While the President dances, innocents mourn their dead, dead at the President's hand.

[jeff47]

263. And they're still the least-bad option

Broadly speaking, we've got three options:

1) Drone Strikes - which have the problems you mention

2) Invasion - the downsides of this should be obvious

3) Back off - the problem with this is our drone strikes are disrupting the ability of terrorist groups to plan large-scale attacks. Backing off on drone strikes aren't going to make these groups stop hating the US. So backing off will lead to them planning and then carrying out large-scale terrorist attacks in the US. The aftermath of such an attack is likely to be #2 above. Meaning we not only get the downsides of invasion, but we get another pile of dead in the US and attacks on civil liberties. Even if the president at the time doesn't invade, political pressure will replace him with a warmonger.

So yes, drone strikes are bad. The alternatives are worse. The way out of this current situation will require resolving the conflict between Israel and Palestine and other regional irritants before stopping the strikes would be effective.