A huge piece in the today’s Times examined our most powerful and least proud alumnus’ deliberative process when ordering drone strikes,  in which he weighs the benefit of killing a suspected terrorist against the risk of killing innocents.

The piece included an oblique shout-out to CC. Obama, who in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech mused on just war, has apparently “reserved to himself the final moral calculation” when chancing collateral damage.

Obama applies “the ‘just war’ theories of Christian philosophers to a brutal modern conflict.” Without “a ‘near certainty’ that a strike would result in zero civilian deaths, Mr. Obama want[s] to decide personally whether to go ahead.” The coolest part:

A student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, [Obama] believes that he should take moral responsibility for such actions.

“He realizes this isn’t science, this is judgments made off of, most of the time, human intelligence,” said Mr. Daley, the former chief of staff.

Hard choices…you should think about them critically!