Although the United States seems unlikely to abandon targeted killing in the near future, the focus ought now to be on developing and implementing standards, limits, and safeguards. In addition to the issues of blowback and the potential loss of technological edge already discussed, the United States has lost legitimacy and stature even among its allies. Legal justification, as the late Thomas Franck has written, is a key to legitimacy. There can be little public confidence in the current policy of targeted killing until the legal justification for it is put on firmer ground and strikes are limited to instances in which a sound factual basis for targeting individuals is made to the public. Legal justification, just as the joke about Wagner's music, is better than it sounds. But that justification has not been presented clearly to the public, nor has it been offered in a timely fashion.

Professor Jack Goldsmith relies in part on “accountability journalism,” Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and litigation to expose conditions that will prompt the public to demand action and Congress to act in response. But he is also ambivalent about the exposure of classified information harmful to national security. And while U.S. Supreme Court rulings during the George W. Bush administration curbed some of the worst prisoner abuses, laid the groundwork for habeas corpus, and spurred improved procedures for trial under the Military Commissions Act of 2009, Guantanamo was not closed, indefinite incarceration has continued, and actual freedom for prisoners has been rare. The broad continuity of policy between the Bush and Obama administrations is notable. Michael Glennon's evidence that a permanent stratum of unaccountable “Trumanites” actually make policy; that a “double government” exists in the United States casts considerable doubt about the effectiveness of the accountability mechanisms suggested by Professor Goldsmith.

It is important now to think ahead about forms of international norms and standards that nations might be willing to live by before we are faced with a crisscrossing of targeted attacks from rogue states and non-state actors who have been able to develop advanced technology. Moreover, the technology may go in a direction of autonomous and miniaturized UAVs presenting even greater problems than the current human-guided ones.