. 283-312

English

Bibliographie : p. 309-312

“War on Terror” has prompted a revival of interest in the idea of moral dilemmas and the problem of “dirty hands” in public life. Some contend that a policy of targeted killings of terrorist actors is (under specified but not uncommon circumstances) an instance of a dirty-handed moral dilemma: morally required yet morally forbidden. This chapter argues that while dirty hands situations do exist as a persistent problem of political life, it is generally a mistake to classify policies of targeted killing (such as the current US policy) as examples of dirty hands. Instead, such policies must be justified under the more exacting standards of just war theory and its provisions for justified killing – in particular the requirement that (with limited and defined exceptions) non-combatants be immune from intentional violence. Understanding this distinction both clarifies the significance of dirty hands as a moral phenomenon and also forestalls a set of predictable and all-too-easy appropriations of the concept to domains it was never intended to address.

• Preventive force : drones, targeted killing, and the transformation of contemporary warfare / ed. by Kerstin Fisk and Jennifer M. Ramos