This article presents six theses on targeted killing as a form of political violence. These explore the power relations, lawfare, scopic regimes, forms of spatial management and symbolic communications which suggest that the practice of targeted killing arises from the failures of the Western global counter-insurgency campaign to achieve its aims. Therefore, rather than demonstrating omniscience and omnipotence, targeted killing is indicative of the Western position of weakness in the wars of ‘the colonial present’.
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