The military kills people. We stopped caring whether those people were civilians during WWII.
Uh, one might regret that civilian deaths were ignored during one or another time period (and they've been ignored many times). But putting it as "we've gotten away with this killing, now we have carte blanche, forever" is rather objectionable.
A balanced view of the overall toll of war is nice but we shouldn't dismiss one concern simply with the excuse that it doesn't mention another.
Another reason people object to drones is that they are weapon of, uh, terror, in the sense that having flying, killing machines around terrifies far more people than are actually kiled by the drone (the use of aircraft to inspire terror has always been part of its military use btw).
Edit: Also, the talk of "friends" and "enemies" is glib and doesn't reflect the situation is Afghanistan. It is a counter-insurgency war where most of the population is civilians that are neither "friendly" nor "unfriendly" off-the-bat. But keep your drones in the air long enough and it seem like you will find a hostile civilian population.
Uh, one might regret that civilian deaths were ignored during one or another time period (and they've been ignored many times). But putting it as "we've gotten away with this killing, now we have carte blanche, forever" is rather objectionable.
A balanced view of the overall toll of war is nice but we shouldn't dismiss one concern simply with the excuse that it doesn't mention another.
Another reason people object to drones is that they are weapon of, uh, terror, in the sense that having flying, killing machines around terrifies far more people than are actually kiled by the drone (the use of aircraft to inspire terror has always been part of its military use btw).
Edit: Also, the talk of "friends" and "enemies" is glib and doesn't reflect the situation is Afghanistan. It is a counter-insurgency war where most of the population is civilians that are neither "friendly" nor "unfriendly" off-the-bat. But keep your drones in the air long enough and it seem like you will find a hostile civilian population.