American and Italian hostages killed in cia drone strike in january

There have been an unusually large number of civilian casualties from the drone program. If memory serves its currently over 20 incidental deaths per high value target. Leaked documents from the CIA (by Der Speigel) even enumerate administrative policy on the number of acceptable innocent deaths per target - in some cases 70 or more civilian deaths were calculated to be acceptable.

The United States also hunted and assassinated US citizen and former Ambassador al-Awlaki with drones after censoring his political speech from Youtube and other online forums when the former Ambassador, through his official duties, became convinced that the US's policies in the Middle East were harmful to the region and became supportive of resistance groups. A scandal ensued when the US claimed to have the right to execute American citizens without trial in circumstances of extreme immediacy but would not release their policy (this is under the now former Justice Department head Holder) and could not defend the claim that there was a critical immediate need (al-Awlaki did not participate in any violent activity and former strikes that missed him were not followed by any activity that could be reasonably called an extreme immediate need).

These scandals aside, imagine what it is like to live underneath the constant threat of instantaneous incineration - the buzzing of drones in the sky and sporatic strikes. This Orwellian world will continue to see its day as the world powers and military suppliers have all been building drone programs, the US has plans to deploy drones to patrol its own skies, and the Obama administration has clearance to sell its drones to other nations.

It's certainly sad that several innocents have been killed by a drone strike.

However, isn't that just the usual "collateral damage" on the Current President's personal "kill list"? why is this news? are a few Westerners worth so much more than hundreds or thousands of Pakistani and Afghan people?