During a speech at Northwestern University on March 5th, Attorney General Eric Holder gave the most detailed look into the process of how and why the United States decides to kill people it deems national security threats. Tellingly, the administration provided a legal justification for targeted killings through a university speech rather than a Justice Department memorandum. In a speech, no legal footnotes are required, and rhetoric rather than dispassionate judicial logic is most important. Holder’s speech offered a concise description of a process that seems very problematic and was couched in the language of patriotism so as to make its more incongruous points more palatable to the listener.
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