Why I view drones overhead as totally awful as boots on the ground:

[truedelphi]

8. Back in Dec 2001, when I researched the Nine Eleven Timeline,

For the Coastal Post article that resulted, I found the following statement on the official CIA website:

"One of the main problems faced by the Agency is that we still lack a way to engage America's soldiers to wage war on their fellow citizens." (I am paraphrasing, since it has been 12 and a half years since that research.)

I think the powers that be thought that endless tours of duty would harden most soldiers to be willing to wage that war on their fellow citizens. Instead, the endless tours of duty meant that within five or six years, all the volunteers for war had either become so PTSD'ed or else so out and out seriously wounded from their service, that they cannot be called up to engage in such a warfare.

When Summer of 2013, President Obama asked all of us to sign onto the war against the Syrian establishment, only 17% of us Americans supported his call to arms. People here are sick and tired of wanting war. We now no longer even want to engage in war against foreigners, so I guess drones are the one thing that the DoD and CIA can rely on. With drones, you don't need as many people to be killers, and the military personnel that are involved can do it from a very sterilized, and comforting environment. Kill a half a dozen terrorists before lunch, and eat at Taco Bell, and like you mention, they don't even have heavy duty, bloody graphics to impact their enjoyment of that lunch.