Philosophers familiar with theories of “just warfare” were faced with this upsetting aspect of “warfare without risk.” Among those who detected a fundamental normative swing here, reactions were strong, even scandalized. The fact was that such a choice overturned the very principles of the standard war ethic. Wrote Jean Bethke Elshtain: “American officials described that intervention as a moral imperative. Yet before the conflict had even ended, observers were wondering if the United States had turned moral tradition on its head, with combatants rather than non-combatants provided immunity from the effects of fighting.” In her indignation, she had seized upon an essential point. What had emerged here, very clearly, was the preeminence of a tacit normative principle that was alien to the law of armed conflicts but implicitly regarded as superior to it, namely a sui generis principle of the immunity of imperial combatants.

Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, loc. 435