ABSTRACT
It was experiences such as this that led me to question the nature of power imposed from a distance, not just by those above the clouds, but by impeccable, faraway figures who order the mass killing of people, and by those who justify their crimes by representing the victims as terrorists, or merely as numbers, without names, faces and histories, or as the inevitable casualties of a superior morality. Thirty years later, the British Defence Secretary, Geoffrey Hoon, told Parliament, ‘The use of cluster bombs [in Afghanistan] is entirely appropriate. Against certain targets they are the best and most effective weapons we have’.2
