Give Obama Credit: Drones Are Better Than Boots

[Maedhros]

1. The problem with drones lies with the rules of engagement for their use.

Despite being touted as "surgical" weapons, drones are not very discriminatory at all. They are targeted using behavioral "signatures" that often conflate funeral and wedding services as "terrorist" meetings, resulting in many innocent people being killed. Often they are targeting using cell phone metadata to identify the "terrorist," which also has problematic outcomes. Troops on the ground have much better situational awareness than a Hellfire missile, so they have some advantages over the remote-controlled alternative.

Perhaps the bigger problem with drones is that they provide a false sense of security in their use, so that people are much more accepting of drone deployment than troop deployment. This leads to the acceptance of continual war in the form of drone strikes as normal instead of horrific.