In the wake of White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan’s speech on drone ethics and targeted killing, we talk to Yale Law School professor Stephen Carter, author of The Violence of Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama.

"The administration says that the drone is the smallest amount of force that we could use. They say it's accurate and therefore it discriminates perfectly," observes Yale Law School professor Stephen Carter.

“The idea of the Talmud is that you are allowed to ask questions about everything,” says Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. He calls the Talmud “the central pillar of Jewish culture” and “a vast book encouraging you to ask questions.”

"People across the political spectrum, right to left, are beginning to wonder if we are committed to a mission whose success is dubious now at best because of the way we’ve defined it," says William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"For weeks the newspapers have included articles about the mounting deaths and suffering of ordinary Syrians. These articles implicitly pronounce a familiar imperative: something must be done. But in the face of this imperative, we are compelled by another: force is justified only where there is reasonable hope of doing more good than harm."

“I feel the voice of God echoing from the mountains all over this place,” says a Syrian Christian pilgrim visiting Deir Mar Musa, an ancient desert monastery in Syria reestablished by Jesuit priest Paolo Dall’Oglio.

“When we’re using missiles that kill but place no risk,” suggests Yale law professor Stephen Carter, “that means it’s easier to fight, which means it’s more likely we’ll fight.”

After 10 years of war, says Georgetown University professor Nancy Sherman, US troops are coming home from Iraq, “and now they see that whole project of stability and democratization unraveling. They come home carrying heavy, invisible wounds, of a sense of betrayal and PTSD. Was it worth it?”

“The question in the eyes of many other Muslims,” according to Georgetown University Islamic studies professor John Esposito, is “are these people really Muslims or not?”

We discuss the major religion and ethics stories of the past year in the U.S. and abroad with Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Religion News Service editor Kevin Eckstrom and Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton.