Jameel Jaffer · @JameelJaffer
1st May 2012 from Twitlonger
Hermann Hesse on John Brennan's targeted killing speech:
Your speech was well constructed; otherwise, it was not particularly original, significant, or provocative. Reduced to the essentials, it said roughly what government officials have been saying in their speeches for a long time: that, generally speaking, "we" long for nothing so fervently as peace, as a new understanding among nations and fruitful collaboration in building the future, that we wish neither to enrich ourselves nor to satisfy homicidal lusts -- but that the "time for negotiations" is not yet at hand and that for the present there is therefore no alternative but to go on waging war. Just about every minister of any of the belligerent nations might have made such a speech, and probably will tomorrow or the day after.
(From "To a Cabinet Minister, 1917" in "If the War Goes On...") I don't know if that's a fair characterization of Brennan's speech, but it makes you think, doesn't it.