Does the lethal use of drones pose any new or difficult moral problems? Or is the controversy over these weapons merely a distraction from deeper questions regarding the justice of war and the United States' bellicose foreign policy? Opposing Perspectives on the Drone Debate pulls no punches in answering these questions as five scholars square off in a lively debate over the ethics of drones and their contentious use in a point-counterpoint debate. The contributing authors are some of the foremost thinkers in international affairs today, spanning the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, political science, and law. Topics debated range from the US's contested policy of so-called "targeted killing" in Pakistan's tribal regions to fears over the damaging effects such weaponry has on our democratic institutions to the more abstract moral questions raised by killing via remote control such as the duty to capture over kill.

This study analyzes the pervasive rhetoric of victimhood in European culture since 1968. In a radically fragmented public sphere, individuals perceive themselves as dissociated from all others, while at the same time they feel similar to everyone else. Where genuine solidarity and communality is attenuated, people present themselves as victims to garner media attention, create fragile social bonds, or escape supposed marginalization and oppression. Fatima Naqvi commences with interpretations of Sigmund Freud, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, arguing that contemporary discourse continues a trajectory mapped in the early 20th century--in the shadow of Nazism. In a series of paradigmatic readings of Rene Girard, Peter Sloterdijk, Michael Haneke, Anselm Kiefer, Christoph Ransmayr, Friederike Mayrocker, Michel Houellebecq, Giorgio Agamben, and Elfriede Jelinek, she traces the on-going fascination with victimhood and the desire for victim status in the West. She looks at the way in which such cultural anxiety expresses itself; at how victim rhetoric calls itself into question; and, finally, at how it perpetuates itself in the moment that it becomes philosophically ungrounded.

Does the lethal use of drones pose any new or difficult moral problems? Or is the controversy over these weapons merely a distraction from deeper questions regarding the justice of war and the United States' bellicose foreign policy? Opposing Perspectives on the Drone Debate pulls no punches in answering these questions as five scholars square off in a lively debate over the ethics of drones and their contentious use in a point-counterpoint debate. The contributing authors are some of the foremost thinkers in international affairs today, spanning the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, political science, and law. Topics debated range from the US's contested policy of so-called "targeted killing" in Pakistan's tribal regions to fears over the damaging effects such weaponry has on our democratic institutions to the more abstract moral questions raised by killing via remote control such as the duty to capture over kill.

In a series of paradigmatic readings of Rene Girard, Peter Sloterdijk, Michael Haneke, Anselm Kiefer, Michel Houellebecq, Elfriede Jelinek, Giorgio Agamben, Naqvi examines the current fascination with victimhood and the desire for victim status.