Jameel Jaffer is a deputy legal director of the ACLU. He led the ACLU legal team that sued for the release of the drone memos. He has written about the drone program for the New York Times, The Guardian, and the Harvard Law Review Forum among others and was listed by Foreign Policy magazine as a Top 100 Global Thinker.” He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show, All In with Chris Hayes, and Democracy Now! and speaks regularly at venues including the American Bar Association’s annual convening, law schools, and ACLU affiliates across the country. He is the co-author of Administration of Torture and lives in Brooklyn.
Praise for Drone Memos:
"A trenchant summation of the issues at hand."
Publishers Weekly (starred)
A nice counterweight to the hosannas ushering Obama from
office”
Teju Cole, The Guardian, Best Books of 2016.
The collection should interest those concerned with the conduct of
modern warfare, fought in the courtroom as well as on the
battlefield.”
Kirkus Reviews
"Democracies may be more fragile than we care to admit, existing
perhaps one election from tyranny. At a time in history when those
words blink red in the mind, this investigation shows the dangers
of investing government with the power to kill suspected enemies in
secret. Jaffer and his team perform a lasting public service by
exposing the targeted killing’ policies, and Jaffer’s introductory
essay is a much-needed corrective to the linguistic manipulation
and official obfuscation that have made these policies
possible."
Edward J. Snowden
"Few programs are more controversial than America’s use of killer
drones. Whether for or against drones, every citizen should read
the previously secret documents contained in this book, and thank
the public-spirited lawyers who made them public."
Jane Mayer
"The sad fact, as Jaffer notes, is that Democrats who protested
when George W. Bush claimed broad war powers were quite willing to
help Barack Obama claim even broader ones. The result is that the
counterproductive, colossally wasteful, deeply unethical, and
endlessly expanding war on terror’ has now become a permanent
bipartisan fixture of our foreign policy. Jaffer’s introduction is
careful and fairsome might say too fairbut it is a devastating
indictment of the irresponsible and short-sighted arguments that
the Obama administration made in secret memos and then in open
court."
Glenn Greenwald
"An invaluable contribution to the literature on drone strikes. The
documents, and Jaffer’s contextualization of them, provide a
crucial glimpse into one of the United States government’s most
shadowy, problematic and controversial programs."
Farea al-Muslimi, chairman, Sana’a Center for Strategic
Studies
"This important book shows how the Obama administration embraced
the legal underpinnings of the global war on terror’as well as
its secrecy, lethality, and lack of meaningful constraint. Jaffer’s
astute commentary critiques U.S. drone policy as unlawful and
potentially counterproductive. With a new administration soon to
take office, the questions he raises are increasingly urgent."
Joanne Mariner, senior crisis response adviser, Amnesty
International
"This is a compelling expose of the sophisticated and concerted
efforts by Obama Administration officials to thoroughly subvert the
international rule of law in the pursuit of minor short-term
military gains and at the expense of American credibility."
Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial,
summary, or arbitrary executions, 20042010
"Armed drones have given the United States the power to kill
individuals anywhere, even far from conventional battlefields, but
the United States has failed to articulate clear limits on their
uselet alone subscribe to the limits imposed by international law.
As Jaffer’s book makes clear, that failure has grave implications
as the technology of killer drones inevitably spreads to other
countries."
Ken Roth, executive director, Human Rights Watch
Praise for Jameel Jaffer’s Administration of Torture:
"In gathering these truly telling documents Jaffer and Singh have
distilled the essence of an evil that has shamed America. Exposing
it can only help remove a terrible national stain."
John W. Dean, Nixon White House counsel
"An extraordinarily important book.”
Naomi Wolf, The Huffington Post
"An historic reminder of the dangers of curtailing human rights
protections in the name of national security."
Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
"An immensely useful resource."
David Cole, The New York Review of Books
"The definitive evidence of the Bush-Cheney war crimes."
Nat Hentoff, The Village Voice
Ask a Question About this Product More... |