> "and technology which improves the effectiveness of killing terrorists and enemy combatants (and thus saving American lives) is a good thing."
There are other than American lives at stake. I suppose what you say would be true, if the U.S. used the technology to kill only those universally bad terrorists and if this somehow significantly decreased the damage terrorists do around the world.
But this is fantasy. The U.S. will most probably use this technology to detect more and to kill more, with much less regard to foreign lives than to American lives. If the technology flags a building that most probably contains a terrorist, the non-terrorist people present won't matter much to a drone whose work is killing terrorists. The building with all people near it will be gone. I do not believe the U.S. government or U.S. military care about the lives of poor people who are on the other side of the world.
Drone attacks also probably aren't that good of a service to U.S. in the long term. They generate strong opposition world-wide and probably also generate new terrorists. Killing one terrorist now in this way may mean creating 10 terrorists 10 years from now.
There are other than American lives at stake. I suppose what you say would be true, if the U.S. used the technology to kill only those universally bad terrorists and if this somehow significantly decreased the damage terrorists do around the world.
But this is fantasy. The U.S. will most probably use this technology to detect more and to kill more, with much less regard to foreign lives than to American lives. If the technology flags a building that most probably contains a terrorist, the non-terrorist people present won't matter much to a drone whose work is killing terrorists. The building with all people near it will be gone. I do not believe the U.S. government or U.S. military care about the lives of poor people who are on the other side of the world.
Drone attacks also probably aren't that good of a service to U.S. in the long term. They generate strong opposition world-wide and probably also generate new terrorists. Killing one terrorist now in this way may mean creating 10 terrorists 10 years from now.