Black Sites

There are places on the earth that no human eye knows; these are the black lands, the people living under a black sun, unredeemed. Sometimes in an Empire of Liberty an excess of light can seem like none...

http://www.virginialawreview.org/content/pdfs/91/1425.pdf

'Supreme Emergency Exemption'.

"This exemption allows us to set aside -in certain special circumstances- the strict status of civilians that normally prevents their being a direct attack in war. We must proceed with caution here. Were there times during World War II when Britain could have properly have held that civilians' strict status was suspended, and thus could have bombed Hamburg or Berlin? Possibly but only if..."

This is Rawls, mind you. Not some incidental voice , but one of the great philosophers of the last century.From 'The Law of Peoples' , page 98. (drawing reference to Walzer's 'Just and Unjust Wars, chap. 16, pp255-265 for this idea of 'exemption').

In this regard, it is also worth looking at Agamben's work, The State of Exception. Here is an excerpt.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/009254.html

And shall we go back to Hobbes? As far as I understand him, if a people is conquered by violence and then sues for peace that new rule is legitimate. i.e violence is sanctioned within some western political theory itself. (see Foucault's 'Society Must be Defended' for a discussion).