I don't belive it at all.
And yes, the US (as well as german) bases pump really much money into local economies. And local economies are suffering from closed down bases a lot.
The weak and fractured governments of Pakistan and Yemen want the US to bomb there. Yemen's being so weak it barely deserves the name.
What happens when your old rules of warfare aren't followed by your new enemy? Do you stand by those rules or adapt to the new reality?
Targeted drone strikes based on human and data intelligence is light years beyond declaring official war and shelling/bombing an entire region to the ground with no regard to what side the inhabitants may be on.
You're creating a false dichotomy between "targeted" drone strikes and shelling and bombing an entire region. By the way, each perpetrator of shelling and bombing entire regions has historically made similar claims of "targeting/precision".
How do we balance our tolerance for casualties with our tolerance of more and more effective weapons?
My point was not to say that drone strikes were wrong or right, only that the technology shouldn't be on trial, the intelligence, effectiveness and purpose should be.
I'm sure when airplanes and modern firearms took over the battlefield many thought they were "unfair" and dehumanized the process or war. And I don't doubt that in the future we'll be equally scared of newer more effective weapons.
I don't agree that as technology gets better that the number of civilian deaths decrease. I would point to the atom bomb and chemical warfare. As drone technology gets cheaper, I don't see why civilian deaths would decrease. This is not an argument for ludditism.
You're presenting regional carpet bombing as the only alternative. This is not the case. There are alternatives other than drone strikes, and regional bombing that you seem to be ignoring.
Using your terms, how many countries is the US at "war" with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili... These are not wars, this is unilateral, self appointed world policing.
Unfortunately, the drone technology is not sufficient to guarantee accuracy. You can tell this because of how civilian deaths have been "redefined" by the US administration and the US military. Both refuse to publish their statistics. Historically, US intelligence has been anything but accurate, maybe the refusal to publish is another example of this.
I question the effectiveness of attacking funerals and weddings half way across the world, under the guise of preventing terrorism. Particularly with spectacular failures recently making the news.
The technology is not on trial, the US's reputation is. The technology has already been shown to be bunkum - the US's defence is that it's cheap bunkum. This isn't progress on any front. The US does not need cheap drone strikes in these countries, nor does it need to bomb the regions.
It's not the weapons people are scared of, it's who is using them.
[0] http://www.livingunderdrones.org/numbers/
[1] http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/25/confessions-of-an-a...
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/29/drones-...
What's next, dial-a-bomb? You do realize you are justifying tyranny with precisely the mechanism of the tyrant: this 'elite' state is 'better' than 'anything else'.
I can think of a 1,000 better ways to solve the peace problem than dropping bombs on kids. The US invests in Death machines. That same technology, with different people, could be just as easily used to deliver tools of life...
But, 'war happens', right? The right to murder another human 'just happens', out there in the big world.. sorry, but no. If you claim sovereignty, then you must not be sad when others disavow you of it. That is the price. The USA respects no sovereign but itself: tyranny.
The takeover of the German state by the National Socialist party was little more than a coup by a gang of thugs, psycopaths and criminals. The persecution of Jews and other minorities was just a convenient scapegoat to drag the majority of the population along. The horrible crimes perpretated during this period cannot in anyway be ascribed as a (popular) uprising.
No? My knowledge of history is rusty.
And of course it didn't help that previous military leaders had been worthless cowards who continued a losing war to a point where they could not longer sue for peace, then leave it to the newly formed democratic government to accept the onerous conditions imposed by the opponents and end up getting blamed for something they had neither caused not any choice in.
German started WW1, btw