Yes we do have opinions, and they are going to be different, often.
But lets look at some put here,yes America once funded one, probably tens of hundreds it now fights, SO?
People change sides in these country's every hour,and that thieving head of state wants to appoint him? we would be better if a drone targeted both.
So drones are killing? very well so are bombs knives and not just in Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iraq.
I think this thread wobbles like a jelly, it started by saying Americans using drones killed Innocent people, unable to prove that it seeks to hide in a world that dose not exist.
We see quote about a convention that has been ignored by country's like these for every day it existed.
Remember,, a God is said to issue laws here not man, and too our lives are far less respected than his followers.

Aiding the enemy makes you an enemy, I would not be soft on these taliban or their friends.
This mob need to be cleaned up for the good of the world.

They say it’s a blessing to have hindsight. It’s also a blessing to be able to view things from afar –like, the comfort of your armchair.

It's very easy sitting in 2011, wise with hindsight, to declare the US foolhardy for support the mujahideen . But one needs to be mindful of the issues of those times: communism controlled 1/3 of the world and probably had influence over another 1/3, there was no telling how much further it would expand– it had ambitions to.The support for the mujahideen was just one of a thousand little schemes the US was using to contain the enemy of the period, some of those schemes led to successes, some, like the support for the mujahideen laid the groundwork for future troubles.

We live in an age where armchair experts --- inebriated with hindsight and a sense of their own moral purity-- seek to denigrate everything Western.

To adapt CSteele’s little quip: what is evident is as [ their detachment from reality increases] so does [their list of prohibitions]:
Thou shalt not use drones.
Thou shalt not subject enemy combatants to discomfort.
Thou shalt not notice that most bomber tend to come from one group (profile).
They shalt not prosecute illegal immigrants who blow-up their boats.
Thou shalt not rescue navy personnel before they rescue the saboteurs.

All sound eminently “civilised”, if your sharing a chardonnay around a dinner table (esp after the fifth glass), but when applied in a world where thugs and con-men rule – they are an invitation for disaster.

Another aspect of this moral purity is, their equating of any association with Pakistan or Saudi as akin to aiding and abetting fundamentalism —and lack of principle.However, I suspect in a different thread –lets say something dear to their hearts, like, Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe – such people would be campaigning for us to leave the door open, for compromise and gradualism.

And Yabby make a highly pertinent point:
“No nation is made up of a homogeneous mindset, they are made up of
people of very different opinions and religious beliefs”

SPQR,

Referring to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, my query to Yabby was more in the line of, "What are the criteria among the many critical players in the Middle-East as to who is admitted to the Friends of America Club - as opposed to who is admitted to the Enemies of America Club?"

As far as Zimbabwe goes, it was never in any danger of U.S. intervention. According to Noam Chomsky it only fulfills the first of the three necessary requirements to be the target of a "preventive war".
1. The country must be virtually defenceless
2. The country must be important enough to be worth the trouble.
3. There must be a way to portray it as the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to our survival.

Poirot
I would be most interested in hearing how Saddam Hussein’s Iraq fulfilled criteria 1;How Serbia –Kosovo fulfilled 1 & 2 ; How Grenada fulfilled any of the three?

But I guess he left himself an out with the qualification: "preventive war".

I think you have made a strong case csteele and thank you Poirot for your always incisive posts. This is far than important than party politics or political philosophy, its about the social fabric. We a ripping and tearing away at it, in a grotesque parody of the values we claim abhorrent.

Why can't we take stock for a moment and take at look at our own actions with balance,
and if your looking for a gung-ho reason to object to drones Shintaro has provided it.

Imagine the next media action blockbuster with Silvester Stallone and and the Terminator,
they sit their playing cards and making wisecracks while a remote machine does all the dirty work.
Now there's something you can hang your hat on.
I've even come up with a title "No Heroes in Hell".