I have spent a significant portion of my morning ...

[patrice]

87. I wonder why that is. I don't know enough to try to answer that question.

That is not a comfortable situation for me. I do believe that PO doesn't do things without what he evaluates to be a good reason. I have some expectation that he is capable of honestly making that determination of what is or isn't a good reason as authentically as possible. I really don't know whether I would agree with him or not, so the answer as to why he does X in regard to the things that your mention is 50:50 for me, not good enough I know, but I cannot deny the fact that I don't have enough of the very precisely detailed and specific information about the relevant situations that would go into making a better determination of why his decisions in these matters are as they are. And I honestly am not comfortable with that 50:50.

I admit that I have a problem with the "military model" that this situation appears to manifest in the Presidency. I cannot imagine myself capable of doing certain things unless I have personally reasoned out for myself why I would or would not do them. I couldn't just do them on someone else's say so. That said, it's pretty clear from human history and the study of human behavior and mental processes, psychology, that under the appropriate conditions, almost anyone will do almost anything. For some people that threshold is a lot lower than it is for other people. I have not personally been tested in that regard beyond the more or less normal crises of interpersonal relationships.

I'm also troubled that my conventional understanding of how the ethics of warriors work doesn't apply now. If I say that something is so worth human life or death that I FREELY offer my own life in that struggle, put my own blood on the line in order to engage the enemies of that valued whatever, that is an ethical basis to engage in combat against others who have FREELY chosen to do so. The quality of freedom that I mention here is a criteria that is almost never honestly met and I understand from those who have been there that what I have just described is more relevant to non-combat environments, because in combat itself nothing is about anything except not dying and, hence, killing as many threats as possible. Even though it is quite clear how often that has gone completely wrong in regards to what is and what is not an actual threat, there's still a hypothetical basis in "my blood for their blood", if freely chosen by all combatants, that is a foundation for those kinds of ethical decisions, by people who actually do those sorts of things. The rest of us, not so much. And even if I do disagree with that moral choice made by someone esle, if I claim the right to freely make my own moral choices, I have to yield that same right to freely make their own moral decisions to others, even if those choices are different from mine. The criteria are freedom and honesty, if both of those are met, and the moral decision is different from mine, I cannot violate their right to that choice and still claim my own right to my own choices in the matter.

None of that applies to drones. That's not freely chosen blood for blood in a struggle for a certain value(s). The value aspect is still somewhat intact in the probabilities of risk to innocent others, foreign or domestic, who are not offered a choice in the matter of that risk, but that's only somewhat intact in the fact that it's all about probabilities, NOT givens, even though it is possible that in some instances those probabilities can be relatively high depending upon the determining factors. Also the blood for blood factor is different between the two sides of the threat. Drone pilots are not in danger, they don't offer their lives, in the struggle for the values that they represent, but their targets, though they may not be offering their own lives directly in that struggle, are at much more of a disadvantage in the danger that they face.