Drone attacks

[Lamplighter]

Does it matter which weapon is used ... garrote, knife, sniper, F-35, poison gas... drone ?

Drones - to the public - are the latest new killing weapon in the US arsenal
The US has already killed ~1,500 humans with missiles from drones.
The US has already targeted and killed US citizens in this manner.

They are also weapons of foreign policy... here is today's item:


NY Times
ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI
October 28, 2013

Pentagon Says Shabab Bomb Specialist Is Killed in Missile Strike in Somalia

WASHINGTON — The United States military carried out a missile strike against
a top Shabab operative in Somalia on Monday, according to Defense Department officials,
three weeks after a Navy SEAL raid in another part of the country failed
to capture a senior leader of the Somali Islamic militant group.

The American strike is the latest evidence that the Obama administration
has decided to escalate operations against the Shabab in the aftermath of
the bloody siege at a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, last month
in which more than 60 men, women and children were killed.
A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on the strike,
referring questions to the Pentagon.
<snip>
Even as President Obama has ordered a punishing campaign
of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, the administration has been
far more reluctant to use similar tactics in Somalia.
The reluctance partly centered around questions of whether the Shabab
— which has not tried to carry out an attack on American soil —
could legally be the target of lethal operations by the military or the C.I.A.

IMO, this is bad policy, not just in Somalia...

Some argued that American strikes might only incite Shabab operatives,
transforming the group from a regional organization focused on repelling foreign troops
from Somalia into one with an agenda akin to Al Qaeda’s: striking the West at every turn.