The Life You Save Might Be Your Own.

Eugene Robinson, on the debate that didn't bark:

The skies over at least six countries are patrolled by robotic aircraft, operated by the U.S. military or the CIA, that fire missiles to carry out targeted assassinations. I am convinced that this method of waging war is cost-effective but not that it is moral.

There has been virtually no public debate about the expanding use of unmanned drone aircraft as killing machines — not domestically, at least. In the places where drone attacks are taking place, there has understandably been great uproar. And in the rest of the world, questions are being raised about the legal and ethical basis for these antiseptic missile strikes.
...
Somalia thus joins Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya as nations where remote-controlled drones are conducting lethal attacks. The strike was deemed justified by U.S. officials, according to The Post, because al-Shabab had become “somewhat emboldened of late” and was “planning operations outside of Somalia” against the United States or its allies.

The Obama administration has greatly increased the use of missile-firing drones...
Since the program is supposed to be secret, officials use euphemisms when speaking about it publicly. John Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, said in a recent speech that “our best offense won’t always be deploying large armies abroad but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us.”

The word “surgical” is used a lot to describe the drone program, although surgery is designed to save lives, not take them.

Why should officials even think twice about using technology that can kill our enemies without putting American lives in harm’s way? Plenty of reasons.

First, there’s the practical question of whether killing terrorists in this manner creates new ones. And in Pakistan, for example, the government has responded to public outrage by banning drone flights from an airfield that previously had been an operational hub, according to the Financial Times.

There is also a legal question. The Obama administration asserts that international law clearly permits the targeting of individuals who are planning attacks against the United States. But this standard requires near-perfect intelligence — that we have identified the right target, that we are certain of the target’s nefarious intentions, that the target is inside the house or car that the drone has in its sights. Mistakes are inevitable; accountability is doubtful at best.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, are the moral and philosophical questions. This is a program not of war but of assassination. Clearly, someone like Ayman al-Zawahiri — formerly Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command, now the leader of al-Qaeda — is a legitimate target. But what about others such as the Somali “militants” who may wish to do us harm but have not actually done so? Are we certain that they have the capability of mounting some kind of attack? Absent any overt act, is there a point at which antipathy toward the United States, even hatred, becomes a capital offense?

It is one thing to assassinate known leaders of al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization with which we are at war. It is another thing to use drones in Libya, against a regime that posed no threat whatsoever to the United States.

Morality? We don't need no steenkin' morality.
What? You think these choices of today are going to come back and bite us in the butt tomorrow? America-the-All-Powerful, All-Knowing, and All-Seeing? We're blessed; nothing/nobody can touch us, natch. Nevermind 9-11 and our enemies abroad. That was just an ... aberration. These wars of choice will protect us all, I'm sure.

*snark off*

Do Unto Others as You'd Have Done to You...