Having been in the military myself, there is an awful moment when you're in this moment of conflict.

Hany Abu-Assad was sitting next to me, and his film 'Paradise Now' had won the Golden Globe. He said to me at the Globes, 'Paradise now, talk to you later.' [laughs] I gave him a big hug for that.

And for the people who promote drones as the answer to everything, there is a danger from being distanced from the reality of the ugly mess of war.

I think if you read the story as bad guy turns good guy, then clearly it is a cliché. But my experience, when I spent three years working with young people in the townships on issues principally around HIV/AIDS, is that people are usually neither entirely good or bad. They are usually variations of both. Just because someone is a carjacker doesn't mean they are a ruthless cold-blooded murderer.

When I see big movies that are only about good versus evil, and the good guy wins, I only can think we're in a far more complicated world than that. I frankly think that this binary philosophy is actually a dangerous way to look at the world.

The question becomes, because we're remotely far away from the territory we're about to bomb, does it make it easier to do it? That it is an important question, and the military is asking those questions.

Having been in the military myself, there is an awful moment when you're in this moment of conflict.