Look at it this way: it makes killing people with targeted missiles that much cheaper, which means they will want to do more of it, not just to "important targets", but to "associated targets", too.

It's basically the NSA equivalent of mass spying. If spying becomes so cheap that they can just do it to everyone, then they're thinking "why not"? Same with drone striking. If it ends up costing them only like $10,000 per target - why not kill the associated forces, too? You know...just to be on the "safe side".