The article also ignores the geopolitical reasons for using UAVs in Pakistan.

And where is the morality or fairness in military actors cloaking themselves in civilian garb in 0rder to blow themselves up amidst crowds of civilians? The majority of suicide bombings have each claimed more civilian deaths than any of the UAV strikes.

I'm a liberal. But I recognize that there are people that only understand violence. I want those people killed, and I want it done with as few collateral deaths as possible, both within our military, as well as in the relevant civilian populations.

I've read your comment carefully and read back over the post and I'm having a hard time understanding what you are trying to say, or how it's related to the topic aside from being vaguely thematically linked.

Care to clarify?

By deciding that people who get carefully selected and killed at an opportune moment is murder but that people who can “defend themselves” (how does a squad with assault rifles defend against napalm?) you end up in a weird situation where killing the leaders is forbidden, even though they started the fucking conflict, while the poor saps drafted into war are fair game.

I don't know how to untangle this problem. In a war, surgically removing only combatants and leadership and not dragging civilians into the death seems rational. But if you have the capability to be that selective about how you kill, then you have moved over to being judge, jury and executioner without due process. The people bombed for being Taliban leadership don't get trials.

But by that logic we've prevented the military from acting at all. Meanwhile, the other guys are leaving booby traps on roads, and sending fools wearing explosives into markets.

Anyway, never apologize for quoting Terry Pratchett.