By Quinta Jurecic @ Lawfareblog.com, April 9

Last week, the Washington Post reported a disturbing anecdote about President Trump’s visit to the CIA on his first full day in office:

[W]hen the agency’s head of drone operations explained that the CIA had developed special munitions to limit civilian casualties, the president seemed unimpressed. Watching a previously recorded strike [in Syria] in which the agency held off on firing until the target had wandered away from a house with his family inside, Trump asked, “Why did you wait?” one participant in the meeting recalled.

Trump also requested that the CIA return to conducting drone strikes itself within Syria rather than only collecting intelligence to pass to the Pentagon to conduct strikes.

The president’s question—“Why did you wait?”—is not surprising. It is, after all, entirely consistent with Trump’s campaign-trail statement that battling suspected terrorists requires “tak[ing] out their families.” But it is nevertheless a jarring reminder of what former FBI Director James Comey termed the “nature of the person” who occupies the Oval Office.

I’ve written at length about the pains taken by President Obama to present himself in relation to the targeted killing program as a kind of philosopher-king: an anguished just-war theorist who deeply felt the weight of each death he caused [....]